Norway has made the landscape the protagonist of its architecture – along the tourist routes, and in a handful of hotels that have become destinations in their own right. Juvet in a river valley where Ex Machina was filmed, polar explorer Børge Ousland's island in Vestfjorden, and the art hotel on Oslo's Tjuvholmen. Three ways of staying in Norwegian design.
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Over three decades, Norway has built up an architectural tradition with the landscape at its centre. Since 1994, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration's National Tourist Routes, eighteen specially selected roads along the west coast, in Northern Norway and in the mountains, have been given rest areas and viewpoints designed mainly by young Norwegian architects – but also by Louise Bourgeois and Peter Zumthor. The landscape architecture journal Topos gave the project a special award in 2012. The same thinking runs through a number of hotels built so that you see nature, not the hotel. Here are three of them.
01Juvet Landscape Hotel – Valldal
Juvet is located in Valldal in Sunnmøre, a small valley right next to the World Heritage-listed Geirangerfjord, about an hour and a half's drive from Ålesund. The hotel opened in 2010 and was designed by Jensen & Skodvin, the Oslo office founded by Jan Olav Jensen and Børre Skodvin in 1995, which received the Jacob Prize in 2007. The jury described their architecture as a laconic yet problem-seeking pragmatism, where form grows out of the given conditions of the site.
The office has also designed Tautra Mariakloster and rest areas along the tourist route over Sognefjellet. Juvet became internationally known when Alex Garland filmed Ex Machina here; the film premiered in the United Kingdom on 21 January 2015 and won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Guests can stay in the same locations that appear in the film. Just north of the hotel lies the waterfall in Grøndalen.
From Valldal, National Road 63 runs north through Valldalen up to Trollstigen, the serpentine road with eleven hairpin bends and a ten per cent gradient that King Haakon VII opened on 31 July 1936 after eight years of construction. Up on the plateau there are viewing platforms overlooking the bends and the waterfall Stigfossen. The road became a National Tourist Route in 2012 and is closed in late autumn and winter; it normally stays open from mid-May to October.
02Manshausen – the polar explorer's island
Far to the north, in Vestfjorden in Steigen municipality in Nordland, lies the island of Manshausen. It belonged to the trading post of Grøtøy, founded in 1690, and here once stood the Manshausen wharf – 65 metres long, three storeys high and with five hoist towers, in its time Northern Norway's largest timber building, where fish was salted and dried. The wharf was demolished after the trading post's bankruptcy in 1923.
The polar explorer Børge Ousland bought the island, the municipality approved his plans in 2012, and in June 2015 Manshausen Island Resort opened. Ousland has built cabins, a conference room, a quay and a sauna and has permission for more cabins; the older houses on the island date from the 1870s. According to Ousland, the cabins have received eight to ten international architecture awards. The resort won its first award as early as 2016.
03The Thief – the art hotel on Tjuvholmen
In Oslo, The Thief is located at Landgangen 1 on Tjuvholmen, the peninsula where thieves were executed in the 1700s and which today is one of Norway's most high-profile urban renewal projects. The hotel was designed by Mellbye Arkitektur Interiør, opened on 9 January 2013, and has a roof terrace. It is situated next to the Astrup Fearnley Museum, and thanks to a collaboration between them, the hotel has a large collection of contemporary art. Sune Nordgren, former director of Norway's national museum, selected paintings, prints, sculptures and installations for the rooms and public areas. In 2016, the hotel topped Condé Nast Traveler's ranking of the best hotels in Northern Europe.
04Building a trip around them
The Thief is a natural starting or finishing point in Oslo. Juvet is reached by flying to Ålesund and driving, and can be combined with the Geirangerfjord and Trollstigen during the summer half of the year. Manshausen is located in Nordland, south of Lofoten, and is well suited to combine with a trip further north. Those who want to see more of the same architectural tradition can follow one of the national tourist routes.
Also read about Oslo's waterfront, from the Opera House and Munch to Tjuvholmen and the drive through Lofoten along the E10. More destinations can be found among Metro Mode's destinations.