Bayreuth Youth Hostel | LAVA - Laboratory for Visionary Architecture

Bayreuth / Germany / 2015

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3 Love 2,114 Visits Published

The letter ‘Y’ is the shape of a new youth hostel in Bayreuth, Germany, designed by award-winning international architects LAVA for the Bavarian Youth Hostel Association. We are in the designer age when Gen Y travellers want funky design, a special identity, access to online and community, and unique experiences, not just a clean bed and shower.


LAVA’s design is a yardstick for the sports hostel of the future through innovative spatial configurations, sustainability at environmental, and structural and social levels, and integrated sporting facilities. LAVA chose the ‘Y’ shape, because it generates a connective and beautiful central space offering expansive views and multiple openings to the sport fields and gardens.


The central atrium is a hub for offline and online entertainment, interaction and communication. Here, a skylight provides natural daylight to a central amphitheatre that connects the different levels, whilst horizontal and diagonal sightlines direct guests to different building functions. Reception, seminar rooms, bistro, kitchen, seminar rooms, sports and game facilities are spread out over two floors and connected to each other via the central atrium. It’s all about intelligent organisation, making it easy to find things, connect, socialise, creating a stage for individual and group activities.


It may be budget accommodation but this integrated concept goes beyond the hostel motto ‘experience community’ to ‘experience the unexpected’ – its not like the hostel we know!
Other key features include:
• Room walls are highly flexible with contemporary modular ‘built-in furniture’ elements accommodating washrooms and bed niches.
• Wood, concrete floors and ceilings create an industrial robustness with brightly coloured yellow infills and strong graphics.
• A whole wheelchair basketball team can stay here! It’s the prototype of a barrier-free building, with rooms, grounds and sports fields all wheelchair accessible.


The city of Bayreuth chose the Bavarian Youth Hostel Association and LAVA’s design for the new 180-bed hostel, following LAVA’s successful remodelling of their 1930s Berchtesgaden, Germany’s first designer hostel. Bayreuth caters for active and sports guests. Construction starts in early 2015.


Sustainability is environmental, as well as social and structural. The innovative structural and social organisation creates a stage for activities, separating individual from group spaces, but bringing together people in an open internal landscape.The room typology is new – LAVA designed a highly flexible modular wooden wall system with modular contemporary custom built-in furniture accommodating washrooms and bed niches. Individual rooms feature concrete floors and ceilings, niches with beds on either side, integration of furniture in the walls. Highly flexible walls between the rooms in the wings can be replaced. These separation walls are fabricated as modular ‘furniture’ elements. Environmental sustainability includes the application of local materials, highly insulated facades and the use of renewable energy.


Wood, concrete floors and ceilings create an industrial robustness with bright infills of yellow and green on ceilings and floors, black and white neutral areas and strong graphics. It is an unusual mix of concrete slabs
and wooden supports. The geometry of the wooden roof is unique as the upper beams follow the curves of the roof and the lower ones follow the straight spacing of the rooms resulting in a three-dimensional truss system visible in the central part of the building. Colour patterns on ceilings and floors make reference to sports activities or natural elements like tree canopies.


This is a prototype of a ‘barrier-free’ building, a hostel suitable for disabled sports teams – where else could a wheelchair basketball team find accommodation? All rooms are accessible by lift or ramps, ‘universal’ bathroom sinks and the grounds and sports fields are wheelchair accessible. Two thirds of the rooms on the ground floor have special bathrooms suitable for wheelchairs.


 


 

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    The letter ‘Y’ is the shape of a new youth hostel in Bayreuth, Germany, designed by award-winning international architects LAVA for the Bavarian Youth Hostel Association. We are in the designer age when Gen Y travellers want funky design, a special identity, access to online and community, and unique experiences, not just a clean bed and shower. LAVA’s design is a yardstick for the sports hostel of the future through innovative spatial...

    Project details
    • Year 2015
    • Work started in 2015
    • Work finished in 2015
    • Client Bavarian Youth Hostel Association, Bavaria (DJH Bayern)
    • Status Current works
    • Type Conference Centres / Sports Centres / Sports Facilities / Hotel/Resorts / Tourist Facilities / Restaurants / Interior Design / Lighting Design / Leisure Centres
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