Seashell North Coast: Nature-Inspired Design
With many resorts spreading over the North Coast, we’ve gotten used to a certain style that hardly anything seems to fascinate us anymore.
But recently, the launch of a new resort, Seashell, was announced and we’re actually excited. The masterminds behind the architecture and design is the well-known design studio, Alchemy.
As a designer, it is obvious that what Seashell has to offer is not just a vacation spot you’ll head to for a couple of weeks every summer, but a place where you feel comfortable enough to want to go all year round.
Taking the little details into consideration of all aspects of the design, Alchemy Design Studios created the idea of a dream home and made it into a reality. With most people spending much more time outdoors than indoors, the main challenge was how to bring the outdoors inside and re-invent the wheel of architecture by solving the problems we find in every other compound or resort in the North Coast.
Having worked on many projects by the beach, the designers had a clear vision of how to make Seashell special and unique. Using nature and the surroundings as their main inspiration, the architectural language and elements used were taken from the beauty of nature and introduced into every detail in the design process.
The main idea was to dismantle the block architecture we’re so used to seeing and work on an architectural language that blends the interior with the exterior, indoor with the outdoor and brings natural light in with a unique flow of energy.
Not just looking to make a beautiful product, Alchemy combined with Seashell took into consideration every detail of the user experience and turned that into a form of design where no line is made without a functional purpose. The quality of the architectural design ensures a better quality of a volume that becomes a part of nature itself.
“The spaces have a completely different lifestyle. There is no form that doesn’t have a function. The main concern is not just another project on the Mediterranean, but another culture, lifestyle and environment. What we do is architecture and design, and with it we wanted to create a completely new lifestyle where the architecture blends in with the surroundings,” Karim Mechtigian, founder of Alchemy explains to us.
All the elements and colours used in the architectural language were derived from nature making it comfortable and relaxing for the mind, soul and body as well as the eyes. They chose one colour to revolve around the compound and blend in with the different colours of surrounding nature and that colour was yellow: the colour of warmth, summer and light.
Inspired from everything that makes the North Coast unique, Seashell took its cues from the beauty of nature and transformed the characteristics of the climate, sea, land and the lifestyle into a compound that will feel more like home than ever.
“The elements of nature that Seashell represents – sea, earth, air, sand, and horizon – are integrated in every unit’s architecture,” Emy Hossam from Alchemy explained. “From these elements, we tried to create shelters or envelopes that embody these elements. So standing there for example, you have walls that provide enclosure, you have open ceilings so the light can come in, the flow of air was very well-thought-of and the open horizon which offers a spectacular open-view. This was our main inspiration. There was no imposed material or style which makes it a timeless design.”
“Every single line has a certain function and traditional ideas that were unnecessary were eliminated and recreated through architecture. We eliminated the ideas of pergolas and used the architecture to create shading systems. The areas where more privacy was needed were designed to be more solid, and even the fence is used as part of the architecture, making a hidden wall, and the landscape becomes part of the architecture so that everything relates to the concept. It’s like a maestro is leading all the parties to follow one vision,” Mohamed Fares, designer at Alchemy explained.
Walking us through the user experience, with Seashell the element of surprise is evident. The architecture is filled with surprises that will make the interior an experience you won’t ever want to leave. So whether you’re looking for a unit on the beach, on a lagoon or in cabins, there’s something for everyone at Seashell.
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