The Retreat at Blue Lagoon Iceland provides “a greater understanding of nature”
Design Group Italia chief design officer Sigurdur Thorsteinsson explains how The Retreat at Blue Lagoon Iceland immerses visitors in nature on this video produced by Dezeen for the AHEAD Awards.
The 62-room resort resort is embedded within the lava formations and turquoise geothermal swimming pools of Iceland’s Blue Lagoon complicated, which is located throughout the UNESCO World Geopark.
The Retreat at Blue Lagoon Iceland was awarded within the Resort Resort class on the AHEAD Europe hospitality awards, which happened in London in November.
Design Group Italia dealt with the mission’s interiors, in collaboration with Icelandic agency Basalt Architects who have been answerable for the structure of the resort.
The Retreat at Blue Lagoon Iceland is a resort resort at Iceland’s Blue Lagoon spa complicated
“The transient right here was to make one thing that will match very effectively into nature” explains Thorsteinsson within the video interview, which was shot by Dezeen at White Metropolis Home in London on the day of the AHEAD Europe ceremony.
“We needed principally to have continuity between nature, the inside and exterior,” he continued.
The mission gained the Resort Resort class on the 2019 AHEAD Europe hospitality awards
The interiors of the resort function colors and supplies that reference the putting panorama of lava, vivid inexperienced moss and vivid blue water that encompass the Blue Lagoon complicated.
“We have now very tactile surfaces,” mentioned Thorsteinsson. “We introduced lava blocks into the constructing, and we handled it as a constructing materials or as a furnishings materials.”
Design Group Italia used pure supplies within the constructing’s interiors
Thorsteinsson said that the resort has been designed to supply visitors an expertise of tranquility and isolation from the surface world.
“While you come to the resort, this world opens as much as you, a bit otherworldly virtually,” he mentioned. “While you enter the constructing, you are passing right into a sanctuary.”
The resort includes a spa with indoor and outside baths and coverings
The centrepiece of the resort is its spa, which provides a sequence of indoor and outside baths and coverings that make use of the positioning’s mineral-rich geothermal waters and naturally occurring supplies, together with silica and algae.
AHEAD Europe resort awards winners are “understated however wealthy”
Based on Thorsteinsson, The Retreat at Blue Lagoon Iceland goals to reconnect guests with the pure world and instil a humbling impression of nature that he feels is misplaced on metropolis dwellers.
“Aside from stress-free, we needed folks to return away with extra respect for nature, and a greater understanding of what nature is and the way fantastic it’s,” he defined.
The resort’s designers aimed to reconnect visitors with nature
“While you stay in large cities, you do not see nature and you do not suppose it’s stronger than you,” he continued. “In Iceland it is very simple to get related, as a result of nature is so robust and also you’re conscious of it and you already know it is stronger than you and we needed folks can get into that temper.”
“You wish to go someplace the place you expertise one thing totally different and one thing you may take house with you as a reminiscence.”
This video was produced by Dezeen for AHEAD. It was filmed at White Metropolis Home in London. Pictures is courtesy of AHEAD and Design Group Italia.