Design showcase: Top 5 quiet designs

by Nicholls Clare | 20 Jul 2022 | Design

This week’s collaboration with TOPHOTELDESIGN turns down the volume on hotel compositions, focusing on ‘quiet’ developments which accentuate existing structural features or locales.

One of the main and usual goals of architectural or interior design is the possibility to give character and personality to a particular habitable space. However, that’s not the only goal that exceptional designers are seeking.

Room to be heard

Today we are looking into quiet designs. What do we mean by quiet? We chose that word not to express nothingness, but instead leaving room for something else to be heard, whatever that may be.

Not to be confused with minimalism (which sometimes coincides with quiet designs), we’re talking about minimal creative intervention in something else that is already there. It is, in a way, a selfless design approach.

That special ‘something’ can embody the form of nature itself, the preexisting structure of a building or the story behind the inhabited area. Sometimes it’s a combination of more than one thing that takes centre stage. Just like a museum is there to bring attention to art or archeological findings, these hotels do the same in an enlightened way.

Today we selected five projects that highlight and guide guests through historical structures and impeccable horizons or landscapes, accentuating what the space itself had to say before the designers were there.

Click on the images below to explore these projects on TOPHOTELDESIGN.

Dexamenes Seaside Hotel

Kourouta, Greece
by k-studio

Image by © Claus Brechenmacher & Reiner Baumann

Al Faya Lodge

Mleiha, United Arab Emirates
by ANARCHITECT
Supplied by KOHLER

Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat

Yangzhou Shi, China
by Neri & Hu Design

Patina Maldives, Fari Islands

Maldives, Maldives
by Studio MK27
Supplied by Spa Supply Solutions & TECE

Image by © Georg Roske

Hotel Terrestre

Puerto Escondido, Mexico
by Taller de Arquitectura – TAX

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