Loisium Hotel – Langenlois, Austria

Building: Loisium Hotel
Location: Langenlois, Austria
Architects: Steven Holl
Clients: Loisium Hotelbetriebs GmbH & Co. KG
Construction Time: 2001 to 2005
Size: 75,347 sf.

The Loisium Hotel was completed in 2005 at Langenlois, Austria. The architect Steven Holl was asked to design a hotel in the middle of a vineyard for the client Loisium Hotelbetriebs GmbH & Co. KG.  The hotel has 82 rooms which can be rented as well as a lobby, cigar lounge, bar, restaurant, spa and conference rooms. One of the main problems was designing a hotel that people will travel from all over the world to stay at. Langenlois was not known for its’ hotels, so the Loisium had to be special, its unique design helped to make it a great tourist attrition. It was built at a vineyard, so Holl used the surrounding to design everything from the hotel to the furniture. The unique thing about this hotel is that a team of specialist was assembles to make sure that each room would create the proper mood for which it was going to used for. They even opened up the once closed underground tunnels so visitors can see the wine barrels and explore the tunnels. The most important part of the hotel design was making sure that people kept coming back, so personal amusement was one of the biggest factors.

A huge part of the resort was the exterior faces of the buildings. The facade is made of an aluminum grating with squared sections cut through. A thermal insulation system is then underneath or glass is behind the aluminum grating where windows are located.  A painted galvanized steel T-section is holding up the glass, also a dark softwood and aluminum facade is located between the windows and the glass doors on the patio.  The structure of the hotel is reinforced concrete, the insulation and aluminum grating is what covers the concrete.

The floor system has either an dark oak wood floor or anthracite carpet covering polythene sheeting for insulation. Reinforced concrete is the main support of the building so the insulation is above the concrete to regulate the temperature. The first floor has 70mm layer of screed with a mineral pigmentation, which is a thin layer of cement. A heating system of pipes and insulation is placed between the screed and the reinforced concrete, this is to heat the floor making sure the building a more  standard temperature.

All information is from Detail Magazine 2007 3rd Edition