The University of Stavanger Archaeological Museum and Statsbygg have invited architect and consultant teams to qualify for a new 6000m2 extension to the existing 1500m2 museum in Stavanger, Norway. Various Architects, together with engineers from Ramboll UK and Østengen & Bergo Landscape Architects are one of 6 international teams chosen to compete for this exciting project.
The existing museum quarter includes historic dairy and ice cream factories that are worthy of preservation, as well as extensions from 1980 and 1990. The museum complex has grown and changed over time, layer upon layer sediments in an archaeological excavation. Our proposal “Stratigraphy” creates a new cultural layers that carefully excavates the existing facility to assign new features with minimal disturbance or changes in existing buildings. The design focused on creating a compact and environmental building that fits in the housing neighborhood.
“Stratigraphy” is a three-story building composed of horizontal layers where exhibit spaces are combined with other functions to create life and synergies between program elements. Lecture and conference rooms are located centrally, close to the exhibition spaces to enrich each other. This creates opportunities for multipurpose use of these various functions.The museum’s new entrance invites visitors to an attractive and illuminated foyer with visual axis through the new vertical atrium towards the cultural garden in the backyard. The existing foyer is reprogrammed to a flexible exhibition space with a full-scale replica of a Viking ship. “Viking Room” connects exhibit in Dairy building to the new building and temporary exhibitions spaces in Gallery 2 and Gallery 3. The two new exhibition rooms are located along Peder Klows street in the 2nd and 3 floor. Both showrooms are flexible column-free spaces of a high technical standard that is suitable for all kinds of exhibitions. The back of house areas are significantly improved in terms of operation and security.
Various Architects are again invited to work on a prequalified competition in Åmot, Norway. Together with Kant Arkitekter and Østengen & Bergo, our team was one of 5 teams out of 15 invited to design a new school for the local community. Project teams were chosen based upon reference projects (30%), experience (35%), and a written understanding of the challenges of the project (35%). We are proud to have scored a full 100 points based upon our submitted materials, and look forward to the opportunity to compete for this project.
The other qualified teams include L2 Arkitekter with Gullik Gulliksen, Filter arkitekter with Grindaker Landskap, Ratio arkitekter with Bjørbekk og Lindheim and Arken arkitektkontor with Rambøll. There is a planned site visit and project kick-off on June 9’th, with competition delivery in mid-August. More details to come after the competition has been delivered.
Various Architects have delivered on our second invited school competition in Norway together with Kant Arkitekter and Grindaker Landksap. Nye Nørvasund School is a new 1-7 grade school with 3 parallel classes in an area outside of Ålesund. Our submission was an energy efficient and space effective building that integrated the school’s complex functional needs onto a site with beautiful views to the south.
Our project (motto:”Skolelys”) was designed to express a sense of community. The three main functions of the school are each given clearly defined areas bound together within a legible linear form. The 1st to 4th grade classes are placed to one side, 5th to 7th grades on the other, and the BASE (students with special needs) placed between the two to provide a truly integrated school. The school’s diagrammatically linear layout is bent in the middle to create a clear division between the parts and to create a main entrance. The school’s sports and recreation multi-hall is placed centrally opposite the bend, along with administration, an open cantina, library, music room, and a 90 seat auditorium over two floors.
The compact plan of the school makes for short internal connections and good daylighting. Individual entrances for each grade connect to changing rooms and lockers in the first floor that open onto central communication spaces where special instructional areas such as art and science are placed. The second floor contains open plan teaching areas. Each year’s area is defined spatially by the extruded boxes on the facades and roof. The extension of these areas also allows for good daylighting deep into the space, and light from multiple sides. There are no hallways in the building as such, with all of the areas having multiple functions. This way all of the available area can be used as part of the educational environment, either for groups or individual workspaces. This allows the school to achieve a very efficient brutto/netto factor of 1.3.
The competition was won by the project “Parallell” by Selbergs Arkitektkontor AS, Trondheim.
When Oslo Red Cross decided to move to new premises in the center of Oslo, Various Architects were contacted by the Project manager of Stella – Red Cross Centre for Women, Marianne Bockelie, to support in the design of the new office space. Various Architects completed the design work on voluntary basis, showing our support to the Red Cross organization which we strongly believe in.
The project is split over two floors. The lower floor houses Stella, with public areas including the reception, canteen, meeting rooms, and internet café, in addition to a few offices. The top floor is mainly office space for staff. The project was developed in close collaboration with Marianne Bockelie. The design focuses on flexibility by maximizing the open spaces. This allows natural lighting to flow through the whole floor.
The opening ceremony for Stella, attended by her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mette Marit, received considerable media attention, emphasizing the importance of woman as a valuable resource in the society, regardless of the cultural and ethnic background.
Two retiring couples have asked us to design a new house next to their existing one, where they can live together and enjoy their retirement.
This ca. 500m2 house is to be built on a 1000m2 site in Stabekk, an area in the municipality of Bærum, just outside of Oslo. Each family will have their own private residence and there will also be some common areas such as a winter garden. The clients are interested in creating an environmentally friendly and unique house that suits their unique needs.
Concept design complete. Schematic design to commence in Sept 2008.
Open international design competition for a 450 meter tall observation tower in Cheongna, Incheon, South Korea.
The design of the tower is inspired by hyperbolic geometry, elegant mathematical forms, and the dynamic yet infinitely balanced taegeuk. The result is an iconic sculptural form that is reminiscent of natural phenomenon. The lattice tower design removes the central core which is archetypical of tall observation towers and replaces it with a lightweight and transparent structure. Within the vast vertical interior space two spheroid volumes that contain the observation platform and educational / entertainment program are suspended in the void creating a tower that is both introvert and extrovert.
The Cheongna City Tower is to be a dramatic statement of design quality and technological innovation whilst also being of a form which is economic and practicable to build. We have attempted to create a dynamic tower proposal that will add an unique iconic element to the IFEZ Cheongna Central Lake Park development. This tower will surely become a symbol of economic growth in South Korea, a national landmark, and an international tourism destination.
We believe that our solution is unique to observation towers in that the tower functions are contained in volumes suspended on the inside of the structure, creating an opportunity for dramatic views both outside of, and inside the tower itself. In addition to high-speed inclined elevators on the tower interior we have also proposed a one-of-a-kind external panorama ride that would lift visitors to the top of the observation tower while slowly spiralling through 450 degrees of views.
This project has been designed to give an end result that is both sculptural, exciting, practical, and with economical use of material. Sculptural design sketches have been translated into circular and elliptical hyperboloids of revolution. These forms extend upwards to create a tower where the plan of the building is dynamic and changing in perfect balance about an invisible central point.
Various Architects, have been comissioned by ANS Mosseveien 16-20 to design a new signal building that will help define the edge of central Fredrikstad when approaching the city on Mosseveien. The project has been designed as an energy-effective and flexible combination of housing, showroom, and retail space.
The compact design of the building reflects and reinterprets the typologies of it’s surroundings to create a dynamic new mixed-use building in fredrikstad. The first floor plinth of retail space is planned to include a grocery store and mix of smaller shops or cafes in an long low volume in glass and concrete which relates to the large scale industrial buildings typical of this part of Fredrikstad. Four “house” extrusions have been carefully placed on the plinth as a transition to the scale of the historical wooden houses on Trosvikberget which lies behind the site to the north-east. The four volumes have been developed as flexible containers for apartments of varying sizes (clad in wood), or as potential “showroom” retail space (clad in metal) connected to the plinth below. A grass roof on the plinth provides private outdoor garden space for residents. The building’s form, placement, and facade treatment will help screen the existing housing behind from the increaded traffic noise on Mosseveien when the new bridge to Krokerøy opens. The directed openings between the houses maintain open views to the waterfront of the Floa river from Trosvikberget and providing good daylighting and for the new apartments.
The four week period of reguleringsvarsling (planning notice) has begun. Various Architects will be collecting input from neighbors and public instances as a part of the planning process. The completed planning application is scheduled to be sent in to Fredrikstad Kommune in early February.
Varslingsmateriale for naboer og offentlig instanser kan lastes ned på kommunens hjemmesider, eller her: varslingsbrev.pdf