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L’uso dei materiali e il catalogo per Angelo Mangiarotti: la forma non si impone ma si ottiene per incastri, gravità e resistenza. Il libro Framing the Project (Corraini) ne ripercorre il gesto
ISSUE NO. 31
One day our homes will produce energy independently. Apartment buildings will be equipped with differential dissipators and pyrolysis systems. Before condominiums, we will see innovations in hotels.
The hospitality sector plays a vanguard role in the fight against waste, consumerism, and everyday pollution – promoting new habits, sustainable thinking, and shared responsibility. Luxury hotels are not the only focus – tourism, especially in Italy, is a positive sector for the economy when well managed. What is the best hotel in Italy for sustainability? Preferences are personal, but beyond opinions, there are rational criteria that can determine the best.
There are guesthouses in Noto with a level of luxury unimaginable in Paris. The best hotel in Italy is not the most expensive. It’s not the one designed by a star architect or hosting celebrity parties. The best hotel in Italy probably doesn’t need marketing – in fact, marketing could be a negative compared to the virtue of being the best. It could be in a city, in the mountains, or by the sea.
For the digital edition of Lampoon, in the only section we can call Life Style, titled Lampoon Library, we continue to review hotels in Italy and around the world. The list is not exhaustive; it is a partial selection based on professional evaluations. We strive to provide an objective review of the hotels we visit, analyzing their daily sustainable practices. Sustainability is not a boring word; it means respect and rigor.
The primary focus is on the choice of raw materials: fabrics, sheets, towels, sofa coverings; the absence or limitation of plastic; energy and water management; kitchen ingredients. For Lampoon, responsibility in these – and other – practices is the only definition of luxury today. Before luxury, a magazine like Lampoon wants to present the hospitality sector as a potential model of better ethical entrepreneurship.
Six Senses has opened in Rome – I met a manager of this property in Singapore five years ago: the first thing he told me was how the herbs and fruits used for cocktails were collected and macerated to produce natural detergent for some cleaning operations in the kitchen.
At the Grand Hotel Tremezzo, you sleep on sheets woven with a thread made from wood fiber. The effect is similar to silk – and they can be purchased through the hotel’s shop. The sheets are produced by the company Beltrami. A closer analysis by experts shows that a thread made from wood fiber is actually viscose. Today, viscose can be produced from waste materials – crustacean shells, orange peels – whereas initially, viscose was made from tree cellulose.
The term viscose originates as an adjective – a viscous material, between solid and liquid, consistent, capable of being pressed and extruded through tiny holes. The viscous material produces extruded threads. The threads resemble silk but, due to the binder holding the substrate together, they are a synthetic compound. Viscose is a synthetic thread mixed with organic material. Sheets woven with synthetic thread may be pleasant on the first night but do not allow the human body to breathe and require constant washing to avoid a stale odor. Frequent washing of synthetic sheets leads to abrasion of the fabric itself, releasing and dispersing synthetic microparticles – microplastics. Where there are microplastics, there will never be anything sustainable.
One of the major problems in hotel management is the recruitment and retention of staff. This is a cross-industry issue but is more complex for the hospitality sector for two reasons. The first is seasonality. Around Lake Como, all activities seem to close from November to March. Both the microclimate of the lake and the cultural offerings of the area could support year-round operation more than one might think for a seaside location. Villa d’Este attempted this during the Christmas season of 2023. For an employee, a seasonal job is logically less appealing than a year-round job.
The second issue is the location of many hotels – in rural areas and the countryside, away from big cities, where many people want to live and have a social life. The focal point of this text: the hotel is a catalyst for the short supply chain. An accelerator of ethical, local, sustainable entrepreneurship, and the construction of an economic and social district. A hotel, particularly one targeting high-spending guests, must invest in the territory where it operates.
What is the best hotel in Italy today, or at least for 2024? Before naming it, let’s agree it meets some of the points mentioned above and those to follow. The hotel heritage is a national asset we must feel responsible for and involved in: like when you care about a guest coming to your home and remember the bourgeois education taught by your mother. Everyone wants to vacation in Italy, and we Italians also enjoy vacationing in Italy: we are nationalists about few things, but among these few are vacations and wine.
A few detailed examples defining every good Italian hotel. Floors without carpet: it was unhygienic before the pandemic, and now it gives a general sense of unhappiness. No carpet, anywhere. It doesn’t matter if it dampens hallway noise – the microbes it retains are more annoying.
Building materials must be local, a definition of sustainability. If marble is chosen, it must be ennobled marble. A local stone, from the nearby mountain, may have a color gradation more coherent with the light from the window. Cement should be a mixture of clay, excavated from the foundations, mixed with sand from the ground. An example of this procedure was given by Matteo Thun years ago in the construction of the Vigilius in Lana, near Merano. Another example is Tenuta dell’Argentaia in Magliano in Toscana.
Build with Italian wood, preferably solid, purchased during forest management. Trees do not have eternal life – if they remain in nature, they die and return the carbon absorbed during their existence to the atmosphere. There is confusion between the concept of CO2 sequestration and CO2 storage – building with wood, locking it in artifacts or semi-permanent buildings, is a positive and sustainable activity. In this context, using hemp wood in lime formation is the latest foundation of what is called green building: a hotel today, especially if recently built or restored, should be an exemplary case of green building – both for its economic advantage and as a better marketing and advertising story. Again and again: it’s about ethical entrepreneurship.
Fabrics must be natural – linen, cotton, wool – especially hemp. Hemp is the only fiber that can be defined as sustainable for the textile industry. Hotels should choose hemp fabrics as a priority. Fire-retardant requirements can be met with treatments. A room with curtains, coverings, and furniture made from natural, non-synthetic fabrics presents a fresh scent – compared to the enclosed smell in rooms with brightly colored polyester fabrics. Hemp fabric is thermoregulatory and potentially antibacterial.
Colors must be natural – which does not mean white. Optical white is not a natural color – even cotton does not appear in a solid white fabric. To achieve white, chemical oxygenation processes are needed. Natural color is the fiber’s color, always streaked, never homogeneous, leaning towards sand, ochre, straw – the color of wood. A natural-colored fabric is more suitable for constant washing, reducing polluting and synthetic residues.
No plastic. Almost nothing should be plastic. Plastic must be eliminated – never chosen: whether it’s an outdoor chair, a beach lounger, or the packaging for laundry service. No plastic. A hotel today designs and implements its operations to minimize plastic use.
A test case is the bathroom. The waste bin under the sink should not have a plastic bag. It should be metal and disinfected daily. In a hotel where the nightly rate exceeds a thousand euros, bathrooms must have a window. The management of soaps must be transparent: it’s unthinkable to waste a nearly intact bar of soap for a single day’s use. The soap can be collected, melted in a double boiler, disinfected at high temperatures, and reformed. A hotel should be able and knowledgeable in waste management. Liquid soaps can be offered in refillable containers, but there must be a mechanism for staff-only access to the bottles.
Toilet paper should not be too close to the toilet – male urination can cause splashback on the ceramic. Like soap, toilet paper rolls should be regenerable. In a world plagued by constipation, a stool to raise the knees should be available near the toilet, with usage instructions. This can also be a good marketing practice and customer loyalty: no one will be more grateful than someone who learned how to relieve themselves better in the morning.
Any flaw in the cleanliness of a hotel should be reported: out of respect for the money we are spending but also to alert the establishment to an objective problem. Your complaint can be constructive: can we turn a reprimand into a courtesy?
What is the best hotel in Italy today? Oranges are squeezed on the spot, not an hour before; the fruit must be seasonal and local. A hotel should have its own garden, Certainly, if surrounded by a rural environment, it could have it on the roof of an urban building – considering that urban structures are active in large-scale construction. You can find many avocados in Mexico, Spain – perhaps in Sicily. Not in the mountains. Neither can salmon be abundant. Chocolate will be mixed with Italian hazelnuts – with little sugar. Few fats. Italian cakes with little butter, focaccias without lard but with olive oil – there is no need for a survey to remember how much everyone enjoys breakfast with freshly baked focaccia. Even better is the farinata; chickpea flour has a good protein balance compared to carbohydrates, a low glycemic index.
A hotel can teach some practices to improve life at home. Not only for sustainability – but simply for a good life. A grateful, fascinated, and educated guest will want to return to where they have been taught so much about better days. A gourmet restaurant should not replace a traditional, simple, and homely kitchen: most people who arrive at a hotel, if they don’t feel at home, return to their own.
In a room, there should be a table where you can work on the computer. We live at the mercy of connectivity: to break away from it, we must tame it. The evening service – the turndown service that is mandatory in five-star establishments – should not arrive before eight o’clock unless there is certainty that the guest has gone out for the evening. The minibar can be updated – not with supermarket products, but even these chosen with care for the short supply chain. CBD oil and condoms can be complimentary. Overlooking the light well is inconceivable in a hotel where the base room costs 500 euros, not even in Venice – where it can happen at the Gritti.
If it’s a luxury hotel, a room must have an external space: if not a terrace, a balcony; if not a balcony, a floor-level window. At the windows, for the summer scents, there must be mosquito nets. If it’s true that Americans are the main clients of Italian hotels; if it’s true that Americans prefer air conditioning even to oxygen – it’s true that Americans come to Italy to find the scent of our flowers. The moonlight and the wind filtering through the slats of the shutters. These experiences are what give glory to memory – Proust taught us that in Dueville. Let’s trust ourselves: the summer sea air at night can compete with a chilly breeze.
Someone may say that these guidelines are debatable – certainly they are. To rebut them, it’s mostly those hoteliers who see the effort in such details. The complaining hotelier, between annoyance and inertia, will be the same one who allocates budget for inviting influencers, convinced of conversions and overlooking reputation – rather than getting bored with sustainability “which is just a trend, fills the mouth but actually doesn’t interest anyone.”
Beware when you see too much communication and advertising: if a hotel needs it, it’s not a good sign. There are hotels that have ruined their perception because of digital communication without criteria. For a significant hotel, the only effective advertising is seriousness and word of mouth – the only story to spread is attention to waste and energy efficiency. Recently, a trade fair in Milan, DUCO, has just ended. The founder, Carolina Perez, chooses the Social Media account name “The Hotel Queen” – perhaps falling into pride, offering hotel tips without being able to understand the rationale behind the selections (as an aside, some ironic videos about basic commonplaces).
To find the best hotel in Italy, you have to go to Trentino-Alto Adige. In this area, both due to the special status of the region and to ingenuity in tourist entrepreneurship, all hotels have superior quality (evaluated on the codes expressed in this text). The Vigilius has already been mentioned. The Miramonti above Merano is another example. To find the best, you have to get to Bressanone and from there go up to the source of the Plose water.
The best hotel in Italy for sustainability and good living is Il Forestis in the Dolomites. An ancient healing refuge has been the subject of an architectural intervention desired by a young husband and wife, capable of choosing: Teresa Unterthiner and Steph Hinteregger. Three towers have been built in wood with air gaps for temperature control – they stand on the panorama, they are invasive but they are a symbol of something that works. The structure is powered by pellets, local wood. The rooms are in wood: ceiling, walls, and floor. The water flowing from the taps is the one that in a London restaurant can cost 20 pounds per bottle. Tyrolean apples are fresh and dried – a guarantee, they help the intestines. For dinner, the menu is provided by the chef – as if we were in an old Italian guesthouse in the Fifties – but with the necessary adjustments: different recipes every evening without having to worry about choosing from the menu. Supplier research is local, rigorously. There are some flaws – but let’s leave the praise for now. What matters is the journey, the intention – results are achieved together.
ISSUE NO. 31
Lampoon is a cultural magazine.
Culture today means sustainability – in its honest meaning.
Culture has always been about human respect, tolerance. It’s not only about accepting human diversity but it’s about searching for the beauty of every human peculiarity.
Inclusion is the first value that defines art. Culture today means one thing only: to be part of a community, to think as a community.
Reading Lampoon, you see that these themes are smoothly aligned. A good part of the articles’ content discusses practices to restore our environment and stories about understanding the others.
Reading Lampoon, you find a dialogue between science and creativity. From sharp and edgy photo sessions to fashion, architecture, technology – the commitment is dedicated to a future that is all about us – together.
LAMPOONMAGAZINE.COM is an independent online magazine, properly listed at the Milan Court Register of Press, number 407 / 19 December 2014
The magazine is released by LAMPOON PUBLISHING HOUSE S.r.L.
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