It's summer, for some the vacation has already begun, and for all - the pandemic is still going on. Due to restrictions in the hotel industry and the need for isolation, already last summer capacious campers triumphed, in which many Poles traveled miles, visiting the most diverse corners of the country and Europe. This year an original alternative appeared on the market - unusual mobile hotels arranged in... old, withdrawn from the market refrigerated trailers of the isotherm type, huge quantities of which are imported to Poland. The Good Spot company is responsible for the idea of adapting the trailers, while designers from the Wroclaw studio We Know Each Other are responsible for the implementation.
Mobile hotels were created in old refrigerated trailers
Photo: We Know Each Other, Izabela Retka
The mobile hotels are parked in selected locations during the holiday season, when not in use - they drive away, leaving the plot intact. The chain offers four types of apartments, each equipped with a full-size bathroom, kitchenette, terrace and air conditioning. Aleksandra Majdzik, architect and co-owner of the studio We Know Each Other, talks about the unusual project.
Ola Kloc: You proposed to adapt disused refrigerated trailers into mobile hotels. How did the idea for this project come about?
Aleksandra Majdzik: We got a lot of positive energy from the investors, namely the guys from Good Spot. They came to us with a crazy idea to create Poland's first chain of mobile hotels in old refrigerated trailers. They totally bought us with the vision of upcycling, i.e. taking old trucks from the graveyards and giving them a second life. The rest was up to us. We decided to juxtapose the excitement of the trip with the nature of the space we work in, which is simply a refrigerated truck.
projections of four solutions
© We know each other
Ola: You have created four concepts - handicapped-accessible, family-accessible, twin trailer and restaurant trailer. How did you manage to functionally arrange such long and narrow spaces?
Alexandra: Thanks to the fact that we had a strong idea, it was easy to arrange a seemingly difficult space. Thinking about functionality, we were inspired by life in RVs, where often furniture buildings are located on the sides, and we have free space in the middle. This saves a lot of space and the user has more freedom. Therefore, all the functional layouts of the four trailers follow this principle. We also wanted variability and the possibility to use the interior in different ways. There are many solutions that allow, for example, to modify the number of beds or the layout of equipment. All this to make living in a small space more comfortable.
Left: seating area in the trailer; right: bathroom in the mobile hotel
Photo: We know each other, Izabela Retka
Ola: As you point out, from the outside you made sure to capture the character of woodie or steel airstream vehicles, what kind of atmosphere did you want to achieve inside?
Aleksandra: The emotion and feeling of nostalgia associated with travel are extremely important to us in this project. That's why, from the outside, the character of the crazy woodie vehicles or the iconic steel airstream is strongly felt, while inside, we combine the coziness of the campers and the coldness of the coolers. In the center of each hotel room is a bathroom, which alludes to its cool character and reminds users of the history of their hotel room. The living area is warmer, and we used a stripe of color characteristic of tourist vans to divide the interior in half. You could say we combined coolness with nostalgia.
Ola: Thank you for the interview.
kitchen in a mobile hotel
Photo: We know each other, Izabela Retka
