Oslo Opera House
The opera house rises out of the fjord like an ice floe of white marble, and you can walk on the roof all the way to the top. The interior is clad in oak. The building showed how a cultural venue can be a public space for everyone, not just for the audience.
The Norwegian National Opera had long lacked a building of its own, and in the late 1990s the Storting decided to build a new opera house in Bjørvika, a harbour and traffic area on the Oslofjord. An international competition was held in 2000 and won by the Norwegian architectural practice Snøhetta. Construction lasted from 2003 to 2008, and the building was inaugurated in April 2008. The opera house marked the beginning of a major transformation of Bjørvika into a new district. The architects wanted the building to be a public place for everyone, not only for opera-goers, and the roof was therefore made accessible on foot. The roof and sloping surfaces were clad in white Italian marble from Carrara, and artists helped to shape the pattern in the stone.
The building has three main parts: the sloping roof rising out of the water, the large auditorium at the heart of the building and the fly tower rising above everything, clad in aluminium panels in a pattern. Beneath the roof lies a large foyer with glass walls facing the fjord, and in the middle of the foyer stands the outer wall of the auditorium, an undulating oak wall known as the wave wall, which leads the audience up towards the auditorium. The auditorium is horseshoe-shaped and lined with dark oak, which gives warmth and good acoustics. Behind it are workshops, rehearsal rooms and offices, where the opera’s sets and costumes are made. In the fjord in front of the building floats a glass sculpture by Monica Bonvicini, She Lies.
The opera house quickly became one of Oslo’s most visited places, and the roof is used by the city’s residents and tourists for walks, sunbathing and the view. In 2009 the building received the European Union’s prize for architecture, the Mies van der Rohe Award. The marble has proved difficult to maintain, and some slabs have had to be replaced. Bjørvika has since filled with new buildings, among them the Munch Museum and the new Deichman main library, and the area has become Oslo’s new cultural centre. The opera house has become a model for how cultural buildings can become public spaces. In Sweden, too, it has been discussed as an example when cities have planned new waterfront cultural centres, and it shows how Nordic architecture can unite landscape, materials and public life.