Weaving_Hotel Savoy

TYPE Hospitality, Renovation
STATUS Commission, Built
LOCATION Grado, Italy
YEAR 2025
CLIENT Hotel Savoy - Fam. Soyer 

DESIGN TEAM Eva Castro, Andrea Cubattoli, Niccolò Dal Farra, Ulla Hell, Holger Kehne, Peter Pichler, Chuan Wang
COLLABORATORS Andreas Erlacher, Gillespies, Graziano Medeot, Fiorenzo Chiabà
PHOTO CREDIT Michael Pezzei

With the achievement of its fifth star, the renowned Hotel Savoy in Grado — family-run for four generations — marks a decisive step toward renewal through a significant architectural gesture. Plasma Studio was commissioned to design a new façade that would go beyond a mere aesthetic upgrade: the aim was to reinterpret the boundary between the hotel’s private architecture and the public space of the city, enhancing both its functional and experiential qualities.
The intervention focuses on the north and west façades of the existing building, which bears the marks of pragmatic modifications made during the 1980s and ’90s. Along these fronts, the new façade acts as a filtering threshold: it mediates between inside and outside, shielding the interior from urban noise and activity without severing its visual and spatial connection to the surroundings. The design integrates acoustic, thermal, and aesthetic performance, while contributing to the targeted enhancement of the urban context.

A central design element is the addition of new balconies whose curved steel structures serve as both a reference to and a transformation of the postmodern vocabulary of the existing building. The alternating sequence of convex and concave circular segments along the façade lines creates a rhythmic progression that enlivens the building’s horizontality. Vertically, this results in a relief-like façade image, constantly reshaped by light and shadow.
The curved outdoor spaces not only extend the hotel rooms but also function as a bioclimatic buffer zone: planters and vertical shading elements structure the façade, offering privacy and a framework for climbing plants. The resulting green layer acts as a living filter — improving indoor comfort, helping to reduce the urban heat island effect, and giving the hotel a renewed identity within the urban landscape. A sustainable irrigation system, fed by rainwater collected from the roof, supports the project’s ecological ambition.

Material choices were made to intensify the dialogue with the surrounding environment: the satin-finished stainless-steel balustrade subtly reflects the movement of vegetation and the play of light from the adjacent canal. In terms of colour, the vertical structural elements echo the building’s characteristic turquoise tones, placing them in a new contemporary context.

Ultimately, the project stands as an architectural statement on temporality, transformation, and the interplay between existing structure and new intervention. The new façade of Hotel Savoy in Grado demonstrates how architectural thinking applied to the existing fabric can do more than resolve functional shortcomings — it can also open up new narrative spaces: for guests, for the city, and for architecture itself.