I have discovered this piece of wonderful architecture, when I skimmed through an architecture book. Now, for me, it looks more interesting, when I did some research on performing center and opera house that is related to my project ‘…for the…’ in my Design 102.

Oslo Opera House, construction began 2004 and ended 2007, designed by architect Snohetta, covering an area of 38 500 square metres, and is located at Oslo, Norway.

There are basically four diagrams that explain the building’s basic concept, derived from the architect.

“The Wave Wall”

Opera and ballet are young artforms in Norway. These artforms evolve in an international setting . The Bjørvika peninsula is part of a harbour city, which is historically the meeting point with the rest of the world.. The dividing line between the ground ‘here’ and the water ‘there’is both a real and a symbolic threshold. This threshold is realised as a large wall on the line of the meeting between land and sea, Norway and the world, art and everyday life. This is the threshold where the public meet the art.

“The Factory”

A detailed brief was developed as a basis for the competition. Snøhetta proposed that the production facitities of the operahouse should be realised as a self contained, rationally planned ‘factory’. This factory should be both functional and flexible during the planning phase as well as in later use. This flexibility has proved to be very important during the planning phase: a number of rooms and romm groups have been adjusted in collaboration with the end user. These changes have improved the buildings functionality without affecting the architecture.

“The Carpet”

The competion brief stated that the operahouse should be of high architectural quality and should be monumental in it’s expression. One idea stood out as a legitimation of this monumentality: The concept of togetherness, joint ownership, easy and open access for all. To achieve a monumentality based on these notions we wished to make the opera accessible in the widest possible sense, by laying out a ‘carpet’ of horizontal and sloping surfaces on top of the building. This carpet has been given an articulated form, related to the cityscape. Monumentality is achieved through horizontal extension and not verticality.

The conceptual basis of the competition, and the final building, is a combination of these three elements – The wave wall, the factory and the carpet.

Urban Situation

The operahouse is the first element in the planned transformation of this area of the city. In 2010 the heavy traffic beside the building will be moved into a tunnel under the fjord. Due to its size and aesthetic expression, the operahouse will stand apart from other buildings in the area. The marble clad roofscape forms a large public space in the landscape of the city and the fjord.

The public face of the operahouse faces west and north – while at the same time, the building’s profile is clear from a great distance from the fjord to the south. Viewed from the Akershus castle and from the grid city the building creates a relationship between the fjord and the Ekerberg hill to the east. Seen from the central station and Chr. Fredriks sq. The opera catches the attention with a falling which frames the eastern edge of the view of the fjord and its islands.

The building connects city and fjord, urbanity and landscape.
To the East, the ‘factory’ is articulated and varied.
One can see the activities within the building: Ballet reheasal rooms at the upper levels, workshops at street level. The future connection to a living and animated new part of town will give a greater sense of urbanity.

Choice of materials

The materials, with their specific weight, colour, texture and temperature, have been vital to the design of the building. Snøhettas architecture is narative. It is the materials which form the defining elements of the spaces. It is the meeting of the materials which articulates the architecture through varied detail and precision.

In the operahouse, three main materials were specified as early as the competition entry: White stone for the ‘carpet’, timber for the ‘wave wall’, and metal for the ‘factory’. During the continued work on the project, a fourth material, glass, which allows for the exposure of the underside of the ‘carpet’, has been given specific attention.

Stone

After an international tender competition, th italian marble, La Facciata, was chosen. This is a stone which, in common with other marbles, retains its brilliance and colour even when wet. It has the necessary technical quality in terms of stabitity, density, and longevity. The producer, Campolonghi, has had the professional ability, capacity, and experience necessary for such a large and complex project.
The accessibble area of the ‘carpet’ is approx. 18,000 m2. Its detailed design has been important: the architect desired that it should not interfere with the general dorm of the building but that it simultaneously was articulated enough to be ineresting at close quarters.
Together with the artists several alternatives were proposed before a particular non repetitive pattern with integrated raised areas, special cuts, various surface textures, and specific details were designed to articulate the main geometry.

Timber

Oak has been chosen as the dominating material for both the ‘wave wall’ and the main auditorium.
For the wave wall it has a light and varied surface. Oak is used throughout for the floors, walls and ceilings. The wave wall has a complex organic geometry made up of joined cone shapes. It is also an important acoustic attenuator within the foyer space. To achieve these goals it is made up of smaller elements which can deal with the changing geometry and provide acoustic absorption.
Inside the auditorium oak has been chosen for a number of reasons: It is dense, easily formed, stable and tactile.
The oak has been treated with amonia to give a dark tone. Here too oak is used for floors, walls, and ceilings, as well as balcony fronts, and acoustic reflectors.

Metal

An operahouse is designed and built to have a long lifespan. This means that a simple, modern metal cladding, such as we associate with factories and workshops, needs to be re-evaluated and redesigned.
After a consideration of aesthetics, longevity, maleability and the possibility to make very flat panel, aluminium wa chosen. To give the panels further quality, a collabarative process was begun with two artists.
The design team initially aimed for an industrial modulrity but that the panels themselve should have greater visual quality. The panels were punched with convex spherical segments and concave conical forms. The pattern was developed by the artists based on old weaving techniques.

Glass

The high glass facade over the foyer has a dominant role in the views of the building from the south, west, and north. Early in the project it was realised that this glass faced was more important than previously assumed, both during the day and night when it would act as a lamp illuminating the external surfaces.

The glass façade is up to 15 meters high. It was the architects intention to design a glass construction with an absolute minimum og columns, framing, and stiffening in steel. The solution was to use glass fins where minimised steel fixings are sandwiched inside the laminates.
The requirements for the glass’s stiffness increased due to the desire for large panels and slim joints where the panels meet.
Thick glass of this sort tends to be quite green rather than transparent. It was therefore decided that the façade of the operahouse would use low iron glass.

In all, eight different panels were designed which give a constantly changing effect depending on the angle, intensity and colour of the light playing on them.

Plan solution, general arrangement

The building is split in two by a corridor running north-south, the ‘opera street’. To the west of this line are located all the public areas and stage areas. The eastern part of the building houses the production areas which are simpler in form and finish. Comprising 3 to 4 storeys above ground. There is also a basement level – U1 – below this part of the building. The sub stage area is a further 3 storeys deep.

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To know more on the Oslo Opera House, like the spaces in the building (main auditorium, interiors), landscaping and courtyard, drawings and details, please refer to this site:

http://www.archdaily.com/440/oslo-opera-house-snohetta/

This is the source and the information posted here are obtained partially from the source mentioned above.

www.archdaily.com is certainly a good website to find new building designs, and many more, related to architecture, updated daily.

Fernando Romero/LAR Official Site

Lucio Fontana at work

Oslo Opera House, by the architecture firm Snohetta, 2007

Richard Meier, Rachofsky House (1996), now a gallery

Architect Teddy Cruz and his work on the US-Mexico Border

US (left) - Mexico (right) Border at the Pacific Ocean

Divulgada a lista das 341 obras indicadas à
décima-primeira edição do Prêmio Mies Van der Rohe.

No dia 19 de dezembro foi divulgada a lista das 341 obras indicadas à décima primeira edição do Prêmio Mies Van der Rohe . Dentre os indicados estão jovens escritórios e arquitetos já consagrados internacionalmente, como Alvaro Siza, MVRDV, Massimiliano Fuksas, Zaha Hadid e Snøhetta, cujo recém construído projeto para a Ópera de Oslo é um dos fortes candidatos ao prêmio.

A premiação, uma das mais importantes do calendário arquitetônico internacional, acontece a cada dois anos e é uma iniciativa da Comissão Européia e da Fundação Mies Van der Rohe. O prêmio, que também conta com sua versão latino-americana, busca promover a produção arquitetônica européia recente e incentivar os jovens profissionais. A cada edição, o juri premia um único projeto dentre aqueles indicados por especialistas e associações de arquitetos de toda a Europa.

Veja aqui a lista completa dos indicados.

La firma noruega, Snohetta, está a cargo del proyecto para el King Andaluziz Center of Knowledge and Culture. El lugar es Dhahran, un pueblo en medio del desierto. Prácticamente en la nada. La forma definitivamente recuerda a Stonehenge. En medio de la nada, casi parece un portal entre dos mundos. Unas formas muy atractivas, aquí los renders.

Part of my morning routine includes a trawl of the interwebs for news and titbits that interest me and may interest my friends. My interests are pretty varied, so I get around a bit. Last week featured the absolutely delightful Where the hell is Matt 2008, which I think I may need to watch again if I aim to make it through this week without spiralling into depression. What? you may ask. Let’s get into what this morning’s trawl yielded:

A few blog entries on the subject of Snohetta’s winning the competition to design the King AbdulAziz Center for Knowledge and Culture in Saudi Arabia. Snohetta are a marvellous architectural firm and I’m crazy for many of their designs (and a shout out to my excellent friend Mr Spurrett for pointing me in their direction). This one is actually very beautiful, and I do hope that it does get built. But a center for knowledge and culture in Saudi Arabia? Really? ‘Cause it looks to me more like the ‘King AbdulAziz Center for how I’m so rich I can spend craploads of money on glorifying myself through architecture’.

Pressing on, I found the intertubes vastly obsessed with some guy named Dmitri who allegedly left a totally psycho voice message on some girl’s phone. Actually, two totally psycho messages. I can’t even bring myself to link to it. JFGI if you must.

As ever, my favourite launchpads featured at least one entry each regarding people in the US or UK being hassled by cops or pseudocops for taking photographs or video. This whole thing is getting really weird. Did you know that people are regularly being hassled just for photographing or filming in a public place? Seriously: this guy has it on video. I mean, does this bother you all? Because I’m finding it increasingly disturbing.

And then there’s privacy issues. I picked this one up on Boing Boing this morning. And this is so not the weirdest one I’ve seen so far. It’s enough to throw me into high paranoia.

Last, but not least, there’s Zimbabwe. Oh Zimbabwe. We wait today to see whether the African Union will do anything at all. We’re not holding our collective breath, are we? Especially since they haven’t done anything about this guy – and I’m going to presume it’s because, for reasons I can guess at but don’t want to think about, he doesn’t get quite as much publicity as Mr Mugabe. Sorry, President-for-life Mugabe. Of course, you can always visit the website of the Zimbabwe government and leave your feedback. I’m sure they’d be pleased to hear from all of us.

So, this Monday morning, it appears to me that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. I’m not feeling cheery. I’m going to watch Matt dance his way around the world and hope it cheers me up a little.

Well, apparently you get this ridiculously nice opera house in Oslo, Norway. The Building was created by Norwegian architecture firm Snohetta, and is the country’s largest project of this kind since the 1300s (no shit). Just a staggering building, if i do say so myself…and I do.

(Lots more info at 2modern)

En relacción con el artículo anterior en el que hablabamos del Masterplan desarrollado por el estudio OMA y llamado Rak Gateway que se realizará en Ras Al-Khaimah, hemos encontrado otro interesante proyecto que estaba vez corre a cuenta de Snohetta y que nos ha dejado totalmente alucinados, sobretodo este video que recomendamos encarecidamente que veais.

El edificio cuenta con dos zonas, una la base en la que se encontrarán centro comerciales, salas de conferencias y exposiciones,además de zonas ajardinadas, y una segunda zona el rascacielos de 200 metros de altura el cual albergará a hoteles de lujo.

La construcción que contará con una superficie total de 270.000 m2 quiere convertirse en la puerta que de la bienvenida al Rak Gateway dado que la principal artería de comunicación que tendrá será la carretera que pasará por medio de este edificio, y en ella se quiere representar al desierto, con sus ondulaciones y oasis. El color blanco predomina y solo se rompe con las zonas ajardinadas.

Toda esta nueva zona se encontrará a tan solo 150 km de Dubai, lo que quiere decir que en el transcurso de unos años recibirá la visita de turistas en busca de arquitectura expectacular que posiblemente visiten tanto esta nueva ciudad con Dubai.

Este edificio nos ha recordado en cuanto a distribucción, lo de contar con una base y luego un rascacielos y las formas onduladas a otro edificio que se construirá en Dubai y del cual hemos hablado y es el The Wave Tower del estudio A-cero.

Nos estamos mudando, puedes ver nuestra nueva web en www.arquict.es, además de cosas nuevas podrás ver también todos los post y comentarios de esta web, esperamos tu visita.

Inaugura no dia 13 de abril a nova Ópera de Oslo, projeto do escritório norueguês Snøhetta, que fez a fantástica embaixada da Noruega em Berlim. Ainda não liberaram nada de material do projeto e as poucas fotos que estão rolando na internet foram liberadas pela própria administração da Ópera.

O projeto é lindo, obviamente, mas o tão festejado design escandinavo já fez tanta escola que este prédio acaba ‘entrando para o clube’ de uma série que vem pipocando na Europa nesta década. O exterior silencioso, límpo, quase gélido, criando paisagens minimal-futuristas, domina o horizonte e não permite que a cidade interfira nas perspectivas.

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O interior, ao contrário, é fluido e sinestésico. O uso de materiais aquece e oferece um pouco de matéria orgânica para não ser frio como o lado de fora. As curvas, as texturas e a iluminação criam ritmos sensuais que deslizam de longos percusos para espaços desproporcionalmente grandes, causando aquele estranhamento de que o espaço interno não condiz com o volume externo.

Parece que a arquitetura contemporânea está cansada do pós-modernismo e resolveu criar grandes espetáculos egomaníacos como faziam os modernistas. Como disse antes, mais uma obra magistral. MAIS uma. Talvez seja a hora de procurar outras fórmulas, não?

Im April wird Oslos neues Opernhaus von Snøhetta eingeweiht und dem Spiegel online ist das eine Nachricht wert.

In April, Oslo’s new opera will open, constructed by Snøhetta, and German weekly Spiegel online thinks this worth mentioning.

Snøhetta? Na, die von der Bibliothek in Alexandria! Ich muss gestehen, der Name Snøhetta war mir vorher kein Begriff!

Snøhetta? Well, remember the new library of Alexandria? It’s them! I have to admit, I didn’t know the name Snøhetta before!

Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 2002 (photogallery)

2002 wurde in Zusammenarbeit mit der Unesco eine neue Bibliothek von Alexandria eröffnet. Das Projekt will an die antike Bibliothek von Alexandria erinnern, die die größte Sammlung ihrer Zeit war. Bis heute gibt es immer wieder Kontroversen um ihre Ende in spätantiker Zeit sowie um Rekonstruktionsversuche.Die moderne Bibliothek will zugleich aber auch in die Fußstapfen des Vorbilds treten: Sie ist für 8 Millionen Bände angelegt und umfasst auch ein Internetarchiv.

Spektakulär ist hier an der gläsernen Bibliothek vor allem die Dachlandschaft, bei dem Olafur Eliasson – ein dänisch-isländischer Projektkünstler und zur Zeit einer der wichtigsten – mitgewirkt hat.

In 2002, a new library of Alexandria was opened in collaboration with UNESCO. The Projekt wants to remember the antcient library of Alexandria, housing the largest collection of its time. To this day, there are controversies about the library’s end in Late Antiquity as well as about possible reconstructions. At the same time, the modern library wants to keep up with its example: It is built to house 8 million volumes and also encloses an internet archive.

Above all, the glass library’s roof scape is spectacular. Olafur Eliassin – a Danish-Icelandic project artists and recently one of the most important ones – contributed to its concept.

Das norwegische Büro Snøhetta mit Sitz in Oslo und New York hat heute rund 80 Mitarbeiter und betreut Architektur-, Landschaftsarchitektur und Innenarchitektur-Projekte weltweit. Snohetta arbeiten interdisziplinär und versuchen, möglichst vielfältige Perspektiven in ihre Projekte einfließen zu lassen. Sie wollen eine Verbindung von Architektur und Landschaft erreichen und auf „Design-Schnickschnack verzichten“.

Snøhetta ist übrigens der Name des höchsten Bergs Norwegen und heißt wohl soviel wie „Schneekoppe“.

The Norwegian office Snøhetta, based both in Oslo and New York, has around 80 employees and is in charge of architectural, landscape architectural and interior design projects all over the world. Snohetta work interdisciplinary and try to combine as many different perspectives as possible in their projects. They want to reach a connection between architecture and landscape and “dispense with design bric-a-brac”.

The Norwegian office Snøhetta, based both in Oslo and New York, has around 80 employees and is in charge of architectural, landscape architectural and interior design projects all over the world. Snohetta work interdisciplinary and try to combine as many different perspectives as possible in their projects. They want to reach a connection between architecture and landscape and “dispense with design bric-a-brac”.

By the way, Snohetta is the name of Norway’s highest mountain and probably means something like “Snow Mountain”.

Zu Snøhettas Projekten zählen: / Among Snøhettas projects are:

Norwegische Botschaft Berlin, fertiggest. 1998

Serpentine Gallery Pavillon 2007, London (another coop with Olafur Eliasson)

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WTC Cultural Museum am Ground Zero, Museum Pavillon (Entrance to Museum), New York

More information about Snohetta at archilab