Lady of the Sea

Christian added this project

The establishment of new institutions as framework for regeneration opens the opportunity to open new integration links to the existing urban fabric. It is in this light that the proposal has opted to abstract the particularities and contradictions that seem to currently segregate Bjørvika with Oslo’s city centre. This is a relationship of opposition, it is not a dialectic impasse, but more of a parallel isolated discourse. At the moment they co-exist in a shared history that doesn’t really correspond to the city’s present understanding of itself.

The new Opera transforms the area, isolated it is an urban island, its own topography which presents a problem of integration. Our proposal is based on superimposing a mathematical constraint to a new city vision established in the current masterplan that can only be projected onto the existing urban fabric. It is the shift, the movement and a dispersal of experiences that ground the basic principles of the morphology and are then translated into the public realm. The Fjord City Resolution interestingly tries recovers a natural aspect of Bjorvika that currently seems to be secondary to the infrastructure and the urban skyline to the west.

The intent was to use this concealed nature to interweave it with strands of culture, for geometries to link with experience. An interwoven strategy of services, transport links and public spaces form the ground fabric that continuous into the building, creating contrasted and varied experiences. Shape is derived from a similar process of opposition, arranging concave-convex configurations, ripplelike, to arrive at basic lines that then are translated into surfaces by systematic modification. This new eastern-centre, framed by the new Diechmaske Main Library, Oslo’s Opera and the new Munch-Sternesen museum, are in our proposal understood within this system of gradated curves and thus allowing an implicit integration at all levels.

The architecture of the new museum, framing the southern tip of Paulsenkaia & Bjørvikutstikkeren distorts inwards to create sheltered space, public and private in a sense that it will relate as an extension of the new museum, hinting at the collections inside. This new concave space extends within the building where large windows establish vistas towards the south. The formal principles of opposing curves are then serially modified to rearrange curves as straight lines. The intention is to emphasis the contrast, of describing the space as tangential and allowing for fluidity within the constraints of traditional geometry.

Formally, the lines that are lofted from east to west are rotated systematically north and south. This mesh allows for curvature were the intention for concentrating activity, for more extrovert areas and closing itself into a simpler system for areas of introspection. This tension is express both in the interior and in the exterior as a loop, a twisting ribbon. The mathematical constraints of the operation allow for subtle adjustment to the complementary urban requirements, to the commons and the Havnprommenade, to the inevitable flux of visitors that will converge on this new fjord eastend of Oslo, and it is these distortions that bind the object without having to delineate operational boundaries.

The proposed urban factors work at all levels, and after a series of re-arrangements site in relation to the new Bjørvika traffic system and the fjord tunnel link we have decided to lift the building to allow the extension of the quays. The main body of the programme will be suspended on a net of catenary arches that span the underside touching ground at four points and linking the quay with the interior. The underside of the new museum will shimmer with the tide and the movement of the water and also allows integration at different vertical levels. The footprints are carefully position to avoid the tunnel and follow the same formal principles of curvatures. Four large catenary arcs working together are sufficient to suspend the new structure, some of these pillars would include vital programme and secure access. They are a metaphorical sound and light radar, an artificial geological formation.

The geometric transformation and shift of lines and curves adapts to the determined view corridors. The footprint that these view corridors allow restrict the volume and we have tried to keep them intact towards the north of the museum site and contigious to B4. However, the proposal allows for some tangential intrusion from the south side, lifting the building and creating a mini view corridor within the space outlines the vista. The view corridors south of A11 are maintained at ground level by suspending the building volume. This recourse works in tandem with bringing the city into the museum by careful and controlled gradation of spaces and of uses, from public, to public art/museum, to entrance area and to the lobby that opens up towards the south and frames the fjord as it catches sunlight.

The design principles that inform the new Munch Museum and the Sternesen Museum Collection can be applied formally to B1 and B4, working with the T-BRA restriction to create zone envelopes for future developments. B4 in Paulenskaia in particular at ground floor level can be arranged to complement the museum access, opening vistas and creating a varied and porous pedestrian flow from Operagata to the new Museum. Vehicular access is restricted to the north east area of B4 where Operagata would feed any local traffic service this plot and also the museum’s vehicular access requirement.

An underground limited carpark can be established along the planned underground drop off area. This underground drop off area liberates Paulenskaia with the possibility of a continuous public realm, integrating the Commons, the Havnpromenade and the new Museum’s access ramps. The sound part of Paulenskaia connecting directy to the museum will be an intersection of routes but at the same time form a pause where different nodes of transportation can converge. In this light, we propose a new pier to the east for local or small scale naval traffic. This pier is an extension of the Cable Car provision concentrating arrival and distributing pedestrian flow through and around the ground floor at B4. To the west Paulenskaia is dotted with artificial ecologies, islands that play with the boundary of the Aker River on a North South Axis, counterpoints in what is no longer just linear flow of pedestrians. We want to emphasize the possibility of B23, the public realm bordering B4 to have a particular character and not to become a mere transition space towards the new Munch Sternesen Museum.

2 years ago

Christian added company Zaha Hadid Architects
2 years ago

Christian added company HAV Eiendom AS
2 years ago