The World's Smallest Hotel

As the current location of the World’s Smallest Hotel collides with a pumping station, which is to be built by Sør-Varanger municipality on the same spot, the hotel will be moved to a storage area until it will get a new allotment. (02.05.2011)

Pikene på Broen invited Finnish architect and artist Sami Rintala to make an artwork for the Barents Art Triennial in 2005. Sami decided that it would be more appropriate to commision something useful. The building was constructed in ten days, (“completed tree minutes before the opening,” says Rintala) with the help of three architecture students. The hotel is a stark rectangular box, with a large capital H stenciled on the gable wall as the only sign of its function. The exterior is dark timber weatherboarding, with one wall punctuated by the door and four windows which look out over the Barents Sea. Rintala chose lack paint for the exterior to fit into the dark rocky landscape, and the interior by contrast, is bright white, to make the most scarce natural light in the winter. Inside the ground floor is a lobby and lounge, with two bedrooms (one single and one double) on the upper floor. The whole place is heated by a stove, which sits on the ground floor. The choice of a hotel as a project was appropriate to triennial, the theme of which was “Border Dialogues”, an exploration of the concepts of borders. The town of Kirkenes is in the Barents region, which includes the northernmost outposts of Sweden, Finland, Norway and Russia.

“In my view the seamen, the fishermen, hunters, hikers and fortune-seekers following through the town need a place to rest that would suit their economies that change like the weather,” says Rintala rather wistfully. This project understands that the population of a place like Kirkenes is transitory, but in making strong connections between the building and landscape, Rintala has also created a building, that while tiny, is absolutely at home in its context.

The Hotel Kirkenes lays claim to being the smallest hotel in the world. Set in the harsh landscape of northern Norway, it is in total just 27 square meters of enclosed space, with only two bedrooms and no electricity or running water. Its designer, Finnish architect and artist Sami Rintala, writes: “All unnecessary luxury is eliminated: no satellite channels, mini-bar or brass doorknobs”.

The Hotel was nominated in the category “Architecture” by the Forum AID Award 2007 (Best Nordic architecture, interior design and product design).

Jury´s motivation states:
“Few buildings have such a reduced expression as the Hotel Kirkenes. The simplicity comes from the barren surroundings. Nonetheless, the hotel is characterized by humor and humanism. The jury would be happy to come for a visit to this welcoming outpost, but perhaps not in winter when the experience might be just a bit too Calvinistic”.

Architect: Sami Rintala.
Construction Team: Sami Rintala with George Lovett, Borghild Hulsvik, Anne Kathrine Vabø.
Total area: 22 sq m.
Period of construction: 10 days.
Completed: October 2005.
Sponsors: Nicopan (windows), Jotun (paint).