When I was still living in Oslo, my daily walk to work took me by the KNA hotel and for some reason every time I wondered, how the hotel would be. Might have been the odd name. While planning my most recent visit to Oslo, the hotel suddenly had a good offer and I took the chance to get my curiosity quenched.

First things first: KNA is the Kongelig Norsk Automobilklub, the Royal Norwegian Automobile Club. It appears that the club used to have its headquarters where the hotel is now.

This mystery solved, there still was something odd with the hotel. It took me a full night and a breakfast to figure it out. There is not a single right angle in the building’s layout. Whether it was designed by an apprentice architect who hadn’t gotten as far as rectangles just yet or whether this is an example of the praised Scandinavian design, I cannot say. However, it is actually quite a brilliant idea. By subtly using obtuse angles, you can mess with perspective just enough to make the room appear larger.

Which may or may not have been the reason why I repeatedly ran into things.