Completion year: 2024 Gross built area: 500 m2 Project location: Mendoza, Argentina Program / Use: Boutique Hotel - Hospitality - Photo credits: Luis Abba

Located within Mendoza’s wine-growing landscape, the Zuccardi Winery Boutique Hotel is conceived as a low-rise architectural intervention that seeks to integrate with the territory rather than impose itself upon it. The project unfolds through a sequence of restrained volumes and intermediate courtyards that shape a slow spatial experience, closely connected to the vineyards, native vegetation, and views of the Andes mountain range. The layout organizes the program into two clearly differentiated areas: a private wing dedicated to the guest rooms and a social core that brings together the restaurant, dining area, and lounge spaces. Between them, linear circulation paths and courtyards operate as transitional devices, articulating a sequence in which architecture alternates between compression and openness, shade and light, interior and exterior. Materiality is one of the project’s defining features. Stone-like walls—with exposed aggregates that recall Mendoza’s alluvial soil—provide thermal mass and establish a strong connection to the site, while exposed concrete slabs, dark-framed glazing, and timber cladding introduce a restrained yet warm atmosphere. The material palette avoids superfluous gestures and instead privileges honest textures capable of engaging with the mineral harshness of the surrounding landscape. Openings are carefully calibrated to control solar exposure and frame specific views. Toward the exterior, narrow vertical openings and more enclosed façades reinforce a sense of shelter; toward the courtyards and vineyards, large glazed surfaces dissolve the boundary between architecture and landscape. Natural light, filtered and precise, shapes the interiors and enhances the contemplative quality of the spaces. Rather than functioning as an isolated object, the hotel is understood as an infrastructure of hospitality deeply rooted in its setting. Mora Hughes Arquitectos thus proposes an experience in which landscape, material, and time converge, creating a place for pause and contemplation at the heart of Zuccardi’s productive universe.