Hotel Experimenta by Jan Konings

Jan Konings’ Hotel Experimenta is a temporary hotel located on the northern IJ riverfront in Amsterdam. It can be understood as an inverted hotel: the neighbourhood as a whole functions as the hotel, the streets become the hotel corridors, and the inhabitants act as hosts who offer guests services, activities, and excursions.

Every booking included a bicycle and a reason to use it. A map pointed guests towards places to eat, do their laundry, get a haircut, or go for a swim. A night cost €50 for one person or €60 for two, and one of the packages included dinner with a local resident. Konings invited guests to record their stay in a guestbook, where they could leave a few words or pictures of what they’d discovered.

Hotel Experimenta is not a conventional hotel, but rather a stay that facilitates both spontaneous and organised encounters with people. It connects the familiar with the unfamiliar and strengthens the social and economic structure of the area. In this sense, Hotel Experimenta can be understood as a new form of public space.

Hotel Experimenta ran from 18 September to 2 November 2008 as part of Droog Event 2: Urban Play. 

---

Jan Konings was trained as an industrial designer but has worked primarily as a designer in public space. He was one of the founders of Schie 2.0, together with Lucas Verweij and Ton Matton, and previously formed the design office Konings & Bey with designer Jurgen Bey.

His work crosses the boundaries of city planning, landscape design, art, ecology, and design. At the time of Hotel Experimenta, he was working on the design of a park on a former garbage disposal site in Haarlem and a hangout place for teenagers in a newly built area in The Hague. Hotel Transvaal, one of his ongoing projects in The Hague, an area undergoing major reconstruction, served as the inspiration for Hotel Experimenta.