Between the Old City of Chania with the Ancient Venetian Walls of San Salvatore and the AVEA Park, the oldest olive processing unit in Greece, basks the Sansal Boutique Hotel. The six storeys volume, has a total of 23 rooms, 4 of which are luxury suites.
Positioned across the sea, a timeless source of inspiration, the Sansal Boutique Hotel creates an overall calming and architectural feel through its clean lines and geometrical intricacy. The elevation bares wide openings that allow views to the Old and the New city of Chania and the seashore and create a smooth transition from inside, out. The design investigates the interplay between controlled transparency and solidness, creating a balance between simplicity and character, softness and minimalism.
The white aesthetics of the building emphasize the clarity of its geometry and are combined with natural materials like wood and marble. Both the floors and a section of the walls are lined with marble and tiles, giving the feeling of internal grounding and tactile contact with the material. The use of wooden window frames, with dark walnut hues intensifies the feeling of depth from the outside, while offering a haptic interaction with natural elements on the inside.
The same structural clarity of the exterior prevails inside the building. The interior was designed true to the overall architectural identity, aiming to read the spaces in coherent, holistic manner, repeating the same architectural language in every spatial unit.
The principle of the eliminating boundaries is also apparent in the hotel rooms. In order to achieve a visually open plan without interfering walls whilst retaining their functional character, the bathrooms are enclosed by glass, ensuring views to the sea from all parts of the room. The mirrors in the bathrooms are placed across the windows, giving the feeling of permeability to the room. The visual closure of the bathroom is achieved with an internal curtain, which allows the visitor to isolate himself from the rest of the room. The large openable window frames, along with the material continuity from the floor inside the room to the balconies, unify the space and direct the visitor to the sea.
The furniture were designed to provide comfort to the guests and to complement the spaces with the same geometric clarity that prevails in the hotel. In this way, continuous aesthetics is achieved, basing on calmness, sensory relationship with natural materials and sharp details. All interior elements, both in the common areas and the rooms, aim to highlight the most important visual factor, the sea. Consistently in this principle, all design choices are based on thoughtful solutions, calming aesthetics and visual purity.
The spatial experience of the SanSal Boutique Hotel is completed in the roof garden, where the linear pool extends in the north side of the building and is visually integrated with the sea, intensifying and enlarging the view towards the blue horizon. Respectively, the plants in the perimeter of the roof garden are similar to the planting on the top of the plateau created by the Venetian Walls. In this way, the boundaries of the roof are conceivably shifted, highlighting their inseparable relationship with its natural and manmade surroundings.
Suppliers & Contributors:
Location: Chania, Crete, Greece
Duration (Design & Construction): 2018-2020
Architectural Design: PNOE • ATH | Architecture & Design Studio | Nikolaos Kerameianakis & Angeliki Labada
Interior Design & Styling: PNOE • ATH | Architecture & Design Studio | Nikolaos Kerameianakis & Angeliki Labada
Furniture Design: PNOE • ATH | Architecture & Design Studio | Nikolaos Kerameianakis & Angeliki Labada
Collaborating Architect: Giorgos Bougioukos
Consultant Architect: John Zachariades
Structural Engineer: Giannis Kapogiannis– KK Civil
Engineers Mechanical Engineer: Eleftherios Kouklakis
Construction: Markt TE S.A.
Paints: Vechro Paints
Window Frames: Wood Experts PLC
Marbles: Varmin AEVE
Metal works: Afoi Gavala ΟΕ
Tiles & Sanitary Appliances: Porcelana Chania
Lighting: Lighting Showroom-Giogia Chalakatevaki, Illum Light, Meidanis
Wood works: Spanopoulos Furniture, Charalampos Palierakis
Chairs, Stools & Tables: Lighting Showroom –Giogia Chalakatevaki, Mexil
Fabrics – Curtains: Vasilis Kontaxakis
Mirror & Glass works: Oraisma Afoi Patsoumadaki ΟΕ
Custom sinks: Kostoglou Stones
Mattresses: Grecostrom Lifts: Lift Hellas
Wiring Switches: Vimar
Security Systems: G4S Chania Crete
