proyectos

Maya Boutique Hotel

Valais/Wallis

A mountain hotel in Nax, in the Swiss municipality of Mont-Noble (Valais), considered the first hotel in Europe built entirely from straw bales. Opened in October 2012, the building used 55 tonnes of straw and 95 tonnes of timber; its external walls reach 90 cm in thickness, with the bales rendered in clay and lime, breathable and with very high insulating capacity. This building envelope allows for practically passive operation: the hotel barely needs heating, making use of heat recovered from the stove and the bread oven, and the straw also provides notable acoustic insulation. It has eight rooms, each dedicated to a species of wood used to handcraft its furniture, and balconies facing the Valais Alps. The project demonstrated that straw construction — an agricultural by-product that stores carbon — can support demanding hotel use in the heart of the Alpine climate, and it has become a benchmark for ecotourism and natural building in Switzerland.