ROSCHINO COUNTRY HOTEL AND SPA

Roschino (or Raivola in Finnish) is a place of great potential for health and nature tourism in close proximity to Saint Petersburg. Luscious pine and spruce forests, beautiful lakes ideal for bathing and stand-up paddle boarding, nature reserves, old Finnish houses and Soviet dachas, fortifications of Vammelsuu-Taipale line and so much else beside can be found a half an hour trip away from Finland terminus by Swallow speed train.

In order to minimise the hotel’s footprint and to preserve the suburban scale of the former Young Pioneer camp we decided on the following device. All public facilities and services occupy eight small ground-level blocks, while the actual rooms of the hotel comprise a pair of three-level wriggling bands, levitating eight metres above ground. Their curvature fits the existing tree clusters so as to impact as few mature spruces and pines as possible. With an articulate inner space in between the bands we still get a feeling of transparency and permeability of the complex from a pedestrian point of view.