NEMA Design Hotel & Spa stands at Analipsi, on the northern coast of Crete at the edge of Hersonissos, 20 minutes from Heraklion airport. The hotel built its identity on crisp lines, deep tones and an informal relationship with the beach in front of it.
On 1 August 2026 it opened EÉSO by NEMA and turned that identity inward. The enclave has four categories of villa-style suite, gardens, a shared pool and a restaurant that serves its guests alone, all built inside the existing grounds.
The name comes from the ancient Greek word for “within”. Omniview, the Athens practice that designed the enclave, took the word as an instruction about the layout. Privacy was settled in the plan before anything was built.
The setting
The host hotel is adults only and has 83 rooms and suites, many of them with their own pools. EÉSO sits above its two existing series, NEMA Retreat and NEMA Suites, as a third and higher tier. At its centre are gardens reserved for the guests who stay there.
On the ground, the suites and gardens lead to a pool used by EÉSO guests alone. NÁ LE MA, the à la carte restaurant at the edge of the plan, is closed to the rest of the hotel. Rooms, water, garden and restaurant sit within one boundary, a separate precinct inside the larger property.
The design
Omniview designs and develops buildings from a single office in Athens. The architect brothers Dimitri and John Tsigos founded it with the property entrepreneur Miltos Kambourides. Dimitri Tsigos calls the scheme introverted, a word he uses about the plan of the buildings.
The practice kept NEMA’s design language and changed its scale. Tones the hotel had used as surface finishes are carried here by the structure itself: thick walls, deep openings and double-height rooms kept in shadow.
Surfaces are grey, brown and close to black, where a Cretan beach hotel would usually be white. Rough stone-like finishes meet glass and metal, and the strong light sharpens every join between them. Ledges are built into the walls, and the walls are thick enough for the rooms to feel carved out of the hill.
Materials and trades came from Crete wherever the island could supply them, starting with Heraklion. Makers from the mainland were used only where Crete could not. The link to the region lies in what the building is made of and who made it. There is no decorative motif.
Inside the suites
The four categories are The Atrium, The Pavilion, The Sanctum and The Penthouse, and they differ in shape as much as in size. The Atrium is the smallest: 100 square metres for two adults, 60 indoors and 40 outdoors. It has an outdoor mini pool, and its plan turns towards its own courtyard.
The Penthouse is the highest and most open. It has 118 square metres, 60 indoors and 58 on a rooftop terrace, with a 26 square metre pool. The pool is heated only at the start and end of the season, from 1 to 15 May and from 1 to 25 October. The Sanctum has the largest plan, at 134 square metres. Outdoor space across the four runs from 40 square metres to 78.
Some suites spread sideways behind long glass walls that connect bedrooms and living rooms to their gardens. Others rise, with stone-like walls continuing past the sleeping area to high openings that let in daylight in thin bands.
The beds have Coco-Mat sleep systems, and the linen and towels are by Guy Laroche. NEMA names both companies as collaborators.
The shared pool
At the centre of the enclave the gardens open onto the pool, and Omniview did something unusual at its edge. Seating structures stand in the water, each under a pergola of its own, where most hotels would set loungers around the pool.
“We wanted to go beyond the typical concept of in-water loungers and instead create inhabitable units within the pool,” says Tsigos. Parts of the pool become places to sit.
Water separates one structure from the next, and their roofs give shade over a pool that is otherwise open to the sky.
The restaurant
NÁ LE MA completes the plan. It serves à la carte, only to EÉSO guests, and opens from 11am to 6pm, so it is a place for the middle of the day.
It is built of stone, wood and water. Slatted ceilings cast patterns of filtered light onto sculpted seating, and water runs alongside the dining area, so the line between the room and its surroundings is never quite drawn.
The wider hotel has more places to eat and drink: Euphoria, the Cretan gastrobar Rizes and its seaside Deck, and the Divine Bar. EÉSO guests can use all of them, while NÁ LE MA stays closed to guests from the rest of the hotel.
Who is this for
EÉSO suits a couple who want a house of their own for their stay and who count architecture among their reasons for travelling. At dusk the shared pool is lit, with a bar at its far end and cypresses planted behind the timber pavilions. Private terraces are enclosed by dark marble walls. Beyond the enclave, the wider hotel runs safari routes across the island’s interior and wine tastings at Rizes, with horse riding and golf a short drive away. All of it is open to EÉSO guests.
