A destination in the woods

Ten kilometres from the spa town of Merano, the small township of Avelengo nurtures tourists and inhabitants alike in an environment of sweet-smelling woodland, luscious meadows and sunny plateaux dotted with quaint old stone houses. Some 1700 metres above sea level, this wonderful area is a favourite destination for visitors all year round. The Josef Mountain Resort is a 4-star hotel located in woodland near the Falzeben cable car that connects Avelengo to the Merano 2000 ski resort.
The complex offers a warm and luxurious welcome in a striking natural setting and was recently refurbished and extended after a change of management. The aim of the work, which was supervised by Rolando Dalla Torre and Studio Alber Markus, was to integrate the resort with its natural surroundings in the most harmonious way possible, upgrade the bedrooms and improve the outdoor areas that link the hotel with its natural surroundings. The sauna area, water park, wellbeing centre and landscaped garden are all inspired by the natural world and dialogue directly with it. You can even swim from the indoor swimming pool (12.20 m x 5.57 m) directly to the outdoor pool (15 m x 5.16 m), which is heated to 34°C and offers hydro-massage beds, fresh air and a unique woodland setting.
For the outdoor areas (poolside, terraces, balconies and garden), the designers needed tiles with advanced technical specifications and high visual impact. The choice fell on Flaviker’s Place_2B Dublin collection, a new concept in wood-effect porcelain tile, with a surface enriched by signs of the passage of time, wear and traffic. The satin surface of these plank-shaped, wood-effect tiles shows evident traces of a previous paint coating to emphasise the material’s pre-used identity. The rustic-contemporary, 120×30 cm tiles are laid lengthwise just as planks of wood. The selected colour, Taupe, reflects that of the woodland around the resort. The fascinating finish of these ceramic ‘planks’ makes them the perfect choice for the leisure terraces that look out over the splendid natural panorama, and for the outdoor poolside, where they blend harmoniously with the reflections of the water, the outdoor furniture and the lawn.
These long, through-body porcelain tiles are 20 mm thicker than usual precisely to permit use in outdoor applications. They also boast an excellent non-slip surface, making them ideal for damp or wet environments.
Thanks to highly plastic, hard-wearing but flexible raw materials, Place_2B Dublin tiles also make it easy to achieve perfectly flat floors on difficult, uneven surfaces. Each tile is slightly convex to ensure maximum contact with the substrate and, thanks to their weight, even the large, rectified tiles in the collection are self-levelling and produce a perfectly flat surface every time. Since the Avelengo area is subject to freezing winters and warm summers, thermal contraction and expansion must obviously be taken into consideration. With this in mind, the designers chose to lay the tiles on a bed of sand without adhesive to create a more stable substrate.