Northern Harvest Country Hotel

For my diploma I have decided to do a transformation project. The building I am transforming is a run-down dairy factory from the 50’s, located in Finnsnes, a little town an hour south of Tromsø. My mother grew up in this place, and during visits at my grandmother’s I have taken notice of the building with it’s significant wild surroundings. This reciprocal relationship, building and nature, becomes an important starting point for transforming the run-down building into programmed architecture, that plays a role in the local situation.

One could claim that an awareness and understanding of the very close link between the factory, and the cyclic local nature can enhance the transformed design. Thus the building, in it self, but also as a part of a broader situation gain efficiency.

Furthermore, and by opening up the building, allowing it a natural cyclic intervention, the aim is to “re-contextualise” or “socialise” the building with its surroundings. This implies an architecture responsive to cyclic changes that happens along a natural section line of 1.5km. Reaching from sea to mountain.

With different analysis of the natural section as a back-drop, I search for a blend between past and present- an understanding of a run down factory with its implications, a local natural situation, and a new responsive architecture; a setting programmed to be a Revised Country Hotel, where the existing factory becomes a part of a hybrid structure- a connector between sea and mountain.

The main architectural problem to be solved will be the shared link between nature old and new.

the projects was nominated for RIBA President medals