03-03-2017

7132 Hotel Vals, designer architecture

Thom Mayne, Morphosis, Kengo Kuma, Peter Zumthor, Tadao Ando,

Switzerland,

Hotel,

A stay at the 7132 Hotel in Vals, a town in the Swiss Canton of Grisons is synonymous with a close dialogue both with nature and with the architecture of some great contemporary architects.



  1. Blog
  2. Materials
  3. 7132 Hotel Vals, designer architecture

7132 Hotel Vals, designer architecture A stay at the 7132 Hotel in Vals, a town in the Swiss Canton of Grisons is synonymous with a close dialogue both with nature and with the architecture of some great contemporary architects. The “House of Architecture” has been extended with two concepts by Morphosis.


The Swiss township of Vals is famous for its thermal springs whose 30° C mineral water gushing from St. Peters spring, in the quartzite of Vals has been attracting guests for more than 100 years. And quartz is one of the key materials that architect Peter Zumthor used to build the new spa in 1996, an architectural masterpiece that earned him the Pritzker Prize in 2009, and that was classified as a listed building shortly after completion.
This classy architecture continues to be the distinguishing feature of the 7132 Hotel (named after the postal code of Vals). Vals native Remo Stoffel bought the hotel and thermal baths from the Vals City Council in 2012 after they decided to sell it to guarantee ongoing maintenance and improvements. 
His investments were made with the pay-off “The Art of Alpine Luxury”, and he called in some of the star architects from around the world - Peter Zumthor, Kengo Kuma, Tadao Ando and Thom Mayne of Morphosis, the third Pritzker Prize winner of the architects involved - to contribute to the “House of Architecture” project with a total of 73 rooms, each one 20 square metres. An addition to the main 1970s building that is undergoing refurbishments and is slated to reopen in July 2017.
These theme-based rooms strongly reference the location, the Grisons Alps, and the personalities of the architects themselves. Peter Zumthor's rooms give guests a dark, sophisticated mood by adopting stucco lustre, a plasterwork technique, while Kengo Kuma has designed a kind of cocoon-like embrace, cladding the room with Swiss oak, in an expression of fine artisanship. Conversely, Tadao Ando pays tribute to the aesthetics of Japanese teahouses in his rooms.
The House of Architecture is completed with another 22 rooms designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis, whose concept is based on two materials - indigenous wood and local stone - with a bright yellow, stand-alone shower in the middle of the room creating the typical visual tension of his work.
A stay in the 7132 hotel in Vals, therefore, turns into a unique opportunity to enjoy the latest luxury hotel, on the one hand, retreating to these majestic, peaceful natural surroundings and on the other you can have a close-up experience with the works of some great masters of modern architecture: a real paradise for our readers because they bring together two of our favourite themes.

Christiane Bürklein

Interior design:
Peter Zumthor, Kengo Kuma, Tadao Ando, Thom Mayne
Location: Vals, Switzerland
Year: 2016
Images: Courtesy of 7132 Vals
Find out morei: http://7132.com/

×
×

Stay in touch with the protagonists of architecture, Subscribe to the Floornature Newsletter