Selva Restaurant & Sonora Bar tropical hospitality experience in Amsterdam
Selva Restaurant & Sonora Cocktail Bar, recognized in the Interior Design – Hospitality category at the Architecture MasterPrize 2025, transforms the 24th floor of the Nhow Amsterdam Hotel into an immersive tropical destination shaped by colour, atmosphere, and sensory storytelling.
Designed by EL EQUIPO CREATIVO under the direction of lead architects Oliver Schmidt, Natali Canas, and Lucas Echeveste, the project creates two distinct hospitality experiences inspired by Latin American landscapes, biodiversity, and mythology. Natali Canas del Pozo shares insight into how narrative design, organic forms, and layered materiality shaped the identity of both spaces.
Could you share some background about yourself or your practice?
Natali Canas: We are an interior architecture and design studio specialized in hospitality, gastronomy, and brand experiences. Our work focuses on creating spaces that tell stories and build emotional connections between people, culture, and place. Through interior design, lighting, materials, and spatial storytelling, we seek to translate local identity into contemporary experiences. Over the years, we have developed international projects including hotels, restaurants, food halls, and mixed-use hospitality spaces, always aiming to create environments that are both memorable and deeply rooted in context.
What was the brief for Selva Restaurant & Sonora Cocktail Bar?
Natali Canas: The brief for Selva Restaurant and Sonora Cocktail Bar was to create two complementary hospitality experiences on the 24th floor of the Nhow Hotel in Amsterdam. Both venues needed distinct identities while sharing a coherent narrative connected to Latin American culture, tropical landscapes, and immersive sensory experiences. Selva was envisioned as a lush, vibrant restaurant inspired by tropical jungles and biodiversity, while Sonora was conceived as a sophisticated cocktail bar with a more mysterious and cinematic atmosphere inspired by pre-Columbian references and the mythology of El Dorado.
Please describe your design process and how you approached the project.
Natali Canas: Our process always begins with research and storytelling. For Selva and Sonora, we drew inspiration from tropical nature, Latin American culture, and sensory landscapes. Working within the striking glass architecture designed by OMA and Rem Koolhaas, our goal was to transform the cold industrial setting into a warm and immersive tropical oasis.
In Selva, we combined organic forms, lush vegetation, textured woods, and vibrant colours to create a jungle-like atmosphere. For Sonora, the design became darker and more sculptural, centred around a golden organic bar inspired by pre-Columbian artifacts and mythical aquatic creatures.
What were the main challenges during the project, and how did you resolve them?
Natali Canas: One of the biggest challenges was competing visually with the extraordinary panoramic views offered by the floor-to-ceiling glass façade. In both projects, especially in Sonora, we needed to create interior elements strong enough to become focal points while still embracing the views rather than fighting against them. Another challenge was transforming a very open, industrial architectural shell into intimate and emotionally engaging hospitality environments. We addressed this through layered lighting, organic geometries, vegetation, textured materials, and curvilinear elements that soften the rigidity of the original architecture.
Operational functionality was also essential. Hospitality spaces must work efficiently for staff while still feeling effortless and immersive for guests, so close collaboration with consultants, operators, and construction teams was key throughout the process.
What do you consider the most distinctive or innovative aspect of the project?
Natali Canas: The most distinctive aspect of the project is probably its immersive narrative quality. Rather than approaching the interiors as purely aesthetic compositions, we designed both spaces as emotional landscapes where architecture, lighting, materials, colour, vegetation, and reflections work together to transport guests into another world.
Which outcomes of the project are you most proud of, and why?
Natali Canas: We are proud that both venues achieved very distinct identities while remaining part of a coherent overall narrative. Selva feels vibrant, lush, and social, while Sonora offers a more intimate and mysterious atmosphere, allowing guests to experience different emotional journeys within the same destination.
What inspires your work?
Natali Canas: Our inspiration comes from many sources: travel, gastronomy, cinema, nature, music, craftsmanship, and vernacular architecture. We are particularly interested in spaces capable of creating strong atmospheres and emotional memories through sensory design. For this project, Latin American landscapes, biodiversity, tropical ecosystems, and pre-Columbian symbolism were important references throughout the creative process.
The project also reflects our ongoing interest in creating immersive hospitality environments that engage all the senses rather than relying solely on visual impact. More generally, we are inspired by the idea that hospitality spaces can become narrative experiences that emotionally connect people with culture and place.
What does receiving an Architecture MasterPrize mean to you?
Natali Canas: Receiving an Architecture MasterPrize for Selva Restaurant and Sonora Cocktail Bar is a great honor and an important recognition for the entire team involved in the project. Hospitality projects are highly collaborative and involve many layers of complexity, from storytelling and design to operations, lighting, craftsmanship, and construction, so receiving this type of international recognition is especially meaningful.
We thank Natali Canas of EL EQUIPO CREATIVO for sharing the story behind Selva Restaurant & Sonora Cocktail Bar, recognized in the Interior Design – Hospitality category at the Architecture MasterPrize 2025. Through layered storytelling, tropical references, and immersive spatial experiences, the project transforms hospitality interiors into emotionally engaging destinations above the Amsterdam skyline.