Ski-in Hotel. Revitalization of the Vidra Mountain Resort

Authors’ Comment

The process of transition from the communist regime to democracy in Romania left behind a fragmented landscape, marked by socialist traces in the built fabric, dominant structures that fell prey to legal and economic abandonment, having been left in the hands of trade unions. The Vidra Resort is a mountain hotel complex ambitiously conceived in the early 1970s, but left unfinished and abandoned after 1989. The result is a built fabric caught in a zone of ambiguity, gradually deteriorating, while the Transalpina Ski Area experiences a growth in tourist demand from year to year.

The approach of the diploma project seeks to work with the existing, by reinterpreting and reconfiguring the spatial and material conditions already present, rather than through a radical intervention that erases or denies the built past. The project thus proposes a form of architectural regeneration that capitalizes on the existing structure from the period of socialist modernism and integrates it into a new functional, spatial, and symbolic vision. The aim is to outline a new contemporary alpine architecture, capable of responding both to the majestic natural landscape and to the current needs of mountain tourism. In place of the demolished wing, a new extension is proposed, configured as a volume curved in plan that follows the contour lines of the terrain. It is conceived as a ski slope integrated into the architecture, starting from the top level of the existing building and descending to the resort's main square. Through this intervention, the hotel becomes an activating element for the Vidra-Transalpina area, integrated into both the tourist infrastructure and the resort's mountain recreation system. The hotel is complemented by the introduction of functions adapted to the requirements of contemporary mountain tourism: a Spa center with indoor and outdoor pools, fitness rooms, a ski center for equipment rental and storage, boutique shops, lounge areas, a multimedia room, and an après-ski bar. These functions contribute to diversifying the tourist experience and to transforming the hotel into an active hub of the resort.