“Not every place needs architecture to speak loudly. Some already carry silence, memory and meaning. These are my personal reflections on place, restraint and responsibility, shaped by a journey that began over thirty years ago with a childhood gift of Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki, and continues today through the way I think about Almora."
Roberts Herberts. Co-founder & CEO, Almora. 24 January 2026. 5-minute read.
Locations that do half the work
There are places where architecture has to stand out.
And there are places where it has to step back.
Over time, I have learned that the most difficult part of creating a meaningful micro resort is not design, construction or even operations. It is knowing when not to intervene.
It is always possible to do more.
To clear trees.
To cut roads into slopes.
To install platforms, walkways and gestures that announce presence.
For the past decades, this has been the dominant visual language of tourism, especially in so-called island destinations. From a distance, many of these places already feel misplaced. Objects competing for attention rather than belonging.
How these ideas age
We have seen how these ideas age.
Futuristic visions filmed decades ago in once ambitious places.
Rusting structures.
Concrete paths overtaken by vegetation.
Landscapes that feel as if time quietly stepped away.
When these images age, they do not become nostalgic. They become uncomfortable.
That realization fundamentally changed the way I look at land.
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When location carries the Weight
Some locations already carry weight.
Silence. Memory. Tension.
When development is allowed in such places, responsibility becomes generational. Handled carefully, these sites will be valued long after we are gone. Handled carelessly, they disappear into the growing archive of abandoned ideas.
This is where a micro resort stops being a product and becomes something closer to a sanctuary. A petite resort. A place of retreat.
In such locations, the brief simplifies. Respect becomes the primary design decision.
A cliff facing the ocean does not ask for decoration.
A mountain valley does not need to be impressed.
A forest clearing already understands privacy better than most floor plans.
In these moments, architecture is not the protagonist.
It is the translator.
Architecture as attitude, not form
I used to think this way of working was instinctive. Only later did I realise how clearly it aligns with a lineage of architects who wrestled with the same questions long before micro resorts existed.
Frank Lloyd Wright once wrote that a building should grow from its site rather than sit upon it. At first, I understood this as a formal idea. Over time, it became clear that it was an ethical one. He was not arguing for stronger gestures, but for deeper alignment. Materials are not finished. They are extensions of place. Stone feels different under bare feet when it comes from the land beneath you. Wood holds warmth not because it is engineered to, but because it remembers where it came from.
Alvar Aalto helped me articulate something else I felt but could not yet name. He wrote about architecture’s responsibility to reduce physical and psychological strain. The more spaces I move through, the more I notice how often design adds friction instead of removing it. At Almora, we are not designing houses. We are designing the absence of friction. Spaces that allow the body to slow down without instruction.
Luis Barragán gave language to a quieter observation. He believed that architecture which does not express serenity is a mistake. I have stood in many beautiful spaces that felt exhausting. Too much signal. Too much explanation. Too much presence. Loud spaces are tiring spaces. Silence, I have learned, is not emptiness. It is capacity.
Designing the absence of friction
The spaces that stay with me are rarely the ones that impress immediately. They are the ones that allow the body to settle.
Paths that reveal rather than announce.
Rooms that do not demand attention.
Materials matter here in a different way. Not visually, but emotionally. Stone feels stable under bare feet. Wood holds warmth longer than expected. Linen absorbs light instead of reflecting it.
And then there is smell. A subject almost never discussed seriously in hospitality.
Salt in the air. Dry grass. Firewood. Morning moisture.
You cannot fabricate these things convincingly. You can only choose locations that already have them. This is why site selection matters more than design iteration. When the location is wrong, architecture is forced to compensate. And when architecture compensates, it becomes loud.
Rethinking luxury
Luxury, in this context, is often misunderstood.
More textures. More features. More options.
I see the opposite happening. Luxury is the removal of decisions. The removal of noise. The feeling that someone has already thought through everything that could have disturbed your calm.
When the location does half the work, this becomes possible. You do not need programmed activities. You do not need storytelling panels. You do not need persuasion.
The place itself does the talking.
Thresholds, not destinations
When I was a child, my grandmother gave me a copy of Kon-Tiki. At the time, I read it as an adventure story.
Raft. Oceans. Courage. Curiosity. Distance.
Only much later did I understand what stayed with me. Thor Heyerdahl was never travelling in search of comfort. He was travelling to understand limits. Of nature. Of humans. Of himself.
The most powerful journeys do not add layers.
They remove them.
At their best, micro resorts are not destinations. They are thresholds. Between movement and stillness. Between noise and quiet. Between who you were before arrival and who you are allowed to be once everything unnecessary falls away.
Architecture should never block that transition.
It should quietly support it.
Where this becomes real
This way of thinking is not theoretical.
Our first Almora location is taking shape in Yunquera, on the edge of Sierra de las Nieves Natural Park in southern Spain. It is a place where the land already does much of the work. Where restraint matters more than scale. And where every decision starts with respect.
I will write more about this place as it unfolds.