Hotel Concepció
Hotel Concepció is a Nobis hotel inside a seventeenth-century building on the edge of Palma de Mallorca's old town. The structure has served as a soap factory, an olive oil factory and a private residence; its cross-vaulted ground floor remains as the project's inherited centrepiece. The new interior is grounded in Mallorcan craft through custom hydraulic tiles — cement-based, hand-made over two years in a small factory in Campos — scaled to one-metre formats in a six-by-six repeat developed from a watercolour. A generously sized lobby, atypical for Palma hotels, is arranged as a domestic living room with new and classic furniture chosen to outlast the trends.
Tile by tile
Helena Toresson and Felicia Warberg, 15 November 2022
For someone who doesn’t know Palma, where is Concepció?
— HT: On the edge of the old town. A quieter part, where you can catch your breath. But it’s only a stone’s throw from the streets full of tourists and movement.
What kind of building does the hotel occupy?
— HT: It’s a seventeenth-century building with a long history. It’s been a soap factory, an olive oil factory, a residence. The first time I visited I was struck by the magnificent cross vaults that run across the entire ground floor. So even though the place was practically Palma’s biggest pigeon loft, you could see what was there.
We have to talk about the floors…
— HT: That goes back to that first visit. I noticed what are called hydraulic tiles — cement-based floor tiles, very decorative, with all sorts of patterns. I’d only seen them in places like Morocco. But the local architects we were working with told me they’re made on Mallorca too. That gave me the idea of using them in a new way.
How did you arrive at this striking pattern?
— HT: Felicia found a watercolour that felt Mediterranean in tone — crisp blue-green, and boldly graphic.
What was it that caught you?
— FW: That it was confident and daring, but also had something tactile about it. There was a bleeding quality, blurred edges. Slightly poetic. That became our reference image.
Then it was a question of translating the inspiration onto tile…
— FW: Hydraulic tiles are usually quite definite in colour and pattern. We wanted something else. We wanted to take the classic and mix it with Wingårdhs, which stands for the bold, and Nobis, which is something more sophisticated. It took a lot of testing. The first attempts didn’t work at all, but the end result exceeded our expectations.
— HT: The tiles are handmade in a small factory in Campos, and they took two years to produce.
— FW: They make the whole project.
"It was confident and daring, but also had something tactile about it. There was a bleeding quality, blurred edges. Slightly poetic."
— Felicia Warberg, on the inspiration for the tiles
And the ones on the ground floor are large?
— HT: They’re one metre by one metre. The repeat is six by six tiles. So yes — it’s enormous.
— FW: The aim was that no one should read it as a repeating pattern. It should feel like an artwork that simply ended up that way.
Apart from the floors, what makes the hotel stand out in Palma?
— HT: The generous lobby. I don’t know why, but you don’t really see that in hotels there.
But the space was already there, and something had to be done with it?
— HT: Exactly, and that’s where the idea of a living-room-like lobby came in. It’s a little more layered in its expression than the more pared-back rooms. We chose furniture that ties the room together and stands up over time — whether the pieces are new or older classics.
That idea of standing up over time — Wingårdhs has worked with it across several Nobis projects?
— HT: From the very first project, Miss Clara, Nobis’s owner Sandro Catenacci said he wanted an interior that would last, both physically and stylistically, for twenty-five years. We’ve tried to achieve that in every project since, including Concepció.
The architectural approach
The architectural approach has been to let all the layers of the building come to the fore and to make new additions clear and distinct. An ambition that was developed together with the architects Jordi Herrero, JHA Architecture Studio, and Eduardo Garcia Ancara, EGA Arquitectura.
This approach, which was eventually approved by careful authorities, consisted of two attitudes. On one hand, to keep building materials and shapes, and on the other, to try to show the building's different layers and styles by removing layers of plaster and paint and presenting them as honestly as possible.
Archaeologists and conservators have followed and analyzed the building's different layers of time, all of which are considered equally important.
As peeling of layers, arches were found, and they were filled with new modern glazing and bay windows. Floor tiles and stone pavings were lifted so that installations could be added underneath.
All original stone and tiles were put back again. Classic wooden ceilings have been renovated and new were produced in the same style.
Many of the building's walls, ceilings and floors had conservation value. Some were so old and considered so valuable, that they could not be touched with new installations.
