Aire de Bardenas is the ultimate cube hotel.

Zone out – taking in fields of gently rippling wheat or a moonscape of pebbles – among an endless horizon outside of a cozy cube. Welcome to Aire de Bardenas in the Spanish province of Navarre.

Navarre isn’t famous for much save wind farms, the San Fermin Festival and its Pamplona bull run, and…asparagus. Visitors are surprised to find such an avant-garde, award-winning gem here. (Aire de Bardenas has received 22 design and architecture awards.)

This is minimalism taken to its leanest extreme, with razor-edged cubes to match the unforgiving landscape of semi-desert and rocky peaks. If you like colorful decorations and soft curves, book elsewhere; low-slung, angular white concrete dominates.

The 22 guestrooms and suites have either patios, some with fruit trees and outdoor bath tubs, or views to the fields. Decor is characteristically simple: pale wooden beds, black or white square baths (round ones outside), white bed linen and those big, beautiful windows.

The monochrome restaurant, naturally, boasts its own organic vegetable garden. Regimented rows of asparagus, artichokes and more are visible from the dining room. Also featured: upcycled chic. Old wooden packing crates are used as fences/wind-breaks around the hotel, including by the swimming pool.

Rates from $252, including tax, breakfast and a little slice of heaven for vegetarians.

Images: Aire de Bardenas, Splendia, Escapio

Places & Spaces is a travel guide that will inspire you to carve out a vacation on your calendar. All of the gorgeous locations and accommodations in our guide share our concern for the environment. From tent glamping to lavish built environments, fair warning, you’ll feel compelled to pack your suitcase.

The post Places & Spaces: Aire de Bardenas, Spain appeared first on EcoSalon.

Stayed home on Black Friday? Good. Here are some gifts you can buy for the comfort of your own home.

Our favorite eco-retailer, VivaTerra, is having a fantastic holiday sale, just in time for dressing your house up in seasonal, original  fun. These five gems are all 50% off, so you’re within your rights to buy two – one as a gift and, ahem (whisper), one for yourself.

With bijou desserts still all the rage, this branch pedestal server ($87) will display your mini-puds to dramatic effect. Designed as a little tree, it has two levels  – one large and one small – with a butterfly delicately perched on the edge of the upper tray. Besides, we’ve been lusting after it for a while.

Finding a unique holder for those table essentials is always a challenge, which is why we love this chirpy bird salt and pepper set ($12). Their shape is smooth and tactile, with a tiny beak and graceful body – they dispense through a discreet opening on their heads. We like their subtle color distinction.

We’re always on the lookout for new ways to present cheese. This ingenious puzzle board ($29) will make your fromage serving both fun and fabulous.

Having limited kitchen space myself, an all-in-one tower which performs no less than five functions is a winner. This minimalist white ceramic tea tower ($27) features storage and presentation for your teapot, tea cup, saucer, sugar and cream.

These glass numbers are designed to echo familiar shapes: the carton ($12) for your cream and the sack ($14) for your sugar. The Milk carton creamer and sugar sack: perfect for the surrealist tea party.

Images: Andrew Warchy; VivaTerra

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The Orchard Garden Hotel in San Francisco is a wallet-friendly city-center green retreat.

When you’re travelling on business, how green are the places where you choose to stay? The Orchard Garden Hotel is slap-bang in the heart of Frisco, near Union Square, so you’ve got no excuse for not taking public transport to get there. They’ve even got bike stalls.

What the hotel lacks in interior-design zing, it more than makes up for with its eco-credentials. Made from recycled materials – glass and steel – it was one of the US’s first LEED-certified hotels. Its interior decór doesn’t have us singing, but the green agenda seals the deal: paper and carpets are made from recycled materials, the inks are soy-based, the paint is non-toxic and the cleaning products are citrus-based and chemical free.

The 86 guest rooms, spread over 10 floors, are decorated in the natural tones, and furniture is made from FSC-approved wood, with organic Aveda bath goodies for pampering (being good has its rewards). As in many hotels these days, you get a large-screen HD TV, DVD player, iPod dock and WIFI.

Now, listen up: when you leave your hotel room, do you remember to turn off all these electronic toys? Really? Honestly? (I don’t.) Doesn’t matter – your eco-conscience is safe, as this hotel has the genius keycard system, as used in Europe. When you enter your room, the (recycled plastic) card goes in the slot, all the lights come on and everything is ready to go. When you leave, you take it out, and – hey presto – all systems go off (bar one outlet for charging a device). All this saves a whopping 20% in energy costs. And potential second-guessing.

Staying downtown in a city, even if you’re here for work, it’s a crime to miss the view: suites have their own terraces, as well as a sofabed for tagalong buddies. If your budget doesn’t stretch to that – prices for interior rooms are impressively reasonable – you can always check out the skyline from the roof terrace.

Rates start at $125/night plus tax, city buzz and bike parking included, car parking definitely not.

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The Scarlet is a super-chic eco-retreat on the south coast of England.

England isn’t known for its good weather, so its beaches can get overlooked by overseas visitors. The south-western county of Cornwall (as in Camilla, Duchess of), however, enjoys a micro-climate, meaning it’s (mostly) mild and sunny thanks to the Gulf Stream that flows past its shores.

The Cornish Coast is also hugely fashionable with Brits, and their chosen escape is The Scarlet. This luxury eco-hotel with spa is located on an isolated clifftop overlo0king the sea; children aren’t allowed, ensuring a peaceful, grown-up ambiance. Owned by three sisters, who conceived and designed it as “the place we would most like to be and want to share,” the hotel is hard to fault on either eco or design grounds.

The Scarlet has a solar-heated indoor pool, natural outdoor pool (supplied by rainwater, using a reed bed filtration system); an air-tight timber-framed building, reducing heat loss; a green roof planted with sea thrift (a native plant) to aid insulation; a biomass boiler using wood chips; natural ventilation; grey and rainwater harvesting; and even an electric car-charging point.

The decor is a perfect expression of funky chic – no cold, minimalist tones here; colorful prints complement rich colors, with wood floors and soft, curvy shapes (round tables and seats) adding to the warm feel; all 37 guest rooms, which come in five sizes, have sea views with outside space – balcony, terrace or garden access, complete with design-statement moulded plastic chairs.

Spa treatments use ayurvedic, organic seaweed and house-brand (ingredients: local clay, salt and herb) products. The relaxing atmosphere encourages you to hang out – literally, in pods suspended from the ceiling; there is also a couple’s suite, with double bath – say no more.

We like: the bright red log-fired outdoor hot tubs overlooking the sea; the mud bath, where you get messy slathering yourself and partner in mineral-rich Moroccan rhassoul, for that extra frisson; and the free meditation classes, a new addition to the yoga and pilates already offered.

If you can bear to drag yourself away, nearby activities include tree-climbing (discover your inner child), surfing (inner dude), wild swimming (inner adventurer/naturist) and basket-weaving (inner crafter).

Rates start at $260 including tax, breakfast, inner calm and (with luck) fine weather.

Places & Spaces is a travel guide that will inspire you to carve out a vacation on your calendar. All of the gorgeous locations and accommodations in our guide share our concern for the environment. From tent glamping to lavish built environments, fair warning, you’ll feel compelled to pack your suitcase.

The post Places & Spaces: The Scarlet, Cornwall, UK appeared first on EcoSalon.

Rosalie Bay Resort on the Caribbean island of Dominica is a colonial-style paradise with an eco-conscience.

When you’ve been to the Caribbean, you’ve probably stayed on one of the bigger, more famous islands: Antigua, Martinique or Barbados. Tiny Dominica is just 18 miles wide and 29 miles long, so it may have been off your radar, especially since its hotels aren’t much to shout about being neither super-stylish nor particularly green. Until now.

Rosalie Bay Resort, which opened just one year ago, sits on the Atlantic coast, in a secluded spot on the southeast of the island, with a perfect sunrise view over the sea. Although the rocky, black sand beach is too rough for swimming, the staff are delighted to drive you to other locales more suited to frolicking in the surf.

Or you can just lounge by the pool drinking cocktails from the bar. Well, you are on holiday in the Caribbean, after all.

Accommodation is in 28 rooms and suites, housed in picturesque wooden cottages with verandas some with swings, looking onto the beach, the Rosalie river, a garden or hills behind. Decor is classic colonial, without being stuffy: locally-built, four poster beds and comfortable armchairs, plus exotic flowers and plants; the grounds are rich with fragrant tropical flora including frangipani, ginger lily and hibiscus. Some rooms have vaulted ceilings and old-fashioned fans.

In the spa, which is elevated above the surf, you can enjoy treatments such as massages using local organic products. The new wellness program promises lots of innovative health-focused activities.

Rosalie Bay is self-sustaining in terms of energy with a wind turbine (the island’s first) and solar panels, as well as a water filtration system. The local environment in the 22-acre estate is carefully protected – the resort has its own turtle monitoring program, which guests can help with. Many locals are employed as staff, some after working on the construction of the property, an eight-year labor of love by the owners, Bev and Oscar.

The restaurant offers highly-rated, original dishes, featuring organic fruit and vegetables grown in the resort’s own kitchen garden with a Caribbean twist: conch ravioli, guava-glazed pork ribs and duck with coconut rice are a few specialties on the menu.

Rates start at $125/night plus tax, including cocktails without umbrellas and baby turtle-minding.

Places & Spaces is a travel guide that will inspire you to carve out a vacation on your calendar. All of the gorgeous locations and accommodations in our guide share our concern for the environment. From tent glamping to lavish built environments, fair warning, you’ll feel compelled to pack your suitcase.

The post Places & Spaces: Rosalie Bay Resort appeared first on EcoSalon.

A premier example of eco-chic, Bardessono is one of only two U.S. hotels that are LEED Platinum certified.

Imagine going away on vacation without leaving the faintest trace? This is not a plot point for an episode of CSI, in which, should the aforementioned happen would make for the most unpleasant vacation ever. We’re talking footprint, your carbon one, while still relaxing, getting pampered, and using no fossil fuels.

Bardessono, in California’s Napa Valley, will make you feel wonderfully smug about your time away but this sense of environmental satisfaction comes at a formidable price.

Built from recycled materials, almost completely self-sustaining in terms of energy, and using only local food, the hotel is hard to fault on environmental grounds. Unsurprising, then, that it won LEED’s highest certification, awarded to only three hotels in the world.

Its list of building materials reads like a lesson in green construction practices: salvaged wood, including redwood wine casks, was used for doors, desks and tables, while stone reclaimed from an old wine store at the owner’s family home was reused on the exterior walls. Even the concrete and stainless steel have a high recycled content. The overall feel is modern and unfussy, yet warm.

Air temperature control comes from a geothermal pump, which also provides naturally-heated water – cooling is by automatically-lowered exterior blinds first, to keep the sun out (unusually rare in hotels, but so simple and effective), and by room thermostat second. Most of the hotel’s electricity is provided by nearly 1000 solar panels on the roof.

The best suites have bathrooms with their own treatment beds, for your in-room spa, and outdoor stone tubs; all of the 62 luxe-sized guest rooms have private patios or balconies (as they should, at this price). Take a dip in the rooftop pool, with views to tree-covered hills. As you’d expect, food and wine are both largely organic, with some grown on-site.

Apart from the knowledge that you’re treading so lightly on the planet, we like the free wine tastings and free yoga classes (I wonder if the two are connected, by any chance? Purge your Pinot with some hard-core sun salutations). Even better, go on a bike tour of nearby wineries and enjoy Napa Valley’s finest vintages, pedaling off the dizzying grapes between stops.

Rates start at $399/night plus tax. Clean conscience and shiny eco-halo included.

Places & Spaces is a travel guide that will inspire you to carve out a vacation on your calendar. All of the gorgeous locations and accommodations in our guide share our concern for the environment. From tent glamping to lavish built environments, fair warning, you’ll feel compelled to pack your suitcase.

The post Places & Spaces: Bardessono, Yountville, California appeared first on EcoSalon.

Magic Mountain Lodge is a storybook hotel in a unique Patagonian forest habitat.

Did you look for elves at the end of the rainbow when you were a child? Well, this is the place where they lived. Located in Huilo Huilo Biological Reserve, southern Chile (which is a UNESCO-recognized biosphere), Magic Mountain Lodge takes you back to your favorite childhood tales. This amazing hotel, with its lush, vegetation-covered facade and a waterfall at the top, which sends a constant stream down the rounded, green exterior, is as magical as they come.

The haphazard arrangement of the poetic arched windows just adds to its fantastical air, as does the rope bridge (those without a head for heights can enter at ground level, for half the fun).

Inside, as you’d expect, all is warm and natural: rustic wood furniture, rough-hewn beams – the hotel was built by traditional artisans who used locally-sourced materials and was voted “Most Sustainable Tourism Destination in Chile.” The 13 guest rooms are simple and cozy rather than overdone.

Must-Try Corporal Indulgences:

We like the outdoor hot tubs made out of huge tree trunks, perched on a deck overlooking the forest, best enjoyed while sipping a glass of Chilean red.

If you prefer indoor soaks, the spa has some unusual hydrotherapy baths: try milk and honey, or St John’s Wort and papaya.

More active guests are spoiled when it comes to choice: hike through the forest, climb a volcano, trek over a glacier, hang off a zip-line, go horseback-riding, hop on a mountain bike, or strap on your snow-shoes; there’s even a snow park for skiers and snowboarders.

Rooms start at $262/night plus tax, wood-sprites and fairies included.

Places & Spaces is a travel guide that will inspire you to carve out a vacation on your calendar. All of the gorgeous locations and accommodations in our guide share our concern for the environment. From tent glamping to lavish built environments, fair warning, you’ll feel compelled to pack your suitcase.

The post Places & Spaces: Magic Mountain Lodge appeared first on EcoSalon.

The Banjaran Hotsprings Resort in Malaysia is a haven of calm and tranquility.

Much of the energy we consume is for producing heat, so a hotel that makes use of naturally piping hot water gets our vote.

At the Banjaram Hotsprings Retreat in Malaysia, geothermally-heated mineral-rich water is used for Jacuzzis, pools, a steam room and a natural sauna. Located in an ancient, lush green valley near the colonial city of Ipoh, the hotel feels so removed from the modern world, you expect dinosaurs to pop out from behind the tree-carpeted mountains that surround it.

The five-star super-luxe spa hotel is built around a lake, with just 26 villas either within their own garden (bigger and more private), or on stilts in the lake, with a balcony overlooking the water (nicer view). Each villa has its geothermal pool, outdoor shower, Bose sound system and large flat-screen TV. We love the locally-made plant-based skincare, stored in refillable ceramic jars.

You’ve probably tried ayurvedic and naturopathic treatments, but have you ever meditated in a limestone cave (no bats, promise)? Here, you can find your inner zen surrounded by other-worldly rock formations; further caves feature crystals, a thermal pool, and even a restaurant offering organic wines.

If you’re being virtuous, the spa restaurant has healthy dishes using home-grown organic fruit and veg from the hotel’s own garden. Look out for local superfruit, the pomelo, which looks like a large green grapefruit. Packed with vitamins and nutrients, as well as cancer-preventing limonoids, its sweet-sour flesh is used in juices and salads.

Outside the grounds you can take a jungle trek; if you can bear to tear yourself away from this idyllic retreat, you can visit a nearby herbal garden. Tama Herba grows medicinal plants used for nutrition and aromatherapy – a fragrant and fascinating walk.

Villas from $482 a night plus tax, including all the eco-friendly, naturally heated water you could possibly need.

Places & Spaces is a travel guide that will inspire you to carve out a vacation on your calendar. All of the gorgeous locations and accommodations in our guide share our concern for the environment. From tent glamping to lavish built environments, fair warning, you’ll feel compelled to pack your suitcase.

The post Places & Spaces: The Banjaran Hot Springs Retreat appeared first on EcoSalon.

Sustainable energy, check; low emissions, check; hundreds of rows of parked cars, huh?

If you haven’t already heard of Abengoa, which is based in Seville, southern Spain, you soon will: it’s coming to the U.S. in a big way. The multinational tech company is currently building two major solar thermal power stations, both due for completion in 2013. One of these, Solana in Arizona, will be the largest of its kind in the world with a stratospheric budget of $2 billion. With an output of 280MW, it will be able to power 70,000 homes. It will also give a massive jolt to the local economy, and spur some new office space.

As you know, we love poking our heads into OPC (Other People’s Cubicles). What we’ve discovered is that high-tech companies these days tend to lead the way in offering quirky, stimulating workplaces for their employees. While the headquarters of this technology company gets the thumbs up in terms of sustainability, it’s not as creative as you’d expect for a modern, cutting-edge company. It also has some unexpectedly backwards policies in terms of fume-spewing and clock-watching.

Abengoa’s Campus Palmas Altas (meaning: Tall Palms) makes their own electricity using a variety of methods, including photo-voltaic panels, parabolic troughs, and a tri-generation plant (which produces electricity, heat and cold). In all, they produce 70% of the energy they consume. Impressive – this is 164,000 square feet of offices we’re talking about.

Their premises – seven low-rise blocks – are cooled using vigas frias (chilled beams), metal pipes that run through the ceiling, filled with cold water. The temperature of the liquid adjusts to the air, keeping the 2,500 boffins at a comfortable, constant temperature. That is no mean feat in Seville, where summer temperatures often top 115 degrees.

Other ways of dealing with the fierce Andalucian sun include self-shading. The buildings are arranged in a linear layout so that each block protects the next from those rays. But they make the most of natural lighting, thanks to glass walls; there are also horizontal shades, and some buildings have huge fixed-position glass screens, which cut the glare by up to 40%.

Such is the sustainable nature of this complex that’s been certified as LEED Platinum, the first to earn this distinction in Europe. It also won the Excellence in Design Award from the American Institute of Architects’ UK Chapter.

However, some aspects of the campus strike us as strange, from the uninspiring buildings to the wholly un-ecological transport situation. Unnerving, too: the monitoring of employees’ movements. I’m talking, spooky, Big Brother-type monitoring.

In terms of the building’s design, as award-winning and sustainable as it may be, it leans towards the prosaic rather than the stunningly visual. Architect Richard Rogers, Pritzker Prize winner, maverick designer of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and, closer to home, World Trade Center Tower 3, says the scheme “creates a new model for the business park, one that is… more compact and urban than conventional business parks”.

Moreover, since Abengoa required such a large site, the offices are located in a dead area next to a freeway. As such, public transport is virtually non-existent thus creating a major sticking point. How is that such an ostensibly green company could end up with a gargantuan car parking area sprawled out next to it? It’s as big as the campus itself and a visible reminder of polluting emissions and personal accountability thereof.

The spaces closest to the offices (under them, in fact) are for pregnant women, those with young children at the on-site nursery (highly innovative in backwards southern Spain), and those with mobility issues. Social awareness 10 points; pollution control, 0 points.

To be fair, the company is trying to implement various alternative transport ideas – cycle lanes, carpooling, free shuttle buses – but for a visitor, the first impression of this company, whose motto is “innovative technology for sustainability,” smacks of, “we heart fossil fuels.”

With an on-site gym and restaurants, Abengoa is doing its best to keep its 2,500 employees around all day – it’s very unusual in Andalucia not to nip home for lunch at ones mom’s place (most under 35s live at home) followed by a siesta. You might be thinking, and…so what? But for a Spaniard, that comes as a major culture shock. All activities, including restaurant visits and photocopying, are monitored by their electronic ID tag. Any and all transgressions are penalized.

These curtailments in movement have led to the nicknames “Centro Penitenciario Abengoa” and “Palmatraz” among staff.

Abengoa is a force to be reckoned with in the solar power world. They’ve just secured $400 million of funding from a U.S. private equity firm and are behind a $2 billion solar power project in the Mojave Desert. Indeed, they are showing us the way forward in the green economy. But let’s hope they sort out some buses soon – and advance their work/life initiatives into the 21^st Century.

Images: Panal Lira; Mark Bentley Photography; El Mundo; David Aureo

The post ‘Palmatraz’: Inside the Cubicles of the World’s Leading Green Tech Company appeared first on EcoSalon.

Costa Verde offers Costa Rica’s most original eco-suite: a vintage airplane in the rainforest.

Costa Verde nestles in the rainforest above the Pacific Ocean, next to Manuel Antonio National Park. Like many hotels in Costa Rica, it is low-rise with impressive green credentials. The owner, an ex-Peace Corps volunteer and an environmental activist left a 30-acre biological corridor around the property with the rainforest grounds sustainably maintained.

Wildlife is literally on your doorstep, as ridiculously cute squirrel monkeys perform acrobatics in the trees. The hotel’s motto is actually “still more monkeys than people.” You can’t get closer to nature than the open-air studios with no AC, no TV and no glass windows but with breezes that will keep you cool, and wild forest sights and sounds will keep you entertained (think iguanas, sloths and toucans co-starring with mini-primates).

What could be more environmentally responsible than a recycled accommodation? Here you can stay in an old passenger airplane – still in mid-air (kind of). The “727 Fuselage Home” is a suite 50 feet up in the jungle, with two beds and two baths, accessed by a private staircase with balcony views of the sea.

The hotel’s other aviation-themed talking point is a C-123 cargo airplane used in Nicaragua in the 1980s, which now serves as a restaurant and bar. El Avion, which was a CIA-funded Contra transport, sits cliff-side in peaceful retirement – if only those walls could talk…

Rates for the 727 suite start at $400/night plus tax; open-air studios $127/night plus tax; views, U.S. political scandal ghosts and wildlife shows included.

Places & Spaces is a travel guide that will inspire you to carve out a vacation on your calendar. All of the gorgeous locations and accommodations in our guide share our concern for the environment. From tent glamping to lavish built environments, fair warning, you’ll feel compelled to pack your suitcase.

The post Places & Spaces: The Costa Verde Hotel appeared first on EcoSalon.