Philippe Starck has revealed A Serra, an ambitious hospitality and residential project planned for the hills of Serra de Grândola near Melides, Portugal. Scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2028, the development will include a 25-suite hotel, 22 serviced private villas, restaurants, wellness facilities, creative studios and a timber village within a 200-hectare setting.

A resort designed to feel like an aldeia

Starck’s organising idea is not the isolated hotel block. The project is imagined as a contemporary Portuguese village, or aldeia, with smaller buildings arranged along a raised main street and linked to food, craft, leisure and communal life.

That is increasingly important in high-end hospitality. Guests no longer want to feel trapped inside one giant object. They want to move between different scales of space: room, garden, café, studio, restaurant, pool and landscape.

The architecture tries to disappear into the site

Developer Larfa Properties is working with Starck, while Lisbon studio Atelier AAVV leads planning and construction and landscape architect Filipa Cardoso de Menezes of FC Arquitectura Paisagista shapes the grounds. The stated ambition is to avoid superfluous gestures that compete with the hills, vegetation and Atlantic horizon.

The image is less “icon building” and more settlement embedded into cork forest, lagoons and warm-toned landscape.

Inside the hotel and villas

The hotel’s 25 independent suites are planned at 70 sq m each, with 90 sq m terraces; 12 are expected to include private pools. The 22 serviced villas take similar visual cues but extend them into longer-stay residential living.

Starck describes the villa interiors as intimate spaces held within concrete shells, then warmed by vegetation, terracotta, red-toned woods, natural leather and touches of gold. It is a palette that draws on the landscape without reproducing regional motifs literally.

Farm-to-table and creative life

The timber village will bring together a farm-to-table restaurant, vegetable garden, grand café, market-style shop, art studio and swimming pool. Workshops for painting, pottery, sculpture, drawing and cooking are planned alongside spa and sports facilities.

That mix turns the development into more than accommodation. The project is betting on culture and making as part of the hospitality experience, a direction increasingly visible across the high-end travel market.

What designers should watch

The most interesting question will be whether the development can preserve the promised sense of naturalness once the operational needs of luxury hospitality arrive: roads, services, housekeeping, restaurants, pools, vehicles and guest movement. If the architecture can absorb all of that without losing calm, A Serra could become an important reference for landscape-led resort design.

The Luxe Journal takeaway

A Serra represents a broader shift in luxury hospitality: away from the standalone trophy hotel and toward places that behave like small cultural ecosystems. The architecture becomes the framework for food, craft, landscape and community rather than the only attraction.

Source: Wallpaper*, September 18, 2026.