Portugal’s eight-room Dá Licença lodge affords a “extra personalised” visitor expertise
Vitor Borges and Franck Laigneau set one-off classic furnishings towards whitewashed partitions to create a collection of distinctive areas inside this boutique lodge in southeast Portugal.
Dá Licença is situated a number of miles exterior the historic metropolis of Estremoz, perched atop a hilly 120-hectare plot of land that is blanketed in mature olive bushes.
With a complete of simply eight visitor rooms, the lodge has been developed by creatives Vitor Borges and Franck Laigneau to be extra akin to a guesthouse the place guests “already really feel at dwelling”.
“Right this moment in Europe, the place are you able to discover a place that’s nonetheless preserved? Because of this we determined to do one thing very discreet – the area offers the impulse to retreat into nature, for sluggish residing,” Laigneau defined to Dezeen.
“We’ve all of the providers of a lodge, however in a extra personalised manner.”
The land had beforehand been host to the ruins of agricultural outhouses that have been utilized by a convent of nuns within the mid-19th-century to develop greens, and later by a commune of farmers to supply olive oil within the 1980s.
Borges and Laigneau enlisted the assistance of regionally primarily based structure apply Procale to remodel them into three whitewashed buildings that might host the lodge’s facilities.
One constructing accommodates a collection of communal areas. These embody the eating space, which is centred by a tapered hanging sculpture with a bark-like floor, and a lounge, the place sage-green armchairs are organized round a stone espresso desk.
An adjoining library-style room boasts floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
Right here there are additionally two visitor rooms and two suites, each of which come full with their very own personal pool and solar loungers shaded by straw umbrellas.
The remaining rooms are unfold throughout two different buildings that even have easy white-painted surfaces.
Decor is supplied by a collection of furnishings and ornaments produced in the course of the 20th-century arts and crafts motion, which Borges and Laigneau have picked up on their travels all through Europe.
PROD transforms 18th-century manor home in rural Portugal into lodge
“[The hotel] is not meant to be a museum. There may be artwork all over the place, however informally so; it’s not meant to be exhibition-like and imposing,” the pair defined.
In a delicate nod to Estremoz’s marble-rich terrain, the pure stone has been used to craft sink basins, bathtub tubs, and pink-hued bathe cubicles.
All through the lodge, doorways have additionally been swapped for arched open walkways – a transfer which Borges and Laigneau hope will encourage visitors to maneuver freely between rooms and let cooling air movement in the course of the heat summer season months.
“There’s a minimal and monastic aspect to Dá Licença, however it’s by no means lower than cosy and alluring,” defined the pair.
“Luxurious right here can be about area and time. There may be room to socialize however there isn’t a lack of locations to be by your self.”
A below-ground room that was as soon as devoted to grease urgent has been remodeled into an area the place Laigneau can show personally favoured items he is acquired throughout his time spent working at an artwork gallery.
Eating tables and chairs are dotted in between, permitting the area to double-up as a 30-cover restaurant.
As vacationers search to discover components of Portugal that lie past already in style spots like Lisbon and Porto, lodges are more and more popping up within the nation’s rural areas.
Two years in the past PROD transformed an 18th-century manor home within the village of Ponte de Lima right into a lodge, the place bedrooms are organised round an inner courtyard. In 2016 Par created visitor lodging on the sting of the Algarve’s Ria Formosa lagoon which options staircases on its entrance facade that lead as much as a roof terrace.
Images is by Francisco Nogueira.