Oslo-Opera House

Opera House in Oslo, Norway marks the country’s cultural heritage. Designed by Snohetta, it is a Norwegian Opera and Ballet. 38,500sqm building started its construction in 2004. It consists of 1,100 rooms, one of which has about 1350 seat capacity. Initial planning cost was about 4.4 billion, but it took only 300 millions when finished in 2007.

The Opera house design consists of three main elements, “Wave Wall, Factory, and the Carpet”. This design has won international competition in 2000, where the participating design should meet their specific requirement which was fulfilled by Opera House.

The Wave Wall

The Opera House located on the Bjorvika Peninsula just besides the Oslo Fjord, it divides the land from the bay like a wall. It also makes the visitor to spend their time peacefully watching the water stretch out.

The Factory

The buildings facilities at the Opera House are well planned and meet the requirement of a rationally planned “Factory”. This setting provides more flexibility for the end users as the number of rooms and room groups were planned very well. This also improved the building functionality without affecting the architecture.

The Carpet

In order to win the competition, the design should meet high architectural quality and also express monumental structure. To achieve monumental structure the architects designed the Opera House to be accessible in the widest possible sense, by laying out a “Carpet” of horizontal and sloping surfaces on top of the building.

Choice of materials

The architects were very specific about choosing the materials for the Opera House. They clearly knew that only with specific weight, colour, texture and temperature will make the Opera a unique structure. They decided to use three materials which was also a specification for the competitions entry. They used white stone for the ‘Carpet’, timber of the ‘Wave wall’ and metal for the ‘Factory’. At the final stage they also included ‘Glass’ which allows for the exposure of the underside of the ‘Carpet’.

Stone

The architects used the Italian marble, La Faccita for the Carpet Layout. It has the necessary technical quality in terms of stability, density, and longevity. It retains its brilliance and colour even when it is wet. The ‘Carpet’ is approx 18,000 m2 required more marble which was supplied by Campolonghi.

Wood

The main auditorium and the ‘Wave wall’ were built using Oak. It is used throughout for the floors, walls and ceilings. The auditorium consists of foyer space where acoustic attenuation is priority, and the wave wall had complex organic geometric structure and joined cone shapes. To achieve these Oak has been chosen, which is dense, easily formed, stable and tactile. It has been treated with ammonia to give a dark tone.

Metal

The Opera House is designed and built to have a long lifespan. Hence the architects decided to use metal that would long last. So the modern metal cladding associated with factories and workshops were re-evaluated and redesigned to suit the needs. After a consideration of aesthetics, longevity to make very flat panel, aluminum was chosen. The panels were further enhanced with collaborative process by two artists.  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

Initial plan is to use only above three materials, to further enhance the structure’s design ‘Glass’ have been introduced in the façade over the foyer. It acts as the lamp illuminating the external surfaces both during the day and in night. The façade stood up to 15 meters high and used minimum steel fixings. Finally this structure gives a monumental and cultural heritage it to Norway.

Sources: Archdaily.com, Arcspace.com