JUVET LANDSCAPE HOTEL NORWAY (2008-2009) To enjoy nature yet to remain as invisible as possible, to celebrate solitude in the natural landscape without feeling crowded by other tourists who share the same passion – these are some of the self-contradictory longings addressed by the Norwegian architects Jensen & Skodvin in their Juvet Landscape Hotel project in northwestern Norway. They started consider the potential scope of the notion of “sustainability”. In their opinion sustainability is not only about saving energy in production and operation, but also the conservation of topography. Conventional building procedures require radical destruction of the site to make way for the foundations and infrastructure. Jensen & Skodvin see conserving the site a token of respect for nature that precedes and succeeds mankind. A careful reading of the topography can also establish a fruitful dialogue between the geometry of the building and irregularities of the natural site, enhancing qualities of both. Each building of the Landscape Hotel rests on an array of 40 mm diameter steel rods drilled into the rock, leaving the topography and vegetation almost untouched. Hotel rooms are conventionally packed together into a larger building, but the rooms of the Juvet Landscape Hotel are in chalets distributed over the woodland terrain, minimizing their visual impact on the environment. Every chalet has one or two walls entirely of glass, and each is aligned to give its occupants an exclusive view of magnificent natural surroundings, while remaining out of sight of other guests to assure privacy. Each chalet adapts to the topography of its site with an individual design. The interiors are muted in character, maximizing the impact of the wealth of nature visible through the picture windows. Architect: Jensen & Skodvin Photos: Jensen & Skodvin 14
EAST BEACH CAFÉ LITTLEHAMPTON, ENGLAND (2007) A building on the beach in a seaside resort has to cope with a split context: on one side there is the untamable sea, and on the other there is a civilization and community. The challenge is not to gloss over the contradiction but to mediate between the sea and town with something that is visible and exciting. How can an architect reconcile the vastness of the sea with the mundane amusements of a beach resort? In their design for the East Beach Café in Littlehampton, a small town on England’s south coast, the London based Heatherwick Studio produced a mediation on the seascape. The café echoes the shape of clouds hovering over the sea and of breakers rolling along the beach. They blended these references into a strongly visual, highly designed icon that will catch everyone’s attention. Inside, tourists can take a coffee or a beer while enjoying a view of the real clouds and real breakers. The new building was a replacement for a seafront ice cream kiosk. The site was not an easy one to design for: it was narrow, compressed between a parade of houses and the sea, and exposed to the weather and vandal- ism. Heatherwick Studio pondered how to design a long, narrow building without giving it flat, two-dimensional facades. They therefore sliced the café diagonally into ribbons. These wrap upwards over the building to form a multilayered protective shell, which is visually open to the sea on one side and closed towards the car park on the other. Rather than use a traditional structure with one component resting on another, the primary structure is a steel shell in which all the parts act together. The shell has a steel outer layer which simultaneously forms the skin and the supporting structure. The surface of the building is raw and weatherbeaten. The steel shell is finished with an oil-based coating that permits a rust-like patina to develop without degrading the structural performance. The East Beach Café, completed in 2007, has brought new life to a quiet seaside town and acts as an inviting beacon for tourists. Tourism Architect: Heatherwick Studio Photos: Andy Stagg 15