Project: Hotel | Location: Albas, Occitanie | Budget: Undisclosed | Amenities: Botanical Garden, Hotel, Restaurant | Phase: Planning

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The former brickworks in Albas, known locally as La Briqueterie, was converted into a gîte in the early 2000s.  Our project further develops this use of the property, a traditional stone and brick building with substantial grounds, into a decentralised hotel catering for couples, and couples with young children. 

 

This hotel project sits alongside a landscape planting scheme for a range of herbaceous perennials and fragrant botanicals, some of which form semi-wild fields, others within a series of botanical glasshouses.  The plants grown on site are then processed into fragrances and cosmetics for consumption by hotel guests and available to local residents through the project's gift shop.  The scheme includes a restaurant with three dining rooms; a large free-plan space within the former brickworks, a glazed annex to the brickwork for informal dining, as well as a botanical glasshouse which can seat up to 12 guests for dinner.  A pier stretches out into the river Lot at the end of which is a single table available for private dining in the evening, and to support river activities during the day.

 

The project’s accommodation takes the form of a series of timber cabins, developed to use only bio-sourced materials in-keeping with the environmental ethos of the client.  These timber cabins are distributed around forested grounds and focused on a central swimming pool and outdoor space.  Three cabins have been designed with “mother and baby” pools to provide an area with a little more quiet and seclusion for people with very young infants.