Identity, hybridization and contamination are the inspiring values for the new YOU.ME Design Place Hotel designed by architect Francesco Costa in collaboration with Simone Micheli in the heart of Trieste.
YOU.ME Design Place Hotel is a 4 star hotel, made with shapes and materials that are able to convey the you-me concept, where those who stay there do not feel like simple guests but the protagonist of their stay.
The building is historic and has a rectangular plan with only one main view and minor views on the inside cloister and “calli” (alleys in Venitian) behind the Greek-orthodox church of St. Nicola. The plan is tripartite with a central stairwell and the style is neoclassical.
The ground floor of the main front is treated as an imitation ashlar from which 3 round arch gates opened. The central part of the facade is characterised by two balconies with wrought iron balustrades on the first and second floor. The framed windows have stone frames and are topped with unbroken protruding pediments.
The facade renovation has established two intervention techniques: one on the stony material and the other on the plastered side. On the stony material after the cleaning of surfaces, the deteriorated layers with carbonate deposits are treated with solutions of ammonium carbonate, while the marl-limestone is strengthened with a non-film forming product made from ethyl silicate in order to slow down the natural decay phenomenon. Inadequated structures are mechanically removed and replaced with new ones with mortar made with natural lime and suitable inerts for particle size and tone.
Inside the building had been carried out little changes on the ground floor for adjustment of toilets for guest and staff, and for the identification of 4 guest facilities: reception, office, breakfast room and pub, and also the kitchen.
All the counter walls in plasterboard are removed and the original walling made of sandstone blocks is highlighted; an intervention for the removal of the rising damp is executed by using a system that permits negative currents to fall below the masonry. On the highlighted masonry, it was carried out a layered plaster in lime.
Flooring is covered in cementitious resin in light grey. Floors interventions considered the remake of toilet facilities inside the rooms, with their enlargement in order to comply with 4-star hotel criteria; a wellness area had been realised at the top floor. All the technological plants were rebuilt according to the current regulations and in order to achieve the maximum comfort for guests.
Regarding the interior design project, Simone Micheli imagined a different dimension, beyond the everyday space-time, capable of celebrating the relationship between host and hosted through the enhancement of the word that becomes effigy and therefore an integral part of the anti canonical archic system.
The luxury is made of simplicity, essential nature and wonder: YOU.ME Design Place Hotel becomes the vehicle through which the current meaning of contemporary pleasure comes to life, a place where man is the main actor.
In the three-dimensional areas that made up the hotel, the word becomes architectural crux and the color, impalpable as white or pearl grey, becomes physical material to model and flank the energetic flow of volumetric elements.
The precious and refined surfaces, the mirrors that reflect the several meanings of existence, images that blend past, present and future together, become tangible signs, containers of unique messages, that with the illuminating vibrations, imply the common areas and strongly alter the space even inside the rooms, where a wooden flooring turns into wall cladding.
The common areas characterized by neutral colors and iconic expansions of the hotel logo are conceived to involve the customer in a unlikely visual and functional dimension. The muffled and hyper communicative spa, with a strong visual identity, was designed to transport the user in a surreal void.
Finally, a peculiar olfactory note and selected auditory harmonies complete the synesthetic, wrapping and all-embracing whole, where the complexity of our time is translated into clarity.
