Trevarefabrikken – ADC

You’d be forgiven for having not heard of Henningsvær. Found way up in the arctic circle, the archipelago in northern Norway is a small fishing village of just 510 people – and also the site of the latest project by Jonathan Tuckey Design (JTD). The west London-based studio has repurposed an industrial building dating back to the 1940s that originally served as a cod liver oil factory as well as being home to a carpentry workshop – ‘Trevarefabrikken’ roughly translating to ‘Timber Factory’. Now, though, the building has a new life as a hotel and cultural hub focused on wellbeing and leisure.

Work on this transformation began back in 2014, when the clients – Mats Alfsen, Martin Kállay Hjelle, Andreas Alfsen and Andreas Kállay Hjelle – purchased the former factory after seeing it was for sale while on a hiking holiday together. Working with locals, they made alterations and began using the derelict concrete shell to host an ocean sauna, yoga studio, café, a wood-fired pizza oven, as well as a music and cultural festival, known as Trevarefest, which runs each summer. (You can read the full story of Travarefabrikken’s beginnings here).

In 2019, the clients engaged JTD, being fans of the studio’s work noting the practice’s conversion of another industrial building in Berlin (now the Michelberger Hotel). In Henningsvær, the architects were charged with the task of dividing up the former factory’s open plan floor, maximising views out to the dramatic landscape and the village’s picturesque urban vernacular.

Interventions are light touch as per the clients’ desire to retain the factory’s strong industrial architectural language – even to the extent that old machines (their purpose unknown) have been left in their original location.

These mysterious machines can be found throughout newly inserted corridors, which have been kept purposefully ‘in the dark’ – with natural light only coming in via transom windows above the doors to hotel guest rooms, reflecting off resin-polished retained concrete floors. The logic behind this, say the architects, is so that these circulatory aspects of the building are in sync with the extreme environment it finds itself in; when visiting the site for the first time, Jonathan Tuckey arrived in December, when Henningsvær receives no sunlight.

“Our work with Trevarefabrikken not only involved physical work to the historic building fabric, but presented an opportunity to reconnect the physical building to its natural surroundings and local community,” Dan Stilwell, project lead at JTD, said in a statement. “Through the careful selection of materials and considered interventions, we were able to highlight the character and heritage of the existing architecture.”

Steel skirting has been used to line the hall in order to protect it from luggage, while bricks from the factory’s old chimney have been reclaimed and employed as steps on into guest rooms, with these being illuminated by delicate streams of light emanating from the room after passing through shutters during daylight hours – a move which was inspired an Edvard Munch painting of scattered moonlight cast upon the sea.

Hotel rooms and suites are located on the ground floor with social spaces – the building’s primary function ­– located above, comprising a restaurant and wine bar. In the rooms, existing services have been kept and left exposed along with concrete ceilings and floors. Warmth has been added through the use of timber joinery, being paired with a gentle colour scheme of seafoam green and cream. Joinery and further wooden detailing such as the shutters, use wood sourced from surrounding islands in the archipelago, while bespoke, curved wooden wardrobe doors were warped by an on-site team, being shaped as such to facilitate views of the bay and mountainous landscape.

On the level above, more has been retained, chiefly, timber funnels once used to aid the production of cod liver oil. Meanwhile, throughout, scars of the past punctuate other spaces, as can be seen with walls being painted white where original white tiles are missing, as well throughexposed imprints of timber boarding found in original concrete ceilings, with this being mirrored in the wooden flooring below.

Martin Hjelle, co-founder of Trevarefabrikken, spoke of the design process in a statement: “Working with JTD has shown us how important it is with an external eye from time to time, to pay attention to detail and embrace contrasts, so one does not forget to appreciate the beauty that often is right in front of us, and that with just a gentle push, can show itself suddenly so much clearer.”