A holiday with a sense of freedom and space

While there is no magic formula for the perfect beach holiday, the Youmami Suite Hotel in Giulianova on Italy’s Abruzzo coast provides a memorable experience for guests seeking a sense of freedom and space. With its unique location overlooking the Adriatic Sea and behind it the Gran Sasso mountain group, the hotel offers standard rooms as well as longer-stay apartments that combine the comforts of home with the services and amenities of a luxury hotel. In the project created by Leo Medori, the Youmami Suite Hotel has an L-shaped structure with 53 accommodation units of different sizes and types. As the architect explains, the “internal open space equipped with a swimming pool and solarium serves as a reference point for most of the apartments. While not being open to the exterior, it can be viewed from the outside through the empty spaces and the double-height openings present on the ground level”. In order to reduce its environmental impact, the architect decided to “colonise” the building with greenery. And to guarantee a high level of thermal and acoustic performance, he opted for vertical external walls composed of single-layer brickwork, rock wool insulation and a porcelain tiled ventilated façade on the west side. “The visible elements of the outer shell and the use of warm coloured materials offer a reinterpretation of the themes of Mediterranean rationalist architecture,” says Medori. Porcelain tile, in particular, plays an important role in the construction and aesthetic choices and ensures design continuity by blending in harmoniously with the surrounding context. The ventilated façade on the hotel entrance side adopts 2-mm-thick Wood Side ceramic slabs in the colour Oak together with Kronos Ceramiche’s patented GECO® construction system, which is inspired by wooden shingles and stands out for its “intense chiaroscuro effect, accentuated on the façade in the various orientations”, explains the architect. Installation is facilitated by the concealed fixing system with elements composed of pre-assembled three-strip panels. The same porcelain tiles are used for the dividing and screening elements of the balconies and large loggias in each accommodation unit, alternating with the glass finish to create a sense of diversity. In keeping with the design goal of using a single material to unify the different spaces when viewed from above, 2 cm thick Wood Side Oak strips were chosen for the floors of the terraces and balconies on the various levels, for the raised flooring in the solarium area, and for the swimming pool with its infinity edge and curved sections, which required special pieces designed by Kronos Ceramiche’s Klab department. Overall, the project’s architecture stands out for its choice of specific construction solutions, “for its reasoned complexity and for the tactile, material qualities of the finishing surfaces”, says Medori. And although the spaces display a certain uniformity and repetitiveness in terms of their layout, “the alternation of external configurations on the various levels makes the elevations more dynamic, while on the top floor the roof overhangs with their timber cladding give the building a uniform finish.”