Thermal Blue: An Icelandic Spa Laid Out in Looping Paths, Grass Banks and Skylit Pavilions

Most spa schemes start from the pool and work outward. Thermal Blue starts from the path. Before any wall is drawn, the site is traced with circles, overlapping loops of trail that gather a river, a hiking route, a bus stop and a handful of buildings into one walkable figure. The architecture then settles into those loops rather than sitting on top of them, half buried in grass, half open to the sky.

Thermal Blue, subtitled "Spa by the Nature," is a spa and hotel complex in Iceland designed by Daniela Georgieva. The project was Shortlisted at Thermal Blue. It is a compact proposal: one main building split into two linked blocks, a scatter of guest houses and a ring of landscape. Its interest lies less in any single gesture and more in how firmly it commits to moving people through terrain.

Two Overlapping Circles Do the Planning Work

The site plan reads almost like a diagram of orbits. Two large rings intersect at the centre of the plot, and the main program sits right on that overlap: a long spa block and a squarer volume for administration, hotel and restaurant, placed side by side. Guest houses gather in small clusters on the outer arcs, one group to the west near the sun decks and open swimming pool, another to the south. Shops and a restaurant terrace hold the junction between the circles, exactly where foot traffic from both loops would cross.

What makes the geometry useful is what it connects. A golf cart trail runs along the ring, a hiking trail exits at the north, and a sweeping arc of parking curls around to a bus station at the southeast entry. The thermal river, labelled on the drawing as the Reykjadalur Hot Spring Thermal River, threads along the site edges. Arrival by bus, a walk into the hills and a soak in the spa all start from the same circulation figure, which gives the scheme a clarity many resort plans lack.

A Building That Lets the Hillside Take the First Floor

In perspective, the main building barely rises above its own landform. A grass bank climbs over the lower level, and a slim wing of timber cladding and glazing slides out of the slope with a long ramp cutting down beside it. Above, the upper volume floats as a brick and glass bar crowned by a curved roof edge that rolls over the facade like a lip. The looping paths of the site plan wrap the foot of the mound, so the building appears to sit inside its own landscape drawing.

The move does two things at once. It lowers the visual mass of a sizeable program against a wide mountain backdrop, and it turns the roof of the ground floor into landscape that guests can read as part of the hill. The pitched guest houses in the distance repeat the material palette at a smaller scale, so the complex reads as a family of buildings rather than one object with satellites.

A Ground Floor Split Between Water and Welcome

The ground floor plan confirms the two-block logic. The northern block is given over to bathing: a large relax zone with swimming pools, paired saunas and steam rooms, separate changing rooms and a doctor's cabin. The southern block handles everything public: an entry on axis, reception at the centre, a restaurant to the west with a route out to the shops, and administration offices and a conference room to the east. A short corridor links the two, with trees planted in the gap between them.

That gap matters. Rather than burying the wet areas behind the lobby, the plan sets a garden threshold between arrival and bathing, so the walk to the pools becomes a small transition outdoors. It is a modest decision, but it keeps the quiet program acoustically and visually apart from the restaurant and offices without needing long internal corridors.

Paired Hotel Rooms Around a Double-Height Void

Upstairs, the same split continues with sharper roles. Over the pools, a second relax zone opens to the void below, alongside a bar, four massage rooms, a fitness space and a salt room for children, a thoughtful inclusion that acknowledges families as part of the spa clientele. Over the public block sits the hotel: eight rooms arranged in mirrored pairs, four on each side, with bathrooms set back to back and a central void and lounge separating the two rows.

The arrangement is efficient without feeling like a corridor hotel. Every room gets an outside wall, the shared bathroom cores keep services consolidated, and the open centre brings light and a sense of volume into what could otherwise be a tight stack. The curved roof seen in the elevation below the plan is where this hotel floor meets the sky.

Glazed Gables Built for a Night Sky

The strongest image in the set belongs to the smallest buildings. At night, low dark timber pavilions sit under sweeping pitched roofs, their gables fully glazed and their roof planes cut with strips of skylight. Warm interiors glow against the black ground while bands of green aurora drift across the sky above the hills. The project's own panels describe partially glazed roofs on the guest houses, intended for watching the northern lights and the starry sky, along with green roofs and a palette of wood and glass.

This is where the scheme's idea of "spa by the nature" becomes most legible. The main building negotiates with the ground; the guest houses negotiate with the sky. Lying in bed under a glass roof slope in an Icelandic winter is an experience no pool can match, and the design wisely gives that moment to the most private rooms on the site.

Why This Project Matters

Thermal Blue shows how much a plan can achieve when circulation leads. By drawing the loops first, connecting bus arrival, parking, hiking and bathing in one legible figure, the project resolves the practical tension of a site that serves both overnight guests and passing trekkers. The buildings then follow with restraint: one berm-sheltered main block, a garden gap between noise and calm, and a ring of small houses that keep the density low.

There is room to push further, particularly in how the curved roof and the pitched guest houses might share a stronger common language. Still, the proposal makes a clear argument worth keeping: in a landscape as dramatic as Iceland's, a spa earns its place by stepping back into the hill and framing the sky, letting the ground hold the program and the aurora become the main event.

View the Full Project

Project team

Designer: Daniela Georgieva

Competition and award

Shortlisted, Thermal Blue

Location

Iceland

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