Tochka na Karte Hotel / Rhizome

Architects: Rhizome
Location: 188760, ul. Zaozernaya, Priozersk, Leningrad Oblast, Russia
Lead Architects: Evgeny Reshetov, Tatiana Sinelnikova
Design Team: Artem Stepanov, Anastasia Voropaeva, Elizaveta Morozova, Lubov Lukonina
Area: 1330.0 m2
Project Year: 2017
Photographs: Dmitry Tsyrencshikov

‘Tochka na karte’ country hotel (Russian for ‘a point on the map’) is located 120 km away from Saint-Petersburg on the shore of the Lake Ladoga, at the border of the Republic of Karelia. The hotel complex consists of prolonged 2-story blocks of double rooms, detached suites, and a reception building. The hotel is a designed in a prefabricated technology: 3.5x7m modules are assembled at the factory and then delivered to the site with the interior finish, networks, and sanitary engineering inside.

These modules are almost ready to welcome guests: the rest of work is to connect them to a power supply and arrange the furniture. The hotel comprises 3 blocks: 32 standard rooms, detached suites, and reception building. One module is a standard room 18 sqm in area. A suite room is assembled from two modules. The reception building is pieced together from three modules and some prefabricated elements. An extended range of the hotel modules consists of four 2-stories blocks interconnected by stairways and terraces. Terrain forms, trees layout and our strive to provide a view of the shore from every room constitute the buildings’ location on the site.

The modules are located so that the whole bulk of buildings is ‘dispersed’ among the pine trees. It is the context of the northern nature of Karelia that defined our architectural design: the hotel is situated at the point where the Vuoksi river runs into the Lake Ladoga. All of the modules are located among the existing pine trees which were saved from cutting down thanks to the modular technology. The first consequence of this context was to maximize the interaction between a resident and environment. It is expressed in a floor-to-ceiling glazing with a view of the Lake Ladoga from each room.

The second is selected materials and patterns. An abundance of wood and dark metal in exterior finish shifts a focal point from architecture highlighting the nature as the protagonist in this space. Nowadays this project is the only one case of the modular architecture of public facilities on Russia’s territory that has a real architectural value. We believe we succeeded in achieving the essence of a place inherent to modern Nordic architecture.