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? — On the edge of the old town, a quieter part where you can catch your breath, a stone's throw from the streets full of tourists.
What kind of building does the hotel occupy? — A seventeenth-century building with a long history: 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.
We have to talk about the floors. — I noticed what are called hydraulic tiles: cement-based floor tiles, very decorative. I'd only seen them in places like Morocco, but the local architects 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? — Felicia found a watercolour that felt Mediterranean in tone: crisp blue-green, boldly graphic, with a bleeding quality and blurred edges. We wanted to take the classic hydraulic tile and mix it with Wingårdhs, which stands for the bold, and Nobis, which is more sophisticated. It took a lot of testing, but the end result exceeded our expectations. The tiles are handmade in a small factory in Campos and took two years to produce.
And the ones on the ground floor are large? — One metre by one metre, in a six-by-six repeat. 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.
"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
The architectural approach
The architectural approach has been to let all the layers of the building come to the fore and to make the new additions clear and sharp. As layers were peeled back, arches were found and 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. Classic wooden ceilings were renovated and new ones produced in the same style. Many of the building's walls, ceilings and floors held such conservation value that they could not be touched with new installations.
