Creative fusion

Despite having been left unoccupied for a number of years, this beachside property in ?njan on the outskirts of Split captured the imagination of interior designer Marijana Boljat from the practice Linija Moderna, who decided to purchase it and transform it into something entirely new. That was the start of the fairytale history of Gallery Luxury Suites & Rooms, a boutique hotel with immense charm and personality built around the nucleus of an old, abandoned house. The Croatian designer gave the property a new lease of life with her highly distinctive interior design project, which adopted some of Polis Ceramiche’s most striking porcelain tile collections. For the hotel’s 14 rooms and suites extending over 450 square metres of floor space on three levels, Marijana Boljat has created a harmonious blend of styles that combine contemporary and traditional elements, giving each of them an unmistakable identity. «Right from the earliest stages of the project, my goal was to make each space in the hotel unique and immediately distinguishable from the others,» says the designer. «This concept was the starting point for a redevelopment project that completely transformed the building.» The new layout consisted of 14 residential units, all with sea views and some with a private mini-pool, a solarium with a large heated pool, a lounge bar and a gym. «As well as offering the highest level of comfort, I wanted each room to appeal to a different type of guest,» says Marijana Boljat. «This inspired me to design them with the utmost freedom, combining modern solutions such as the large glazed walls and parapets overlooking the sea with other more traditional solutions, especially the furnishings and accessories such as the vintage-style wooden furniture and suspended lamps and the stone basins in the bathrooms. The search for this interplay of styles was one of the reasons behind the choice of ceramic tiles, particularly the collections from Polis whose textures were perfectly consistent with the language of the interior.» The rooms and suites in particular feature the Stoneheart collection in the colours Silverstone, Sunstone, Landstone and Nightstone, a porcelain tile with a sophisticated and discreet varied colour effect inspired by Nordic quartzites. The 60×120 cm tiles used for the floor and the shower corner are streaked with veins that enhance the natural appeal of the surfaces and give the rooms a spacious feel, while the walls of the walk-in showers feature the geometric patterns of the Muretto Warm mosaic collection. They are complemented by the decorative geometric elements and patterns of the Lineae marble-effect collection, used both indoors in the colours Lilium and Nebula and around the swimming pool in the 2.0 outdoor version.