Hotel Rakhat

Architecture braided into the land

Role:Lead Architect (via Rani Ziss Architects)

Scope: Resort Planning, Topographic Architecture, Hospitality Design

Location: Mount Arbel, Tiberias, Israel

Site Area: 18,000 m²

Client: Private Developer

Context

Mount Arbel isn’t simply a site - it’s a topographic presence, shaped by wind, gravity, and long horizons.
Designing a resort here meant listening, not sculpting.
The brief called for a high-end hospitality complex with 45 guest villas and shared public programs, all nested within a steep and ecologically delicate terrain.

The question wasn’t what to build, but how not to disturb.

Strategy

The design draws inspiration from Mediterranean hillside villages - stepped, whitewashed, minimal.
Each villa was positioned along the natural gradient, allowing the slope itself to guide orientation, privacy, and airflow.

Public functions - spa, lounge, restaurant - are embedded deep into the landscape, emerging only at their thresholds.
Circulation between spaces unfolds as a gradual descent: you move with the hill, not across it.

Material & Form

Natural stone and textured plaster in tones pulled directly from the earth
Flat green roofs that become part of the visual horizon
Breeze-oriented apertures, minimizing mechanical reliance
Soft shadow lines and sheltered terraces, defined by structure rather than ornament

Light is filtered, not framed. Sound is muffled by mass. The building doesn’t assert - it absorbs.

Outcome

Rakhat rethinks luxury through restraint: it offers no grand arrival, no iconic gesture.
Its success lies in disappearance - allowing the guest to feel immersed in landscape, rather than architecture.

It is not a building to be admired from afar.
It is a space to be walked through, felt in quiet layers, and remembered not for its form - but for the way it left the mountain intact.

Environmental Intelligence

Passive thermal strategies were embedded from the start:
Roofs insulate through planted mass, while walls operate as thermal buffers.
Orientation reduced direct gain while preserving long-range views.
The site does more than hold the architecture, it regulates it.

Experiential Sequence

Arrival begins above - and the building vanishes as you descend.
First the sound of wind, then stone underfoot, then the first glimpse of water.
The sequence is not theatrical. It’s geological.