Isern & Associats redefines the seafront of Cambrils with a luminous, Mediterranean architecture

On the seafront promenade of Cambrils, where the historic Hotel Pòsit once stood, rises the new Hotel Marina Cambrils by URH Hotels — a work by Isern & Associats that engages in dialogue with both the coastal landscape and the memory of the old fishing district. Its serene, precise architecture reinterprets Mediterranean essence through light, texture and detail.

With a built area of over 4,300 m², the four-storey building with a ground floor houses 67 double rooms in the four-star superior category. Developed by Natarent Cambrils and operated by URH Hotels, the project — representing an investment of nearly six million euros — combines functional rigour with aesthetic sensitivity, integrating respectfully into the city’s historic fabric.

The experience begins on Pau Casals Street, where a bright portico welcomes guests into a warm and inviting space. Light-toned floors, soft wall coverings and ochre-yellow accents create a serene atmosphere that anticipates the spirit of the hotel: close, welcoming, and profoundly Mediterranean.

The atrium: the sculptural heart of the building

The lobby is organised around a grand circular staircase that spirals around the load-bearing structure, leading to a three-storey atrium. Clad in woven wicker panels, the space filters natural light as if through a handcrafted fabric, evoking the fishing baskets of the old harbour. The wicker’s texture, the warm tone of the wood and the gentle lighting transform the structure into a sculptural piece that lends both scale and character to the whole. The corridors, lined with the same wicker panels and wooden doors, preserve this sense of continuity and calm. Indirect lighting softens transitions, inviting guests to move through the building unhurriedly.

Rooms of Mediterranean wellbeing

On the upper floors, the rooms unfold a language of wellbeing and discretion. The bed takes centre stage, with a scenographic headboard that conceals the bathroom, while a long multifunctional desk runs along the opposite wall. Oak wood, earthy tones and yellow upholstery — the guiding colour of the project — define an enveloping ambience. A handwoven natural wool rug reinforces the sense of home and tactility.

Light, material and landscape

On the fourth floor, the breakfast restaurant opens to the sea through large windows that blur the boundary between inside and out. The furniture combines dark marble, natural wood and yellow ceramics, creating a chromatic continuity that unifies the entire project. Two large rugs define distinct zones within an open space designed for gathering and contemplation.

From there, a solarium terrace stretches towards the horizon. The infinity pool, raised on a wooden platform, offers open views of the Mediterranean — a simple gesture that encapsulates the spirit of the project: balance, calm and clarity.

Architecture that belongs to its place

The building’s volume opens towards the square, fostering a gentle dialogue with the city. Setbacks and balconies cast shifting shadows, while the limestone plinth and smooth plaster of the upper façade recall the traditional language of the old town. At both ends, a double skin of technological wood panels filters light and ensures privacy, creating a bridge between tradition and contemporaneity. In this way, the new Hotel Marina Cambrils integrates naturally into the historic fabric of the fishing district, offering a high-quality space that helps revitalise Plaza del Pòsit and strengthen the urban life of the waterfront.

Architecture and interior design: Isern Associats – Daniel Isern.
Project direction: Aleix Naudó.
Construction management: Tècnic Empordà.
Structure: Bac Engineering Consultancy Group.
Installations: Atoms.
Project management: Klar Management.
Operator: URH Hotels.
Construction company: Units-4.
Furniture / Lighting: Lifra Contract / Lumens.
Photography: Meritxell Arjalaguer.
Source: Boutique de Comunicación.

Isern & Associats

In the architecture of Daniel Isern, constructive reason and the emotion of inhabited space coexist in harmony. An architect trained at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, where he also specialized in architectural rehabilitation, he began his professional career in 1999 before founding his own studio in Barcelona in 2012. Since then, Isern Associats has built a solid trajectory in the fields of hotel and residential design.

His practice is founded on an essential principle: the balance between technical precision and human sensitivity. Each project arises from a rigorous reading of the place and its inhabitants, but also from an intuition capable of transforming functionality into experience. Isern maintains that a hotel must “work like a clock,” without failures or artifices, yet it must also move and inspire — it must tell a story through light, texture, and silence.

Since its founding, the studio has developed projects acclaimed for their conceptual coherence and material excellence, including the Hotel OHLA Eixample in Barcelona, the restoration of Palau Fugit Hotel in Girona, ME by Meliá, the ME Sitges by Meliá, the Áurea Palacio de Correos in Logroño, the Hotel Bellville in Paris, and Hotel Atzavara in Santa Susanna. In each of them, architecture and interior design merge into a single narrative where timelessness and serenity prevail over fashion and excess.

The work of Isern Associats has been nominated for the WAN Awards (2014 and 2018) and received an honourable mention at the Catalunya Construcció Awards 2018, recognitions that endorse both its technical rigour and its design sensitivity. In parallel, Daniel Isern directs the Postgraduate Programme in Hotel Design at Escola Sert, part of the Architects’ Association of Catalonia (COAC), from where he promotes a contemporary and demanding vision of hospitality design.

Composed of a multidisciplinary team of architects, interior designers, and product designers, the studio works through the seamless integration of architecture, light, and materiality. Its language is serene, tactile, and precise: an architecture that does not impose but accompanies; that seeks comfort through proportion, detail, and authenticity.

In each work, Daniel Isern reminds us that true beauty lies in the discretion of well-crafted things, in the harmony between what is seen and what is felt. This vision defines the new Hotel Marina Cambrils by URH Hotels, where his Mediterranean sensibility —clear, sober, and luminous— transforms functionality into atmosphere and space into a lasting emotion.

Project by Isern & Associats