For design
Dar Hi
Nefta · Tunisia
The Sahara begins just south of Nefta, and on the ridge above the town's palm oasis stands a small village of ochre towers, the colour of the ground they were raised from. This is Dar Hi, the desert set to a designer's idea and left, sensibly, to the light.
Nefta lies at the edge of the Chott el Djerid, the great salt lake that turns to mirage in the heat, and its oasis, the famous corbeille, drops away in terraces of date palms below the town. Dar Hi takes the high ground above it. Matali Crasset, the French designer, laid the place out like a village rather than a hotel, towers of raw clay brick standing on pillars, walls the colour of the earth, every room turned towards the palms, the desert or the rooftops of Nefta. Inside, her saffron yellow runs through the concrete, a cushioned bench here, an arched door there, a curtain drawn across a stair. It is a serious idea carried through with a light hand.
There is one kitchen and it keeps things honest. Najet, a cook from Nefta, sends out simple, seasonal food, vegetables from the oasis, dates, the flatbreads and slow dishes of the south, nothing dressed up for effect. You eat by the pool or under the towers, and the meal answers to the place rather than to any notion of what a design hotel ought to serve. It is the better for it.
Dar Hi is not a resort and does not pretend to be. Eighteen rooms, a hammam fed by sulphur hot springs, a heated pool, a library, and beyond the walls a working oasis the owners help tend through their Palm Lab project. What makes it rare is the marriage of a real designer's vision with a real place, deep in the Tunisian Sahara where almost nothing of this ambition exists. Come for the architecture and the quiet. The light does the rest.
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