Designer Niki Szilagyi has overcome various spacial challenges to create a balanced, harmonious feel to the interiors of Mavida Balance, a new hotel and spa nestled in the alpine village of Zell am See.
Balance is an unusual word to find in a hotel name. Once inside it's even more disturbing to read the word 'mental' alongside the standard signage for restaurant, lobby and spa. But the balancing of body and mind is what it's all about at the Mavida Balance Hotel and Spa. The name Mavida has been concocted as a Spanish version of the dolce vita, bearing in mind the hotel is in Austria. The 'mental' actually refers to the services of a resident psychiatrist who complements the hotel's superb and spacious spa facilities.
The hotel's interior design is a harmonious blend of new and old materials, amplified with tongue-in-cheek pastiches of the traditional pension accommodation, plentiful in this area of Austria. The building housing the Mavida Balance Hotel & Spa is itself a concrete 70s parody of the traditional, sloping roof and geranium-laden wood balconies of Alpine postcard fame. Its location is equally unassuming - down a small side road and beside the quaint commuter railway. But the village of Zell am See is beside a beautiful lake surrounded by stunning mountain scenery. The nearest ski lift station is a five minute walk.
The original residential building was constructed by a structural engineer, who specialised in bridges. This is evidenced by the preponderance of heavy columns and beams, which gave interior designer Niki Szilagyi some interesting challenges.
The condition of the building is such that it looks brand new, and on stepping up to the lobby entrance it comes as a surprise to be greeted by the pillars and columns of the lobby's low ceiling. Szilagyi immediately gives this a positive spin by emphasising that "guests will immediately feel the cosiness of the Mavida welcome". More interesting is the way she dealt with the problem. Enlarging the window openings, opting for a neutral limestone floor covering and selecting particularly low, lounge furniture serve to give the space the feeling of more height. A lightness of touch is added by the use of the deep mustard yellow, Mavida's signature colour, behind the reception desk and the sparkle of glass-fronted, recessed display cases. However, she agrees that in a newbuild the space would have been higher.
In the ground floor bar and first floor restaurant the problem was more how to light the space, the low ceilings being no real disadvantage here. In the bar the recesses between the ceiling beams are lined with hidden lighting that shines up to the curved corner of the ceiling, throwing the light into the centre of the recess. These lights are programmed to change colour through the course of the day and night. In the restaurant, indirect light is provided by mirrored-chrome pendant uplighters centred in each recess. (Szilagyi saw them in a friend's home the night before her pitch and was so taken by them that she included them the next day.)
In a ski resort, although the summer season is just as important, lighting the dark winter days is a prime consideration. There are a multitude of indirect and recessed light sources - in front of windows for example - to enhance the natural daylight. Intentionally or otherwise the hotel's lighting also produces a variety of patterns. Downlighters produce a crenulated pattern on the red wall of the restaurant. Uplighters in the top of the curved shower wall in the spa's sauna area create an organic, daisy-chain effect on the ceiling. Also notable are the marbled gold vertical wall lights in the corridors. Looking like heavy duty, thick glass they are in fact made from a pliable, plastic sheeting that incorporates a 3-D patterning effect - an idea provided by a local lighting technician.
The mustard Mavida yellow is used sparingly in the hotel so as not to weaken its effect. The more consistent colour is a deep red; every guest room has at least one wall in this colour. This accents the more homogenous taupes, khakis and raw hessian upholstery colours of the Casa Milano furniture. Slate is used to line the guestroom bathrooms and the wet areas of the spa. Except at the pool surround where a slate composite resistant to the pool's chlorine is used. Retained from the original building are the stunning stone of the staircases and landings. Varying from a boiling mass of blood red to striations of anthracite and warming caramels, they are too good to be replaced.
If these stone floors are somehow retro then the corridor fitted carpets are more so. The local pension has multi-coloured stripey carpets, originally made from old rags, that slide about on top of the polished floor. Here the fitted carpets have a red boarder that frames the stripy pattern "runner". The corridors have an slight slope caused by the small difference in floor levels of the two wings of the hotel that were originally separate buildings. In the angle between these two wings has been added the new spa area at the back of the hotel.
Having worked for Studio Thun, her last project being Vigilius Mountain Resort, Szilagyi was grateful of owner Herbert Bren's receptiveness to her ideas for Mavida.
The semi-circular end to the ground floor bar is a case in point. Much additional storage space was generated by the defunct corners left by the semi circle. However the cosiness produced by the banquettes surrounding a centred open fireplace overruled. "The effect was to create a space that looked welcoming when it was barely occupied. Where guests can feel comfortable on their own," states Szilagyi. Leaning back against the vertical stripes of velvet upholstery and looking onto the glass encased fire there is much greater sense of privacy than along a straight wall.
There is a sense of ordered functionality about aspects of the hotel. The guest room cupboards have space saving sliding doors and are lit by movement sensitive interior lights. The blocky wood tables in the pool area of the spa are clear and unpretentious. In the restaurant, work station cubes, used separately during full service times, are brought together to create a central "island" for the breakfast buffet.
The restaurant has a semi-show kitchen with a shoulder height slot window. Diners can see activity but it is not distracting, allowing focus to fall on the central "Ice Cube". This is a glass wine storage area with internal separation of white and red. This, the extensive wine list and Riedel glasses are testimony to Bren's fascination with oenology.
Szilagyi has also incorporated the use of some unusual materials. Heavily grained, rare Ruster wood has been used to face the reception desk and the bar, where it has a tobacco stain. The interior of display cases in the hotel's shop and restaurant are painted with dark grey matt lacquer paint. The light absorbing qualities of the Nextel paint giving a deeper perspective. Curtains of a reflective gold, then warm silver shielding material from Creation Baumann lend a sophisticated air to the restaurant. Some of the bathroom ceilings are actually a stretched white membrane, far quicker to install than plasterboard, whilst in the spa, the high curving walls of a relaxation area appear to be coated with an aggressively bumpy concrete. Some surprise then that when touched they give a soft fibrous, almost cotton wool like feel. This Sona spray is used mainly for its acoustic absorbing merits.
The same spa relaxation area includes an unusual insertion. Rising from the pale floor is a black bench of slate from the centre of which water gently pours. In the harmonious surrounds sit Dedon-alike loungers with cushions sewn into the white cotton antimacassars. In a slightly earnest way the spa also includes a silent room. There's no doubt the Austrians take their spas seriously. And with the balance thing in mind, a session with the psychiatrist can be followed up with a complete musculature and spinal analysis as the first step in developing a new fitness program or to kick start an existing one. Instead of the ubiquitous Technogym equipment, Mavida has the top-end Italian Bcube range.
Treatment rooms are designed to be 'invisible'. The lustre of the silver grey shellac plaster is meant to be unobtrusive. Following a Feng Shui principle, all internal corners have been rounded to retain the energy flow within the room. The spa suite includes its own sauna, double massage room and circular bath within a lounge area. There is also a floatation room with an open bath rather than a claustrophobic tank, and a pair of Alpha-chairs from Sha. of Vienna. The opaque chairs are lit blue and lightly vibrate with soothing music. They are designed to induce the deepest, Alpha, state of relaxation and are so finely balanced as to rock with the user's breathing.
However the clever bit about the spa is the indoor pool or rather the lounge area. Here again is the low ceiling of alternating beams and recesses, this time painted purple and khaki. The loungers are in fact waterbeds. The white vinyl 'mattresses' are kept in place by a wood surround into which is built a sloping headrest cushioned with a pillow. The first row of loungers sits directly on the floor. Others, including double waterbeds sit on two very shallow tiers of timber decking. The whole effect is to keep everything close to the ground maintaining some proportion to the space.
Equally well proportioned are the guest rooms, in three categories. Balance rooms have showers only. Spa rooms incorporate a bath hidden behind an island wall.
Panorama suites concentrate on the theatre of the natural landscape, which is best viewed from the bed on its raised platform.
Flooring is naturally- finished, larch-wood plank flooring, with slate in the bathrooms. Vanity units are simple with oblong porcelain basins including a fliptop make-up mirror.
Mavida takes the Austrian alpine hospitality scene to a new level. The whole experience is far removed from the "Ma and Pa" pension in terms of design, comfort and service levels. Herbert Bren has the experience to make it work. At twenty-six he was Germany's youngest five-star hotel manager at the AllgŠu Sonne. Stints at Hilton and Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts prepared him to open the next-door Hagleitner Family Balance Hotel & Spa, recently awarded as "best family hotel" in Austria.
