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You’ve heard about carbon neutral but how about ‘energy positive’? That’s exactly what this brand new hotel in the Arctic Circle promises to be.
Svart is an eye-popping circular hotel floating on stilts at the edge of a fjord close to Svartisen glacier in the Meløy area of northern Norway. When it opens in 2022, it’s should be able to produce more energy than it uses – a world first. Pretty incredible, huh?
The hotel’s design is sustainable and low-impact. It’s currently being built using local materials and is designed to blend into its rather beautiful surroundings. There’s even a sustainable farm on site, producing ingredients for the hotel’s four restaurants.
The best bit? ‘The hotel will save 85 percent of its annual energy consumption and it will harvest enough solar energy to cover both the hotel operations, including its boat shuttle operation, and the energy needed to construct the building,’ explains the team behind it. The plan is then for the hotel and everything associated with it to go entirely off-grid and zero waste, and sustain itself within five years of opening.
When it opens, Svart will have around 100 bedrooms, many of which will have enviable views of the fjord, thanks to the hotel’s circular design and vantage point. Guests will also find an indoor-outdoor spa – think sound therapy, cryotherapy and Nordic-inspired treatments – an education centre and design laboratory, plus two electric boats to ferry visitors around. As for what you could spend your stay doing, the hotel will put on activities like ice climbing on the glacier, yoga classes in the midnight sun, wildlife-spotting, diving and fishing.
Oh, and you could probably kill a day or two just admiring the hotel itself.
Find out more here.
Can’t wait until 2022? You can sleep in a human-sized birdbox high above this Norwegian fjord.