Tucked into the Miramón forest on the southern edge of San Sebastián, where the city gives way to a dense canopy of oak and pine overlooking the Bay of Biscay, Hotel Arima & Spa was designed from the ground up as one of the first carbon-neutral hotels in the Basque Country. The building, conceived by the local architectural practice Zigzag Arquitectura and completed in 2018, takes its formal cues from the woodland setting — vertical timber screens in pale larch wrap the facade in a rhythm that softens the three-storey volume against the tree line, while planted rooftop terraces and a cascading courtyard dissolve the boundary between built structure and forest floor. The result is a 79-room property whose architecture carries the quiet conviction of a building that has genuinely thought through its relationship with the land rather than simply gesturing toward it. Inside, the interiors sustain that discipline without becoming austere. Guest rooms are finished in light oak joinery, warm white plaster, and natural linen, with deep-set timber-framed windows that frame the surrounding greenery like botanical prints — a detail made literal by the watercolour leaf studies hung above the beds. The restaurant employs exposed timber ceiling ribs over poured concrete floors and a long communal table in pale stone, a composition closer to a Scandinavian farmhouse kitchen than conventional hotel dining. On the roof, a timber-decked pool terrace commands an unbroken view over the forest canopy to the Atlantic, the distant hills of Gipuzkoa dissolving into summer haze.

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