First Hotel Jessheim

Journeying through time and space belongs to history. The transportation routes of bygone eras are no longer significant. Airline companies’ global route maps are irrelevant for internet bookings and modern travel: a collection of destinations and experiences without connection in space and time, a point cloud. First Hotel Jessheim will add another point to this cloud, encapsulating the experience, embracing the traveler, celebrating the hotel as a destination.

The identity of the hotel is not solely defined by interior qualities; the architecture, the object in the landscape, visible both from the surroundings and the air, tells one story: one frame around shared experiences in a shared space, a meeting place for globe-trotters.

Site

The hotel occupies former farmland between suburban housing and fields, local streets and the European road system, a small city, and the international network of Oslo airport. Divided into three buildings, three different expressions, three development stages, each different in character, the hotel creates a porous edge between Jessheim and the highway system.

The Oval, First Phase

The oval shape gives the hotel a unique identity; different from other buildings in Jessheim, whether seen from the ground, the plane, or Google Earth. There is no front, nor back, with views in all directions. The hotel breaks free from the orthogonal housing structures, an object defining the edge of Jessheim, between city structure and free-standing farm buildings in the landscape. The soft shape, accentuated through a double curvature in the exterior cladding, plays up to Jessheim’s undulating fields, dark and furrowed like newly plowed farmland.

Plan

One corridor in one arced stroke organizes all the hotel rooms. Like beads on a string, the chain is tied, creating a continuous movement from lifts to rooms. The corridor expands for vertical communication and service, creating a simple yet spatially interesting flow and easy orientation: A compact and clear building volume, allowing the façade to be utilized solely for hotel rooms.

Under a glass roof, an acclimatized interior courtyard becomes the ground floor reference point for activities and congregation: a warm and active oasis with a climbing wall, wind tunnel, and planting in contrast to the Norwegian climate outside. The ground floor functions make a logical chain around the central space: from entrance and reception to administration and back of the house, to kitchen and restaurant to the view, transforming into meeting rooms and lounges to a sports bar, completing the chain at the main entrance.

Facades and Roof

Vertical cladding, partly overlapping the windows, accentuates the building, exaggerating curvature and shape. Windows form continuous strips around the building to give wide-angled views of the landscape. The dark charcoal wooden exterior, contrasting the haphazard coloring of the surroundings, creates tension opposed to the warm wood of the interior space. The cladding continues up and above the hotel floors in a curved movement, softening the shape and protecting a rooftop sheltered from dominant wind directions, allowing this exterior space to be used for an outdoor gym and a running track.