VIVOOD Landscape Hotel

About

Most hotels ask you to notice the building. At VIVOOD, the building almost disappears. Above the Guadalest Valley, dark steel and glass suites are scattered across a pine covered hillside. From inside, there is remarkably little to distract you. The bed faces the mountains. The restaurant faces the mountains. Even the shower seems to have been positioned with the mountains in mind. The concept began as an architectural research project, which perhaps explains why the rooms feel less like hotel suites and more like carefully positioned viewing platforms. When VIVOOD opened in 2015, the goal was not to create a landmark but to blend into the landscape as gently as possible. The architecture rarely demands attention. Instead, it quietly frames everything around it. And there is plenty worth framing. This part of Alicante feels surprisingly remote. Terraced hillsides, pine forests and limestone peaks have little in common with the beach resorts most visitors associate with the Costa Blanca. Benidorm is barely an hour away, yet it might as well be another country. The temptation is to use VIVOOD as a base for exploring the region. Guadalest, one of Spain’s most dramatic villages, sits just a short drive away, its medieval fortress balanced improbably on a rocky outcrop above a turquoise reservoir. Yet the hotel has a curious effect on people. Plans tend to slip. A coffee on the terrace becomes lunch. Lunch quietly becomes an afternoon spent watching shadows move across the mountains. Suddenly it is time for dinner and Guadalest can wait another day. What VIVOOD does exceptionally well is create continuity. From the moment you arrive until the moment you leave, room, architecture and landscape all point in the same direction.