DF_DC has designed B5 Boutique Hotel, a hotel combining layers from three centuries into a contemporary hospitality exemplar in Lugano, Switzerland.

The hotel was designed by working with the historic layers, recognising its 100-year existence as such and preserving fragments from different periods as a sense of depth.

The exterior was completely re-conceived by being clad with semi-reflective green tiles, becoming both a new point of reference in the area and a memory of times past through abstract reflection.

The intervention on the building is based on a conscious and careful process of addition, subtraction and crystallisation, where layers, materials and fragments of space are activated or transformed into a new whole.

"Hotels are places of potential long continuity in time," said DF_DC. "The transformation is always based on a recognition of the historical memory, where techniques of the past are brought back to evoke a sense of longing, in opposition to the evolution of hotels as places of monotonous replica."

This project has been longlisted in the hospitality project category of Dezeen Awards 2025.

Studio: DF_DC
Project: B5 Boutique Hotel