The Miramonti Hinterhof originates from a demanding landscape condition: a narrow, shaded rear area compressed against a steep rock face. As the hotel faced limited open spaces in its surroundings, client and designers engaged with this overlooked plot, exploring and embracing its potential. What was once perceived as marginal and harsh is reimagined as a generative ground, transforming constraint into a system of spatial and environmental value.

The project is conceived as a unified landscape strategy integrating a Yoga House, a Private Sky House, a Sauna, an Onsen Pool, and a sequence of terraces and relaxing platforms. Rather than introducing isolated buildings, it creates a continuous topography where architecture and landform are fully integrated. The rock becomes the guiding spirit of form, its verticality, mass, and irregular geometry giving the project character and soul, shaping levels, defining alignments, and structuring the overall composition. Gravity is not resisted but employed, reinforcing the spatial tension of the slope.

The Onsen Pool participates in this landscape logic as an extension of the terrain. Facing the rock face, it feels naturally part of the site, offering open views of the distant panorama and the calming presence of the nearby forest. The pool is crafted from the same porphyry as the surrounding rock, reinforcing its connection to the mountain. Water operates as a landscape element, amplifying the presence of the stone in which it reflects and creating a harmonious relationship between natural and built layers. Crafted by local artisans using materials from the surrounding area, the pool blends the contemplative ritual of Japanese bathing with alpine recreation, combining the solidity of stone with the gentle lightness of warm water and the ephemeral presence of its rising steam.

Just like it had fallen from the sky, the Yoga House is a shelter for selfness experience, fitness workout, and personal practice, perched on the rock face behind the Miramonti Boutique Hotel. Slender footbridges lead across the slope, and even before entering, visitors feel they have arrived somewhere special—among the stones, embraced by the rock. Carefully placed openings frame the surrounding forest and sky, drawing attention to the landscape and letting everything else fade away.

The intervention redefines the rear area of the hotel as a central landscape condition rather than a residual service space. Its enclosure, steepness, and limited exposure are preserved and leveraged to generate depth and identity. The project works within the inherent morphology of the site, intensifying its qualities through precise insertions rather than manipulating the site extensively.

Circulation is fundamental to this approach. A system of terraces, bridges, and platforms unfolds across the slope, establishing a calibrated sequence of movements and pauses. Paths trace the existing gradients, allowing visitors to experience the evolving relationships between stone, vegetation, and architecture. Movement becomes a tool for revealing the site, structuring a progressive and layered reading of the landscape.

Vegetation integration softens the boundary between rock and forest, weaving greenery through the intervention. This creates a continuous ecological field where natural and built components coexist, reinforcing the perception of the project as part of an evolving landscape rather than a fixed object.

Views are carefully composed. Openings, alignments, and platforms frame selective portions of the Alpine context, avoiding panoramic generalization to allow controlled and sequential perception. Each view contributes to the choreography along the path sequence, creating a dynamic and site-specific experience.

The overall approach is defined by restraint. Targeted interventions minimize impact while enhancing the intrinsic qualities of the site. The project does not impose a new order but reveals and amplifies existing conditions, transforming a previously overlooked area into a coherent landscape of wellness, movement, and environmental continuity.

tara team:
Heike Pohl
Andreas Zanier
Maria Giada Ferrari
Carlo Giannarelli

Photographer: Tiberio Sorvillo/ Markus Ruf/Samuel Holzner
Location (City, country): Hafling, Italy
Site area: 4775 m²

46.6499472993315, 11.209077906581998