Project overview

Club Mediterranée has been present on the promontory of Santa Lucia in Cefalù for approximately forty years with a holiday village which is now coming to the end of its natural life. Club Med's intention in commissioning a new design for the site goes beyond a simple overhaul of the existing buildings (for the most part straw cabins) in an ambitious plan to upgrade the whole site to reach a wealthier and more demanding clientèle fewer in number catered for with more permanent accommodation.
The site is of outstanding natural beauty and a great location near one of Sicily's more beautiful historic towns. Over the years the settlement has grown with the addition and modification of facilities as well as the integration of new planting not always in keeping with the character of the place. Since the original founding of the resort, a number of regulations, local, regional and national, have been passed with the objective of safeguarding the natural beauty of the coastline and preventing speculative eyesores. From the outset Club Med has observed the restriction of not building anything visible from the town of Cefalù. For the most part the construction visible from the sea is in any case of a very low profile and temporary nature in accordance with Club Med's founding philosophy.
The challenge at this point is
1) to accomodate the new requirements for a more up-market resort
2) through the restitution of the site to its intrinsic natural beauty.
The success of the first depends largely on the outcome of the second. Our intervention aims to do this by a close observation of the landscape, local building traditions and materials and the natural flora autoctonous to this area.

The intervention does nevertheless have to cater for the demands of the modern tourist with the technical characteristics he or she expects.

The new project aims specifically to reinforce the the site's autoctonous original character particularly in the landscaping and planting as the dominant visible theme. The rooms and public spaces are designed to meet the standards of a modern hotel while the atmosphere and walkways are more in line with the resort rather than the a large seaside hotel. The 566 existing straw huts will be replaced by 120 large and more comfortable bungalows located towards the water and 200 guest rooms using a more permanent construction technique. These rooms are set into the landscape along the contour lines of the slope and are clad in dry-stone.

Dry-Stone Guest Rooms

The design of these blocks of housing start from the abstraction of the contour lines over the whole site which become the traces of the the dry-stone walls. The walls curve in a sinusoidal pattern creating interior and exterior spaces which make up the houses all the while adapting themselves to the slope of the terrain. The dry stone wall has traditionally been used for terracing- in this case we have made it inhabitable.

Restaurants and Night Bar

These are set into an existing construction. Towards the east overlooks the sea and the view of the town of Cefalù- a magnificent view. The two levels of the restaurants and night bar are articulated around two courtyards establishing a sequence of open spaces either shaded (veranda, pergola, trees), or sunny (terrace) or closed (restaurants, night bar-airconditioned).

Bungalows

The bungalows are designed to maintain the temporary nature of the construction of the huts they replace, but to reduce the visual impact to a minimum and improve the level of comfort to one in keeping with a modern hotel.

The Service Area

Under the sports deck and its cloud of netting are the staff lodgings, plant rooms, storage and admin offices arranged in a long one storey building with gardens cut out of the continuous slab around which the rooms are arranged. The building is deliberately low so as leave the prominence of the existing 17th century Palazzo to the fore.

Poolside