Aire de Bardenas
Near Tudela, Spain
Press Reviews
The Guardian, April 2011
"Hotel in the cereal fields near the Bardenas Reales de Navarra
natural park. A great example of how contemporary architecture can
work with a hotel."
Travel + Leisure
"Single-story cubical structures set against an austere, windswept
landscape in northeastern Spain: the Hotel Aire de Bardenas has the
feel at first glance of a lunar encampment. But there is a familiar
elegance here, a kind of recycled, modular minimalism that recalls
the traditional buildings of this rural area, a semidesert
environment next to a nature preserve. The serene, white-walled
rooms are oriented to the outside - large windows offer spectacular
views."
Conde Nast Traveller (UK)
"One of Spain's most talked about hotels; the Aire de Bardenas is
something new, original, and remarkable. What strikes you first is
the austerity of the surroundings. The hotel is set in an expanse
of dusty plains. From a distance it looks like a collection of
containers for storing vegetables. There is something futuristic
about the Aire. You can imagine that in a few years' time more of
the world's hotels will look like this. The collision of luxury and
Zen-like spartanness certainly chimes well with the chastened mood
of the early 21st century.
Concrete paths wind through a labyrinth of glass panels. The
post-industrial look works better in the public areas than in the
box-like cabins. These are so very plain - all-white walls, plywood
floors, amenities in brown paper bags - that for a fleeting moment
you might be reminded of a Swedish prison, before the big bed, the
crisp cotton sheets, the power shower and the pitch-perfect heating
persuade you otherwise. On an ice-bound winter day I found it
strangely romantic, in a science-fiction kind of way, to shut
myself in my hermetic cube and peer out at the uncanny landscape of
strewn rocks, soil and sky. It is a good deal more comfortable than
it sounds."
Wallpaper*, October 2008
"Named after the wind that rolls in over the Bardenas desert, the
hotel is a cluster of pale boxes around a main hall. They sit a
little eerily, like the relic from 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the
middle of a wheat field between a national park and the town of
Tudela.
But this isn’t just a glorified outpost. Lopez and Rivera
designed the 22 rooms with clean lines and sleek steel to balance
the rough world outside. The rooms center on big, pop-out windows
where you can sit and contemplate the desert without getting sand
in your espadrilles."
