Gold Architecture, Building and Structure Design · 2021
Aurora Lodge Chalet
- A' Design Award 2021 Gold Winner in Architecture, Building and Structure Design
- Awarded April 15, 2021
- CLIENT: Snorre Stinessen Architecture
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 26,837
- Verification code 599E424C34 · Verify this award
About Aurora Lodge Chalet
Aurora Lodge is a chalet and small lodge located in the remote Lyngen Alps in Norway. The main building stretches across a natural plateau behind a single line of trees and holds a communal living space, five bedrooms with private bathrooms, and a kitchen and dining room. A separate suite and a sauna stand along the path and across a creek. The tilted A-frame form aligns the roof with the terrain, giving privacy on one side and open views on the other. Concrete floors, a steel and wood structure, copper cladding and tall structural glazing suit the exposed coastal site.
Aurora Lodge Chalet by Snorre Stinessen represents a distinguished achievement within the contemporary tradition of contextually responsive architecture that seeks meaningful dialogue between built form and natural environment, a philosophical approach with deep roots in regional building traditions that have long understood the necessity of creating protective shelter while maintaining profound visual and experiential connection to surrounding landscapes. The work demonstrates remarkable compositional intelligence in its angular profile that appears to echo the natural topography of sloping terrain while asserting its presence as a deliberate human intervention, the descending roofline creating dynamic visual movement that guides the eye across the facade while simultaneously suggesting accommodation to prevailing winds and weather patterns. Technical accomplishment manifests particularly in the masterful deployment of materials where warm timber cladding establishes an organic material dialogue with the natural surroundings while extensive glazing transforms the structure into a luminous beacon during twilight hours, the transparency dissolving conventional boundaries between interior domesticity and exterior wilderness. The chromatic relationship captured in this image reveals the architect's sophisticated understanding of how built structures perform across different temporal conditions, with the warm amber interior illumination creating compelling counterpoint to the pervasive blue hour atmosphere, suggesting themes of refuge and warmth against the magnificent but indifferent vastness of winter landscapes. Thematic resonances extend to enduring human concerns with shelter, contemplation, and the meditative possibilities of dwelling in close proximity to natural grandeur, the extensive glazing functioning not merely as environmental barrier but as framing device that choreographs specific relationships between inhabitant and landscape. The work invites consideration of how architectural form might embody philosophical positions regarding human relationship to nature, neither dominating the landscape nor disappearing within it, but rather establishing a dignified presence that acknowledges both the power of natural environments and the legitimacy of human needs for comfort and protection. One might contemplate how this structure transforms the experience of seasonal extremity from hardship into opportunity for aesthetic appreciation and meditative dwelling.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Located in the remote Lyngen Alps, this project is partly private retreat and a small lodge. Organized within a main structure comprising two units and terraces, a separate suite and a sauna across the creek. With respect for the nature the design endeavors to complement the site, with the main building stretching out across the natural plateau, just behind a single line of trees. High ceilings and seamless glass walls invite the sky and landscape into the building.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Main building: Length 32 x Width 8 x Height 6m
- Tags
- chalet, lodge, cabin, A-frame, shelter, Lyngen
- Production Technology
- Floor and foundations are combined in a concrete slab. Combined steel and wood construction ensures a solid, but slim envelope in spite of hurricane wind loads and massive snow loads. Buildings are clad in copper to withstand the salinity of the ocean air. Insulation, vapor barrier and complete construction ensures air transmission and construction breathing. Glass panels are upto six meters in height, structural glazing, glued directly to the steel pillars.
- Design Challenge
- The creative challenge was in the making of a design that both respects and embraces the fantastic natural surroundings. The technical challenges include construction and logistic planning for a very remote and inaccessible site, very limited building season etc and a very advanced construction demanding millimeter precision in all elements, the craning from a base 100m away and 50m higher of 6x2,5m glasses to be placed down between steel constructions on a very exposed site.
- Project Duration
- Construction started July 2020, completed February 2021. Planning actually started 10 years earlier with the architect buying the plot privately and eventually developing a project for sale. The main layout is in line with the original design, although modifications where made in the detail planning upto construction.
- Operation Flow
- The main unit houses a fully independent communal living space, five bedrooms, all with private, en-suite bathrooms. The northernmost unit houses the main kitchen and dining room, designed like a winter garden observatory to provide fantastic views across the sea to the horizon.
Along the path to the main house, a separate annex/suite follows the same design approach. Across the creek, the sauna sits as a separate building with its interior all focused on the view towards the ocean. - Research
- The plot was originally bought more than 10 years previously by the architect privately, and much time has been spent on site to understand the terrain, seasons, winds, and other factors thoroughly analysed prior to the design of the project, positioning of buildings, landscape design, pre-production design, production, infrastructure, logistics planning and construction planning. The design even encompasses complete furnishing and equipment as a lodge and complete hospitality planning.
- Inspiration
- The concrete floor and terraces are an extension of the natural terrain. A simplistic A-frame design echoes a fundamental shelter; however here tilted back from the seaside to an angle where the roof is aligned with the surrounding terrain, to provide privacy on one side and panoramic views on the other.
- Image Credits
- All Images: Snorre Stinessen
Colors of Aurora Lodge Chalet
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