Jesolo Pineta, Venice (Italy)
The residential complex Merville House in the park was designed by architect Gonçalo Byrne and landscape architect João Ferreira Nunes. 50,000 m² of beach-front pine wood are home to a 26-storey tower, three four-storey apartment blocks, a shopping centre with 10 stores and a 1,400 m² well-being centre plus two underground floors for car parking and storerooms. It is all immersed in the vegetation of a 20,000 m² private park and an equally large public one. The Portuguese architect Gonçalo Byrne designed the buildings to blend in with their natural surroundings as much as possible. The three fourstorey buildings for example are faced in Canadian cedar; the tower, meanwhile, is covered in blue and green coloured glass to merge with the sky. Landscape architect João Ferreira Nunes, another Portuguese, was responsible for landscaping the grounds. The public area features a series of raised walkways that allow people to traverse in the wood without ruining the undergrowth. Whereas the private area includes numerous facilities, such as for example enormous hydromassage pools and water features, heated and covered during the winter, a condominium gym with glass walls, changing rooms and saunas and a bar/restaurant. Merville uses three alternative energy sources: geothermics, photovoltaics and heat recovery, which provide electricity for the public areas and the lights in the grounds and power recirculation of the water in the pools. Only luxury materials have been used in these rooms. All the 132 light-filled kitchens are elegant prestigious examples of an Arclinea exclusive for Merville: six different versions of the glossy white lacquered Convivium Elegant model with grooved handle in the same finish as the doors and 2 cm thick white Quarzo worktop.