Park­hotel Holzner — The story of a mountain haven

Joy

The Park­hotel is a place where people of every gene­ration can feel at home and enjoy the good things in life. Its extensive, laby­rin­thine grounds are full of sur­prises, with pan­o­ramic views, tranquil corners and spots where you can relax in one another’s company. Time doesn’t stand still at the Holzner but it does seem to follow its own laws: the day unfolds at a lei­surely, self-indulgent pace – depending on your age, mood and incli­nation, you will have all the time you need to feast, play, enjoy a sauna, walk, unwind and gaze in wonder.

Amidst the breath-taking natural spec­tacle of the Dolo­mites, for adults and children alike, a holiday at the Holzner is a delightful expe­rience for all the senses. Anyone who swims their morning lengths in the pan­orama pool, letting their eyes range across these majestic, silent peaks, will bathe in a sense of freedom and the sheer joy of being alive.

Building history

At Park­hotel Holzner, Alpine art nouveau meets the clean lines of con­tem­porary archi­tecture, and the house becomes a first-person nar­rator for its own (building) history.

Over the decades, repeated upgrades and reno­vation works proved necessary, the ori­ginal sub­s­tance of the building being altered with great care and only where needed. The most signi­ficant changes were the instal­lation of central heating, en suite bath­rooms and the con­version of the breakfast veranda on the sou­thern façade into an enc­losed dining room at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s. The new wellness suite in 2006 brought with it the con­version to heating using rene­wable fuels and the con­s­truction of a wood-chip heating system. After management of the hotel passed to the fourth gene­ration in 2008 – marking the art nouveau hotel’s one hundredth anni­versary – the time was ripe for a new vision and a new chapter in the archi­tec­tural history of this mountain hotel.

Breaking new ground

The design of the new project to sen­si­tively extend the existing pre­mises was put out to com­pe­titive tender by the owners. The requi­re­ments for the future archi­tects: new ideas and con­cepts that would keep the focus on the history of the pro­perty and local tra­dition in terms of content and tech­nical mate­rials while opening up a con­tem­porary aes­thetic. It was the intention in this sus­taina­bility-focused project to retain the ori­ginal cha­racter of the art nouveau structure while cor­re­sponding in full to the cross-gene­ra­tional needs of families on holiday – the hotel’s main target group. The con­cepts put forward by Brixen archi­tec­tural part­nership berg­meis­terwolf (Gerd Berg­meister and Michaela Wolf) hit the bullseye.

Between 2013 and 2018 the Holzers‘ desires and visions took shape step by step. Sel­ected mate­rials and clear design now pervade the interior, linking old and new into one har­mo­nious entity. The new building ele­ments — the berg­meis­terwolf wing with under­ground garage, the new Eden suites and the Liberty Spa — blend per­fectly with the pre-existing building ensemble, extend the art nouveau hotel and engage with the sur­rounding land­scape. The large glazed windows give a sweeping, unob­s­tructed view over the moun­tains and the extensive parkland, like a pro­jector screen for a diorama of sky and mountain peaks.

The extension of the attic and the con­version of the old tower into a small obser­vatory were an important part of the upgrade concept, the greatest premise of which was the search for a tim­eless archi­tec­tural lan­guage, a con­nective link between past and present.

Art in archi­tecture

The reno­vated and the new building complex as well as the recent design of the sur­rounding park is the har­mo­nious result of an inter­di­sci­plinary fusion of creative skills: arch­ti­tecture (berg­meis­terwolf), land­scape design (Roland della Giacoma) and art (Manfred Alois Mayr).

South Tyrol artist Manfred Alois Mayr designs colour con­cepts for buil­dings. In his work, he responds to the reso­nance of the location, its history, tra­dition and function. It is not the deco­rative role of colour that he focuses on, but the identity of a place revealed in colour. Mayr har­mo­nises his work as an artist with the place where he is working, probing to discern its essence, and lis­tening atten­tively to it. What he per­ceives and learns becomes a leit­motif as he searches for the right pig­ments and chooses surface finishes. Mayr’s chro­matic art in archi­tecture has a lasting and striking impact on the observer: harmony of place and colour gene­rates con­tem­plative silence and an atmo­sphere that is almost sacred.

Holy halls

In the basement, snugly tucked away deep in the heart of the Holzner, is the new Liberty Spa with spa­cious tre­atment and rela­xation rooms, saunas and, its steaming high­light, the Hamam. When day­light shines through the high glass fron­tages and floods this ample space, there is a still, almost sacred sense of tran­quillity. Atmo­spheric lighting in the evening bathes the Liberty Spa in the enchanted ambience of the 1001 Nights, natural aro­matic essences caress the airways and relax the mind. An oasis for the soul and senses amidst the mountain magic of the Dolo­mites and a hommage to the eponym for the Liberty Style, Arthue Lasenby Liberty.