Club
Med Resort Valmorel – France
Article
by: Tony Smyth
Photo
Credits: Bruno van Loocke
Located in the heart of the French Alps in the
picturesque Tarentaise Mountains, the Four Trident (T4 - equivalent to upper 4-star) Club Med Valmorel Resort has a prime location in an
authentic and charming Savoyard station at an altitude of 1,460 metres. Designed by architect Pierre Diener,
the resort fits into the natural surroundings and has been awarded France’s NF
Démarche HQE certification for the resort programme and design reflecting the
resort’s high environmental quality.
The resort also offers five star chalet apartments.
The 345 Club rooms, 49 deluxe
rooms, chalets, public areas and restaurants were designed by Paris-based
interior designers Marc Hertrich and Nicolas Adnet. Both designers have worked on several Club Med properties
around the world as part of the brand’s revitalisation and upgrade programme.
“Our relationship with the Club Med is really exceptional,
based on real confidence,” says Hertrich.
“Nevertheless, this project was a pitch winner. Our proposal of layout
between the room and the bathroom, which is totally innovative, mainly helped
us to win this Club Med chalets contest.”
The all-inclusive concept in a new setting was driven by the
changing expectations of its guests prompting Club Med to surge upscale to
reach out to and retain a demanding international family clientele. Since 2005
the group has been refocusing its activity on 4 and 5 Trident Resorts, 5 Trident
(T5) Luxury Spaces and Luxury Villas by Club Med and constantly innovating to
develop its offer: sites of natural beauty, a wealth of activities, comfortable
settings, tailored services.
Responding to Club Med’s policy of creating new welcoming and
high-end villages led Hetrich and Adnet to create a contemporary, authentic (inspired
by location), luxurious but not ostentatious welcoming atmosphere for the new
resort.
Describing the hotel, Hertrich says, “It is really a new palace
for the 21st Century set in the mountains, comfortable, huge, surprising, creative,
in the spirit of time and ideal for families.”
The resort is surrounded by chalets, in which the design team
have created contemporary mountain apartments.
“We wanted to create warm and comfortable atmospheres in very
big spaces and volumes in the chalet living rooms and the resort dining rooms,”
says Adnet. “Another important thing was to turn these different atmospheres
into something magical and dreamlike such as in the lobby, the main restaurant,
the spa and the T5 spaces.”
Hertrich and Adnet worked with the architect to review some
circulations and some spaces inside the Club Med village, as well as its
connections. Juxtaposing their
design with the outside architecture, which takes its inspiration from the
traditional style of the villages, the interior design duo decided to work with
more modernity on the interiors. In the chalets they chose to use local natural materials such
as wood, stone and slate to endow authenticity, warmth and charm.
“As always and for all our projects, the local context is
key,” says Hertrich. “The
magnificent views of the mountains determined the position of the bed in many
rooms which were placed in front of the window where possible.”
Sustainability was also a major consideration and using local
building practices, materials whenever possible was pursued.
Working with a resort that tailors to families and that also
has a high level of sporting activities, programming the space to allow for intimate
spaces, public areas, dining and specialist sports facilities such as ski room,
swimming and children’s play areas offered the design team an interesting
interplay between the residential and the active areas including the bar which
hosts performances and opens late into the night.
With such a vibrant mix of venues and a constant stream of
arriving and departing guests the designers worked with an acoustician, a light
designer and a sound specialist to ensure that the overspill from revellers and
sporting activities would not impact on the relaxation of the guests in their
rooms. A mix of absorbent
materials such as wood, fabrics, and more upscale materials including velvet
and leather on furnishings and walls were used to absorb sound. Acoustical ceilings were fitted for the
swimming pool, some restaurants and the corridors.
Hertrich and Adnet wanted to create an atmosphere to make for
luxurious and welcoming holidays for both the winter ski and summer alpine
seasons.
“We wanted something different for this resort that would be
comfortable and relaxing but with some humorous hints,” says Adnet. “The walls are covered with tavaillon
tiles and the pillars dressed like trees and throughout the space artistic
oversized animal sculptures of deer, antler chandeliers and sconces and other
whimsical touches.”
For the arrival experience the idea was to set the scene straight
away at the entrance by creating surprise by inviting the customers to walk
through a land of a fantasy forest, a magical atmosphere not typical of other
mountain resorts.
The designers used different types of furniture to bring this
to life: a farm table as the welcome desk is also reminiscent of the refectory
tables from a monastery and a giant globe as the ‘Observatoire d’Eté’. They also employed different versions
of the four seasons theme on floors, walls, and ceilings and the four dining
rooms are also imbued with these seasonal elements. Giant milk pails were placed in the mountain restaurant and
wooden sheep graze by the swimming pool.
The traditional materials have been reinterpreted to create an authentic
and cosy mountain atmosphere but in a diverted way in order to avoid the
classical resort cliché.
The colour scheme and textural qualities of the spaces use
predominantly natural tones but with a accents of bright contrasting colours in
each area. Red was used for the
animation and conviviality spaces, orange for the autumn room, white for the
winter salon, pink and green for the spring salon and blue for the summer salon
dining spaces. Bedrooms were
personalised in orange and rust tones.
The resort has several F&B areas including the main bar, a
VIP ‘bar de la tour’, the main restaurant with two different buffets and four
different dining rooms, the baby restaurant and the specialty mountain
restaurant.
“We wanted to create very different atmospheres in order to
offer each customer the possibility to choose between breakfast, lunch and
dinner and to change location throughout the week,” says Hertrich. “These different venues have their own
identity but they share the same spirit of authenticity, modernity, comfort and
friendly luxury.”
The main bar takes its inspiration from the rocks of the mountains
in a very cosy lounge all in wood with slate grey finishes punctuated with red.
The VIP bar is a more intimate space ideal for the end of the evening occupies
on two levels in an octagonal tower.
The main restaurant with its two buffets was inspired by Haute
Cuisine. The Spring dining room is
very colourful and decorated with branches and birds whilst he Summer room
takes its inspiration from the observatory in which guests can discover the
stars in summer. Two huge deer on the main table gives a certain magnificence
to the autumn dining room and the winter salon is very white punctuated with
black, decorated with antlers.
The specialty restaurant, the Laiterie, gives tribute to the
land, the rural communities and evokes the theme of the cheese dairy decorated
with milk pails and other dairy utensils. The baby restaurant is dedicated to the resort’s youngest
customers and is an extension of the Laiterie.
The decorative direction concept for the bedrooms within the
resort proper was to bring warmth and mountain comfort to a user-friendly and
contemporary bedroom. This would
contrast with the whiteness of the snow-covered mountains outside and also to
psychologically evoke warmth from coming in from the cold.
Wood, white velvets for the curtains, chromium-plated
lanterns resume the a fairy tale themes with paintings depicting white forests sparkling
with frost.
“For bedrooms we wanted to create a unique experience which
is to walk through the bathroom to get into the bedroom,” says Adnet. “This helped us to gain some space in
the middle of the bathroom and to make the most of space at the end to maximise
views.”
In the T5 suites, a lot of space was devoted to the different
areas with a common living room shared by parents and children to give a more
friendly, family oriented atmosphere.
The charm of the living room comes from the wall lamps made of metal,
laser cut leaves. A collection of paintings of mountain vistas, which could
belong to an art lover have been hung in the living room. The different heights
of the carpet seem to show a pattern of a geographical map of the mountain and
the colours that punctuate the room are inspired by berries found on the
mountain pastures.
The bathrooms are very generous in size and have wide openings
into the bedrooms. Finished with
wainscoting and panels covered with leather that add warm luxury with slate flooring
for additional style.
“For the lobby, high traffic areas and the corridors, we
carefully worked on the carpets and the rugs choosing modern versions of
Aubusson rugs,” says Adnet. “The red carpets are imprinted with animal foot
prints of boar, deer and birds.”
The many sculptural elements specifically designed and
manufactured for this new Club Med are the hallmark of this project.
According to the design duo, the stylised tree trunks, the
chandeliers in metalized wood - some of them over two metres in diameter, many oversized
sofas, rocking chairs ideal for reading, turned wooden huge consoles, generous
wall lamps made of winding branches which punctuate the corridors all combine
to create an atmosphere of luxury, peace and pleasure.
“We love in particular the atmosphere of the specialty
restaurant with its armchairs from the fifties, giving a modern twist to a
traditional restaurant,” says Hertrich.
“The very positive feedback we have received from our customers since
the opening shows that we have succeeded to create a new mountain village
ambitious, luxurious, warm and friendly.”
