This summer, the historic Bürgenstock Resort Hotel overlooking Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, will be transformed from its historic roots to include three hotels, a medical hotel and a vast 10,000sq m (108,000sq ft) glass-walled Alpine Spa.
Several architects have been recruited to transform each of the hotels, but interior designer Maria Vafiadis, founder of MKV Design, is charged with connecting the interiors of the three hotels and the spa, imbuing a sense of continuity between properties.
“We make things click together nicely, like little pieces of a puzzle,” says Vafiadis. “You cannot ignore the individuality of the properties, and you cannot ignore the totality of the project. At the end, everything works together.”
Vafiadis began working on the Bürgenstock project – which includes both modern, new-build architecture and historic renovations – six years ago, and has taken inspiration from the most striking aspects of the resort: its colourful 150-year history, and its breathtaking mountaintop views across Lake Lucerne.
The Alpine Spa is perched on a cliff top, 450m (1,476ft) above the lake, and is enclosed in floor-to-ceiling glass walls designed to create an atmosphere of tranquility. It will include a Kneipp bath, private bath chambers, an Arabian rasul made with local Bürgenstock rock, Turkish steamroom, panoramic sauna and tranquility room, whirlpools hidden within a cave, and 15 treatment rooms and three private spa rooms – all with views out over the lake – a dramatic departure from the typical windowless spa treatment room.
“Here, everything is about the view – you don’t want to distract from that,” says Vafiadis. “It has to be quite neutral, and quite modern.” She used a simple palette, with natural materials of stone and timber that play with texture, and elements of fire interspersed throughout.
Guests enter the spa either directly from the hotels, or from a subterranean entrance three floors below, in the belly of the mountain. The spa journey is designed to take guests from this very internal, cocooned space to a continued cosiness in the thermal areas, and finally to an outward-facing resolution in the L-shaped relaxation room – with panoramic glass walls – or in the individual treatment rooms, which also make full use of their stunning views.
“This is where you celebrate the location – you celebrate the fact that you’re on top of Lake Lucerne, and you overlook not one, but ten lakes,” says Vafiadis. “You overlook the mountains, you overlook nature, and you are in Switzerland.”
This is not the first large spa and resort Vafiadis has worked on; she is also responsible for Greece’s Costa Navarino resort, which includes two hotels and a 4,500sq m (48,000sq ft) spa; the 1,200sq m (12,900sq ft) spa at the Royal Savoy Lausanne and the 1,500sq m (16,000sq ft) spa at The Metropol in Belgrade.
“A spa needs to feel intimate, so the bigger it is, the challenge is to not lose the intimacy and the warmth and cosiness that you expect,” says Vafiadis. “What we try to do, even in very big spas, is to break the areas into smaller groups, so instead of going to a sauna or steamroom, you go through a series of them. So although it’s big, you create more interesting journeys for the guest, and it doesn’t lose its sense of intimacy.”
The resort had an existing spa, first opened in the 1950s, and Vafiadis kept some of the details from that, including an organic-shaped outdoor swimming pool, the protected modernist changing rooms, and a bar with glass port holes that look underneath the water of the swimming pool. Vafiadis describes these bits as having a “James Bond-like atmosphere” – some parts of GoldenEye were even filmed here – with unusual details that are still relevant today.
In preparation for the job, she poured over historical documents and early photos. In its heyday, the resort was filled with members of the aristocracy, politicians and Hollywood stars such as Sofia Loren and Audrey Hepburn – who was married in the little Bürgenstock chapel next to the Palace Hotel.
“We don’t want to recreate the past, but we want the guest to feel this history,” explains Vafiadis. “We want them to sense that where they are meant something before, and that this is taking it to another level, and continuing the story.”
