A Treviso farm building’s re-emergence as an agile hostel, club and co-working space indicates the changing face of hostels.

Key features

Once undertaken as an office conversion project and abandoned mid-way, the former barn is walking distance to Treviso’s airport. The site’s prime location made it a viable candidate for adaptive reuse: RCAA completed the transformation, turning the farm building into Nomad Hostel, a lively hostel, bar and club. Resiliency and adaptability became integral to the design as the pandemic struck while RCAA was still conceptualizing the space. The project continued despite the crisis, but no one knew when – or to what capacity – the hostel would be able to open. The team explains that keeping the bathrooms and kitchens in their existing place and maximizing the use of peripheral and exposed M&E allowed them to keep the budget low and avoid demolition to achieve flexibility. 

Partitions were introduced sparsely and the custom, locally produced furniture is fully modular and dismountable. Guests enter a bright reception area in white and yellow, a palette which flows through to the rooms. The unifiying marigold-hued, resin flooring was installed everywhere for its durability and to eliminate the need for repaving should the layout be rearranged or subdivided in the future. Taking cues from the endless possibility of Lego bricks, RCAA conceived interlocking furniture – shelving units, lockers, tables and beds – that can take on various configurations. Even the reception desk is easily split up and recoupled, clearing the space for auxiliary functions. 

The 1,500-sq-m spatial configuration adopts the large, airy impact of the barn layout and magnetizes the view toward an adjacent park, rather than the flyway. Privacy was also a main concern: each area has a different level of seclusion. 

FRAME’s take

Hostels are usually the most economic choice for accommodation while travelling, but their image has long centred on young travellers and undesirable facilities. That picture is changing fast as the cost of living surges and operators up their design and amenities game. People seek more experience-driven travel that helps them engage with local culture and people, and hostel venues can tap into the movement away from the exclusivity, surging costs and generic programming of hotels and even Airbnbs. As states a January 2023 report by The Business Research Company, which projects the global hostels market to see growth from $6.04 to $6.35 billion from 2022 to 2023: ‘Hybrid hostels combine the affordability and sociability of dorm-accommodation with the upscale facilities of traditional hotels.’  

Aesthetically, Nomad Hostel is not a far cry from its 2010s-era ancestors. It’s also not uncommon to see hostels with attractive hospitality spaces and bustling communal areas. Where this project excels is in its collection of agile design decisions. The impressively executed reuse of the barn, modular furniture design and low-impact reconfiguration of spaces gives rise to an interior that can evolve as the hostel market – and the needs of its patrons – do.