Hotel Green Solution House (Hotel GSH) will be the first climate-positive hotel in Denmark. It is located in Rønne on the Danish island of Bornholm, a popular tourist destination.
In 2021 it will open a new wing designed by 3XN architects and GXN (the sustainability-driven green think tank of 3XN architects) with 24 rooms, a conference room and roof spa – all built, clad and insulated using wooden materials that will not only be CO2 neutral, but climate positive.
Built, clad and insulated with wood, Hotel GSH's new hotel wing is expected to provide a positive climate footprint when built – something that has not been seen in a commercial building in Denmark before.
“The idea is simple – we believe that climate positive architecture combines good design and good business. Today destination tourism has got multiple dimensions. Hotel GSH will provide a blueprint for a climate positive future and this experience is a destination worth travelling for, which ultimately makes it a good business for our client”, says Kasper Guldager Jensen, architect, partner 3XN and founder of GXN.
Despite the COVID-19 crisis that has hit the hotel industry hard, Hotel GSH's Director Trine Richter expects a continuous flow of Danish companies and tourists to Bornholm for business and pleasure. At the same time, she hopes to show the way forward towards designing and using building materials other than steel and concrete, which are the primary materials used for construction today.
“Even though the industry is having a hard time right now, we are full of expectation that the Danes will continue to spend their holidays in Denmark, and that companies will continue to demand meetings and conferences with a sustainable set-up. We are excited about the prospect of setting new standards for Danish commercial construction with this new climate-positive building, where the load-bearing structure will be made from wood. Everyone talks about it – we build it,” says Trine Richter, Director, Hotel GSH.
Besides being all wood, the climate-positive hotel wing excels by upcycling waste products created from the offcut construction for the furniture and surfaces, while debris from local granite quarries in Bornholm are used for decoration in the conference room. The stone also helps to regulate the temperature in the conference room, as granite naturally stores heat and cold.
Furthermore, the building an all naturally ventilated via skylight windows and open areas, which eliminates the need for mechanical solutions. One of the hallmarks of the new building is that all the components are designed for reuse with reversable joints and will not end up as demolition waste as with conventional construction projects.
Hotel GSH opened in 2015 and was also designed by Danish architects 3XN and their green think tank GXN. Construction of the new climate-positive hotel wing at Hotel GSH will begin autumn 2020 and is scheduled to be completed before the summer of 2021.
To be consistent with the objectives of the 2016 Paris Agreement, cities need to ramp up their collective ambition, driving rapid and systemic change on the ground. As asked, architectures, and therefore the architecture firms, urgently need to focus themselves on an ambitious emissions reduction trajectory to achieve architectures carbon neutrality and climate resilience by 2050.
You can learn more about timber construction, following our series of interviews: “Benefits of timber building | part 1” and “Benefits of timber building | part 2”
Images courtesy: 3XN architects
