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Norway’s Ydalir Hotel created by Lund+Slaatto Architects is the first university campus hotel in the country

By • Jan 13, 2019

In Norway’s city of Stavanger, Lund+Slaatto Architects has built Ydalir Hotel, the countries first fully functioning hotel located on an actual university campus.

On the edge of the land for The University of Stavanger, the building sits steady, made from visually pleasing but durable materials. Ydalir Hotel is made primarily from brick, concrete, copper, and oak. Besides contributing well to the campus aesthetically, the hotel gives it an added revenue stream as well, boosting its small local economy and creating jobs.

The hotel consists of 59 rooms in total, a few of which are larger suites with fully functioning kitchens that have been adapted for slightly more long term stays. On the ground floor, the space is more diversified because it also features a few public rooms intended for the university’s use, like the public thesis defence room meant for PhD students.

Rather than making it a statement building, designers actually wanted to make this unique hotel blend quite cohesively with its surrounding, so they split it into three “cubic volumes” or separately standing buildings. Each one is place at a different angle, creating a unique space between them that gives the hotel rooms inside each additional sunlight and better views.

Luckily, guests don’t have to actually walk outside to get from building to building, since Norway gets quite cold in the winter. Instead, they can use the high glass bridges that form part of why the hotel is so visually unique in addition to being fantastically functional. Because the bridges are glass, they’re afforded fantastic views of the campus and its surroundings as well!

An additional ambition of this guest project was to create a durable, high quality building that will age with dignity. Part of the process of achieving this goal was was paying attention to angles right down to the millimetre during building. The places where materials shift from brick to glass on the exterior, for example, are measured extremely precisely in order to create as subtle as possible a transition between inside and outside.

Inside the hotel, warm colours and materials are used to create a sense of comfort. These schemes have a clear connection to the hotel’s surroundings through the big windows featured in the building’s facades. The actual guest rooms are characterized through the extensive use of stunning wood pieces, combined with concrete and oak parquet floors to break things up visually while still keeping that rather natural aesthetic alive and well.

Photographs by Sindre Ellingsen

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