Firm： Visionnaire Home Philosophy

Type： Hospitality + Sport › Restaurant Wellness/Spa Transport + Infrastructure › Marina and Ports

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2022

SIZE： 100,000 sqft - 300,000 sqft

BUDGET： $10M - 50M

Darsena del Sale is an individual destination in Europe – a temple of well-being that arises from water and has built its identity based on water and salt. This is a project that envisions archaeological architecture and purpose, forming a balance between multifaceted feasible spaces and respecting the 'genius loci' but with an international relevance pronounced by its uniqueness.

Located within the naturalistic park of the Saline di Cervia, Darsena Del Sale aims to become a true epicenter of well-being with unique, unprecedented and avant-garde services, low-emmissions facilities and the first destination on the Adriatic dedicated to quality leisure tourism, right in the center of the canal harbor recently reappraised by the Municipality of Cervia.

Music, events, food and wine, and spa are key elements that define the DNA of this destination. A location situated on a total area of over 20,000 square meters, exterior and interior spread out over three floors, where water and salt embodies both spaces.

The warehouse of Salt in Cervia is a testimony of industrial archeology from the early 1700s, which was revisited in the 1980s with a project by Architect Giancarlo De Carlo to recover and transform the warehouse into a naval museum located next to the dock. The noncompletion of the project was successfully resumed in 2017 thanks to public investments made by the Municipality of Cervia, Region of Emilia Romagna, European Community and a significant contribution by Visionnaire, a meta-luxury brand of reference in the sector of interior design in Italy that became a Benefit Corporation as of December 2021.

A jewel of paleo-industrial architecture which, thanks to an ad hoc redevelopment project, has found a new ontological location. From a storage unit of "white gold", as salt was called in ancient times, to a technological vessel to satisfy the five senses.