Nashik, India
Aria Hotel, designed by Sanjay Puri and his architectural team at Sanjay Puri Architects, is a luxury resort located among lush greens in the wine-growing region of India, created responding to the site contours, the views of the surroundings, the climate & the materials, presenting a “web” of experiences within its different volumes.
Aria Hotel has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Awards Honorable Mention by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The site for this hotel is gently contoured rising up 9 meters towards the south with the entry at the lowest level in the north.
The southern side rises up into hills in close proximity to the site.
The client’s requirements included a large banquet hall of 15000 sq ft in addition to 60 rooms and other facilities.
Since the banquet hall would have large gatherings its access is planned directly from the road frontage at the lowest level of the site.
The public facilities including the hotel lobby, restaurant, bar, spa & business center occupy a higher level 6 meters above the banquet hall entered directly from an ascending approach road.
The rooms at the higher level are oriented to face the river in the north or the immediate hills in the south with open circulation spaces & naturally ventilated & skylit courtyards.
Each level of the hotel is integrated with the natural contours of the site, minimizing land cutting & landfill.
No soil was taken out of the site or brought into the site while constructing, making the construction both economical and sustainable.
Over fifty percent of the walls are built with natural black basalt stone available in close proximity to the site.
All the circulation spaces are naturally lit & ventilated rendering the building energy efficient. Solar panels on the rooftop, over the banquet kitchen & parking areas, generate fifty percent of the electrical energy required for the hotel.
Rainwater harvesting tanks, with water recycling & reuse, further add to the sustainable methods adopted for the design of this hotel.
All the rooms, restaurants, spa & banquets open into sheltered balconies & decks that provide outdoor usable spaces whilst minimizing the heat gain into the internal volumes.
On each floor, the rooms form rectilinear cuboids that are angled differently creating balconies that frame the picturesque surroundings with 2 floor high suites at the topmost levels.
Painted in terracotta color stucco, these frames are juxtaposed with the black basalt stone walls of the lower floors.
According to the architectural team, “this hotel is contextual to the site’s location, climate & the client’s brief, amalgamating them cohesively.”
Project: Aria Hotel
Architects: Sanjay Puri Architects Pvt. Ltd
Design Teams: Sanjay Pur, Toral Doshi, Manjeet Khatri, Sudhir Ambasana, and Dipti Patil
Client: Aditya Parakh
Photographer: Dinesh Mehta
