The moon, the vineyard and…

“As he spoke, I saw Gaminella opposite, which at that height looked even larger, a hill like a planet, and from here you could make out clearings, stands of trees, tracks I had never seen before. One day, I thought, we must climb up there. That too is part of the world.” (Cesare Pavese, The moon and the bonfires).
With his project for a satellite-like building set on “a hill like a planet”, in a landscape steeped in literary references, architect Pietro Masson pays tribute to the poetic vision of one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century.
The veranda, like a crystal, lights up the horizon and serves as the connecting element between the building and its surroundings, allowing for a fluid interchange between the interiors and the surrounding landscape that creates a sense of dimensional disparity. The project for this steel and glass construction initially proved highly controversial, attracting the criticism of a number of environmentalists who saw it as a foreign element in conflict with the Langhe region’s ancient landscape and history. But in the end all parties came to an agreement and the Boscareto Resort was judged as adding value to a region that has an urgent need for adequate hospitality structures.
The new hotel is a high-end, five star establishment with thirty-eight rooms and luxury suites, as well as a spa, restaurant, wine bar, bar, conference centre and meeting rooms. With its thirty-two hectares of vineyards, it is set in a landscape of great beauty, consisting of rolling hills, well preserved ancient villages and medieval castles. As an alternative to the traditional hotel typology with windows and shutters, the project opted for large glazed surfaces that would allow guests to gaze out over the vast rolling hills and appreciate the passing of the seasons through the constantly changing landscape. In all the rooms, one wall is effectively substituted by glazing, the large windows assembled within a coherent laminated wood structure. The laminated wood, a hi-tech and high-performance version of this most natural of materials, is also present on the exterior on facades characterised by box-shaped window frames inserted onto a special plaster base, in tone with the colours of the furrows where the Barolo grapevines grow. The interiors are designed as an articulated space with ever changing plays of perspective that avoid a sense of stasis. Special attention has been devoted to the finish of the walls, which consists of strips of fireproof fabrics in colours that vary according to the intensity and type of lighting and paintwork with a specially designed pattern and colour variations.
The swimming pool, located in the veranda, serves as a visual element in striking contrast with the surrounding landscape. The veranda consists of a laminar wood beam structure set on large monoliths clad with green bush-hammered marble that takes on grey-green tones according to the angle of incidence of the light. The surfaces are extensively clad with Quality Quarz porcelain tiles from Ceramiche Caesar’s Antiche Pietre collection. One particularly sophisticated touch is the finish of the tiles interspersed with steel bars. The same type of material is used on the floors and walls and in the swimming pool area, creating a luminous mosaic of porcelain and glass.