Jensen & Skodvin Architects is a Norwegian architectural firm established in 1995 by Jan Olav Jensen and Børre Skodvin, both educated at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Juvet Landscape Hotel is located at Valldal, near the town of Åndalsnes in north-western Norway. Passing tourists are attracted by a spectacular waterfall in a deep gorge near the road, Gudbrandsjuvet. The hotel has been built in two main phases. Seven rooms and a separate spa building were built in the first phase, from 2007 – 2010. In the second phase, from 2012 – 2013, two more rooms have been added. The site for the hotel is a nature reserve. After extensive negotiations with conservation authorities, permission was eventually granted for a plan allowing for a maximum of 28 rooms to be built, given that no dynamite was used or changing of the terrain was done.
Instead of the conventional hotel, with guest rooms stacked together in one large building, the Landscape Hotel distributes the rooms throughout the terrain as small individual houses. Every house has one or two walls that are entirely built in glass, thus the experienced space in each room is maximized. Through careful orientation every room gets its own exclusive view of a beautiful and unique piece of the landscape, always changing with the season, the weather, and the time of day. No room looks out at another so the rooms are experienced as private even though curtains are not used. The rooms are built in a massive wood construction with no exterior insulation, and are intended for summer use only. Each building rests on a set of 40mm massive steel rods drilled into the rock, existing topography and vegetation left almost untouched. The glass is set against slim frames of wood, locked with standard steel profiles, using stepped edges to extend the exterior layer of the main glass surfaces all the way to the corners. The interiors are treated with transparent oil with black pigments, so that reflections from the inner surface of the glass wall are minimized. Shelves, benches and a small table are all built by the same massive wooden elements to maintain a certain degree of monotony that goes well with the complex nature views and to keep the visual presence of the interior at a minimum. The hotel was also featured in the sci-fi movie Ex Machina.
(Source: Jensen & Skodvin Architects)
