Trojena

“Instead of a sprawling city, we have created a series of interconnected villages,” explains Kronawitter. “This minimizes the development footprint, preserving the landscape while opening up diverse experiences of the site.” Trojena’s six clusters—Gateway, Discover, Valley, Explore, Relax, and Fun—offer villages, activities, events and hospitality tailored to their location. From skiing to stargazing, high-altitude wellness centers to secluded luxury cabins, every element builds a sense of connection to the environment. “Rather than a single city center, Trojena features a series of city centers, each of these is a unique focal point that expands your experience of the mountains,” says Kronawitter. By emphasizing local distinctiveness, this zoning strategy counters the homogeneity common across many travel destinations and fosters a unique sense of place.

Taking a decentralized approach to hotel design, LAVA envisioned the Ritz-Carlton’s Hiking Boutique Hotel as a collection of luxury “pods” positioned across a mountain ridgeline and anchored by a central hub. The spatial design draws from cellular networks and fractal patterns, with clusters of hotel pods settled within the contours of the landscape. The location of the pods maximizes privacy and offers each room expansive and unobstructed views southward into untouched wilderness. Moving through the hotel takes you along the ridgeline and away from Trojena’s center, allowing for an immersive experience that pairs luxury with nature.

“We took significant steps to integrate buildings and infrastructure with the natural terrain,” continues Kronawitter. “To do this, we had to develop a transportation system that reduced the number of roads while providing seamless connectivity across the mountain.” Drawing on the historical use of gondolas in alpine regions, LAVA’s urban ropeway minimizes groundwork. “Once people are elevated off the ground, there’s less need for roads and heavy infrastructure,” says Kronawitter. “We envision Trojena as one large natural park, and the urban ropeway helps preserve this as public space. It’s experiential transportation; the idea is that people will want to use it. If someone finds themselves with 30 minutes before dinner, they might take a quick ride down to the lake, savoring the panoramic views or perhaps stopping to visit a sculpture garden along the way.”

Successful cities have always had to balance infrastructure with the distinctive character of their location. Trojena does this through a forward-thinking approach to hyper-landscape experiences, where innovative and decentralized design integrates with the natural environment to achieve a new sensorial and emotional relationship between people and place.