Architecture and recipes

In the city of Savona, along the coast road to Ventimiglia, stands a hotel where architecture and food are harmoniously intertwined. Mare Hotel is a four-star seafront establishment designed by Claudio Tiranini, a chef who grew up in a family of restaurateurs but only began his career in catering after completing his architectural studies. “Ours is a family-run hotel established in the 1960s,” he explains. “When it passed into the hands of my sister and myself in 1985, we carried out an expansion and restyling project. Today it has 67 rooms along with a garden, a private beach, a seawater swimming pool and three dining venues: a beach bistro, a sushi bar and a longstanding gourmet restaurant.” Further expansion and renovation work will soon be carried out on the property, which as Tiranini explains is notable for its “decisive image, seaside style and furniture and accessories that – amidst carpets shipped from India and colourful virtual beach umbrellas – evoke water, stones and the sea”. The hotel’s success owes much to its privileged position along a stretch of the Ligurian Riviera with blue flag status. “The splendid natural environment is recreated powerfully in the renovated rooms through the use of technology,” the architect continues. Ceramic tiles from Florim serve as the unifying element, both in the guest rooms and in other areas of the Mare Hotel. Porcelain tiles from the Pietre/3 collection by Casa dolce casa – Casamood (Made in Florim) were chosen for the bedrooms. The same line in two different sizes was used in the bathrooms to create a sense of continuity with the bedrooms, while Buildtech/2.0 collection concrete-effect tiles and B&W_Marble marble-effect wall tiles, both from Floor Gres (Made in Florim), were adopted in the kitchens. As the archichef explains, the kitchens also offered an opportunity to carry out a reuse project given that most of the accessories, from the trays to the butter dishes and the small pastry stands, were made from offcuts from the slabs installed on the floor and walls. “For reasons of hygiene, I wanted a surface with as few joints as possible in the kitchen, so I opted for 3.30 metre length slabs,” explains Tiranini. “But the fact that the room is 2.80 metres high meant there was a 50-centimetre offcut – far too much to be left unused. So we thought we’d give it a second lease of life while at the same time helping the environment.” The same philosophy can be observed in the kitchen, where many of the ingredients are sourced from local vegetable gardens, as indeed in the rest of the hotel given that the electricity derives exclusively from 100% renewable energy sources. As this goes to show, the road to sustainability is paved with small but significant gestures.