Description
Comino is the smallest of the three principal islands forming the Maltese Archipelago. Two different architectural projects are located on two separate bays on the northern coast of the island: San Niklaw Bay and Santa Marija Bay. On Santa Marija Bay, 19 bungalows have been defined and composed around a Community house and public restaurant. On San Niklaw Bay, a prestigious 70 room hotel will replace the existing, obsolete buildings and infrastructure. Whilst the architecture of the hotel has been defined by the visible geological layering, stratification, and tectonics of the island, that of the bungalows is inspired by the scale of the human, typical of vernacular Mediterranean coastal village architecture. The project seeks to achieve a zero net carbon footprint and to be certified LEED Platinum.
The bungalows are located on St Marija Bay, on the northern coast of the island of Comino. The architectural massing is conceived as a composition of small built volumes : micro elements, volumes at the scale of the individual room. It is the built volumes, the micro scale of the rooms, that become the genesis of the Village Masterplan; the rooms define the architecture which in turn, defines the Village’s urban layout.
Through fragmenting the building masses into small elements, the project seeks to create a low, human scale, pixelized built environment that follows and flows down the natural terrain, void of any imposing masses. This composition allows the garigue flora and mineral geology to flow through, around and in between the resulting architecture, blending and integrating the built masses into the Comino and Santa Marija Bay landscape.
Program 19 bungalows and a restaurant
Status Ongoing
Client Hili Hospitality
Built area 5 500 m²
Construction Costs 20 M€
Design Belvedere Architecture
Sustainability Ove Arup International Ltd
