Kuara Hotel by David Guerra is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2020 Silver A' Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Competition Category.
SilverArchitecture· 2020
Kuara Hotel
by David Guerra
Client: David Guerra Arquitetura e Interiores
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Architecture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #88106The Design
About Kuara Hotel
Kuara is a hotel built in a preserved rain forest area on the coast of Arraial d'Ajuda in Bahia, Brazil. The architecture combines vernacular and modern forms and seeks a close relation with the surrounding nature. Wood is used on floors, walls, louvers, brise soleils and panels, with species such as cumaru, tatajuba, ipe and peroba. Bamboo, natural fibers, straw, wicker, leather and Brazilian stones are combined with stone imported from Italy in floors and bathrooms. All native vegetation was preserved, and the new buildings stand where the former hotel buildings stood.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
Kuara Hotel is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Kuara Hotel is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Kuara Hotel is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Contemporary Architecture and Interior Design Services
We create sophisticated spaces that blend contemporary design with Brazilian soul. Our award-winning studio specializes in residential, commercial, and hospitality projects, combining architectural innovation with thoughtful interiors. With over 20 years of experience, we deliver unique environments that reflect each client's identity.
Discuss Your ProjectInterviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative integration of indigenous Tupi-Guarani culture into Kuara Hotel's design philosophy is remarkable - could you elaborate on how this cultural heritage influenced your architectural and aesthetic decisions?
The Tupi-Guarani culture inspired the concept of Kûara from its very name, which means “sun.” This heritage guided the creation of a Brazilian, natural, and sensorial architecture that celebrates our origins and the bond between nature and spirituality.
The preservation of native vegetation and adaptation of the old hotel structure at Kuara Hotel demonstrates exceptional environmental sensitivity - what challenges did you face in balancing luxury hospitality requirements with ecological conservation?
The greatest challenge was balancing luxury and environmental preservation. We maintained the soul of the place, part of the existing structure, and all the native vegetation. The project doesn’t impose itself — it listens to the land, returning respect for the landscape in built form.
Your selection of materials at Kuara Hotel, particularly the masterful woodwork by disciples of Zanine Caldas, creates a stunning dialogue between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design - how did this collaboration evolve throughout the project?
The woodwork, executed by artisans connected to Zanine Caldas, was essential to expressing the idea of contemporary Brazilian identity. This collaboration brought texture, authenticity, and a dialogue between the handcrafted and the modern, defining the hotel’s character as sophisticated, authentic, and distinctly Brazilian.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The architecture, thought primordially in establishing solid symbiosis with the richness of the reserve, in a vernacular and modern construction, also answers to the sophistication, essential to every refugee destined for leisure and resting. Therefore, the briefing asked for a modern and established project, which could underline the privilege of being constructed in a preserved rain forest area. This dialogue merges with architectural and interior details, that rescues the Brazilian bossa.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The complexity demanded not just the rough work of experienced carpenters, but the creation of an entire workshop on site to optimize the job. Bamboo, natural fibers, straw, wicker, leather, Brazilian stones, and other handmade elements counterbalance with Florim stones, imported from Italy, used in floors and bathrooms, which despite presenting an industrialized production of the highest standard, still presents the sensation of natural rock, without the inconvenient of water infiltration.
- Tags
- hotel, brazil, tropical, wood, sun, nature, bahia
- Production Technology
- In the choosing of materials, it has become necessary to use diversity, in the search for interaction, with great focus in the beauty of wood, in its natural state, executed with perfection by carpenters, whom were disciples of the master Zanine Caldas. The work is abundant in the surfaces, such as floor and walls, as well as architectural elements like venetians, brise soleils, and standard panels, with species like cumaru, tatajuba, ipe and peroba.
- Design Challenge
- This richness of memory and diversity could not be ignored, opting, thereby, for the preservation of all native vegetation, using the structure of the old hotel to build the new one on the same places as the old buildings. The landscape architecture takes that into account.
- Research
- This lush nature is inserted on site, since way before the idea of an occupation. An organic composition, which main axis is the Mucuge river. The rain forest flourishes in conjunction with the mangue (a kind of swamp endemic for this region, which hosts a unique biome), between the famous cliffs of Arraial DAjuda. The 200 meters of beach take us to the unforgettable horizon offered by the Atlantic Ocean, on which, about 500 years ago, the portuguese caravelas came from the west, beginning a new phase on Brazilian history.
- Inspiration
- Kuara, meaning sun for the indigenous Tupi-Guarani. The house of Tupan, the supreme god. Kuara Delivers, every day, energy, heat, life, all elements that make Bahia, the province on which the portuguese discoverers disembarked in Brazil. The Brazilian, indigenous at first, but not only, mixed through dozens of generations, in an ethnic pluralism, bringing an unique diversity to our people, strength in a fascinating narrative about the roots of this country.
- Project Duration
- The project started in Arraial DAjuda, Brazil, in 2010, and finished on site in 2017. The hotel inaugurated in the end of 2017.
- Operation Flow
- Privacy, intimacy, and silence were key words in the program of necessities. Also, the sounds from the waves and birds, the aroma of the vegetation and the sea, and of course the unforgettable views from the very preserved coastline, were treated as untouchable, and make the stay in Kuara not only a time of opportunity and relaxing, but active experience of contact with nature.
- Team Members
- Jefferson Gurgel
Nínive Resende
Bernardo Hauck
Letícia Thibau - Image Credits
- Image #1: Jomar Bragança
Image #2: Jomar Bragança
Image #3: Jomar Bragança
Image #4: Jomar Bragança
Image #5: Jomar Bragança
Video Credits: Coletivo Imaginário
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