Between the Old City of Chania with the Ancient Venetian Walls of San Salvatore, and the AVEA Park,
the oldest olive processing unit in Greece, basks the Sansal Boutique Hotel. The six storeys volume, has a
total of 23 rooms, 4 of which are luxury suites.
The entrance opens up to the reception, the welcoming area, the restaurant and the outdoor terrace. All
the rooms face towards the north with uninterrupted views to the Aegean Sea. The endless pool runs
along the planted roof terrace and creates a visual connection with the blue horizon.
Positioned across the sea, a timeless source of inspiration, the Sansal Boutique Hotel creates an overall
calming and architectural feel through its clean lines and geometrical intricacy. The elevation, clearly
influenced by modernist aesthetics, bares wide openings, that allows views to the Old and the New city
of Chania and the seashore and creates a smooth transition from inside, out. The design investigates the
interplay between controlled transparency and solidness, creating a balance between simplicity and
character, softness and minimalism.
The white aesthetics of the building emphasize the clarity of its geometry and are combined with natural
materials like wood and marble. In particular, marble is used to cover the ground floor and walls,
forming a “pedestal” for the building that creates a more natural relation with the ground. The use of
wooden window frames, with dark walnut hues intensifies the feeling of depth from the outside, while
offering a haptic interaction with natural elements on the inside.
The clarity of the buildings’ architectural volume in combination with thoughtful material compositions
and functional elements, create a balanced, calming and timeless retreat with a subtle but distinct
luxury.
The same structural clarity of the exterior prevails inside the building. The interior was designed true to
the overall architectural identity, aiming to read the spaces in coherent, holistic manner, repeating the
same architectural language in every spatial unit.
Thus, the large openings on the ground floor allow the planting outside to co-shape the reception and
restaurant areas, softening their boundaries and allowing them to reconcile with the outside
environment.
The principle of the eliminating boundaries is also apparent in the hotel rooms. In order to achieve a
visually open plan without interfering walls whilst retaining their functional character, the bathrooms
are enclosed by glass, ensuring views to the sea from all parts of the room. The mirrors in the bathrooms
are placed across the windows, giving the feeling of permeability to the room. The visual closure of the
bathroom is achieved with an internal curtain, which allows the visitor to isolate himself from the rest of
the room. The large openable window frames, along with the material continuity from the floor inside
the room to the balconies, unify the space and direct the visitor to the sea.
The palette of materials used is consistent in all areas of the hotel. Both the floors and a section of the
walls are lined with marble and tiles, giving the feeling of internal grounding and tactile contact with the
material.
In the upper part the walls are white, so that the rooms are as bright as possible during daytime. All
furniture is made of oak wood in a dark walnut shade. Consequently, a continuity in aesthetics is
achieved, based on calmness, sensory relationship with natural materials and sharp details. All interior
elements, both in the common areas and the rooms, aim to highlight the most important visual factor,
the sea. Consistently in this principle, all design choices are thoughtful solutions based on calming
aesthetics and visual purity.
Artworks, decorative elements, lighting and fabrics, were selected in order to emphasize the
architecture of the building, by creating an aesthetic approach with references to the timelessness of
design and materials. Specifically, both artworks and ceramic elements are characterized by the purity of
their geometry and refer to the coupling of modernism with ancient Greek art.
The spatial experience of the SanSal Boutique Hotel is completed in the roof garden, where the linear
pool extends in the north side of the building and is visually integrated with the sea, intensifying and
enlarging the view towards the blue horizon. Respectively, the plants in the perimeter of the roof garden
are similar to the planting on the top of the plateau created by the Venetian Walls. In this way, the
boundaries of the roof are conceivably shifted, highlighting their inseparable relationship with its natural
and manmade surroundings.