Environment and Hotel
ENVIRONMENT
Grañón is a thousand-year-old town, with about 300 inhabitants, crossed by the Camino de Santiago, where tourists will find peace and tranquility. Its incomparable beauty leaves no one indifferent, as we find a town surrounded by a lunar landscape, by the forms of dry land, where the predominant color varies according to the season of the year.
The Camino de Santiago has led pilgrims to the sanctuary of the apostle Santiago for more than a thousand years. His tomb would be the foundation stone of a Cathedral and of a city that, since then, would attract the footsteps of walkers until it became a destination with traces and echoes throughout Europe.
THE HOTEL
The starting point for this project was a traditional "manor house". A construction typical of the popular architecture of La Rioja.
Manor houses are buildings whose origins date back to the 16th century. Most of the houses have two floors, in which masonry and ashlar masonry are used in the lower part, and wood and brick in the upper part. Many facades house ancient coats of arms, belonging to the families to which they belonged. In this case it is a peculiarity that the Casa Grande does not house any coat of arms, a noble house with a chapel and altar, where they did not want to appear wealthy.
The house is from the 18th century and has two floors of masonry and ashlar masonry, lintelled openings and a balcony with ironwork. Preserving and displaying the stone, stripping the building bare, has been the key in this minimalist intervention so that Casa Grande Hotel has the splendor it once had.
Both inside and outside, exposed stone has been left on the walls, with the aim of maintaining the essence and simplicity of the house itself, achieving a unified image throughout the building. Design always obeys rules and spatial details meet a goal, but it is also true that Casa Grande Hotel worked hard to make invisible energies palpable, such as the emptiness and luxury of large spaces.
The restoration and rehabilitation of the building began in February 2019. The construction techniques have been those of the year in which we live and special care has been taken in the choice of insulating materials, which are of high quality, as well as in the rehabilitation and in the construction of the new roof.
Integrating a project with such characteristics in such a privileged setting as this one entailed a great responsibility in the use of all those construction techniques that guaranteed its optimal energy efficiency, visual integration in the environment and sustainability.
