A-lab brings Oslo to Paris
Barcode
How can the growth of a company mirror the growth of a city?
Exhibition: “Between The Blue and The Green - Reconnecting Oslo”
Location: La Galerie d’Architecture, Paris, France
Date: 1th - 25th of February 2023
A-lab is short for «architecture laboratory», and the company was founded some 20 years ago by two entrepreneurs who wanted to break free from the traditional architectural mode of thought. Their claim was that in order for necessary innovation to happen, focus had to change from the finished object to the process. They created new interdisciplinary collaboration processes where all voices are heard and all options are possible – in both larger and smaller projects. One of the studio’s key tenets is to always expand their visions, and so their collaborators have been actors who welcome being challenged and whom A-lab can learn from and with. Through a curated selection, this exhibition will present how this alternativeness has resulted in projects that not only reflect Oslo’s new era of urban development, they have influenced it in a profound manner.
Stasjonsallmenningen, Bispevika
Photo: Hav Eiendom
A Paradigm Shift
Twenty years ago, being the fastest growing capital Europe, Oslo set a vision preserve its identity as the city between the green and the blue, and to strengthening it even further. A central aim was to reconnect the city to the fjord and to maintain the forest around it. The shift from a port city to a fjord city has ignited a paradigm shift in which one of the pivotal ideas is multi functional areas as the key to compact and more sustainable city. This vision has survived political changes and has been refined over time, as is apparent in several of the projects in the exhibition where these ideas are taken to a new level.
Galleri Oslo
Grønlikaia
Ground Level as Key
As shown in the exhibition, A-lab identified the importance of a wellfunctioning streetscape when materializing the city’s visions. The audience will see the evolution from A-lab’s first project, Barcode, Oslo’s first business district of high-rises, and the first part of the Fjord City, through Lilleakerbyen, where they flipped traditional master plan thinking on its head by programming the entire ground level before planning the buildings. The ideas and insights from research and testing in Lilleakerbyen where they introduced life in the river as a premise provider for the plan are taken further in the final piece of the transformation of Oslo’s harbor: the future development of Grønlikaia. A-lab insists that the new dimension of architecture should not separate nature and humans, but rather treat them as co-dependent entities in an eco-system. This implies that landscape and fauna, not only above water, but even life in the sea, should be included. The Grønlikaia project demonstrates how the city’s visions and ambition level have been refined.
Lilleakerbyen
Illustration: LPO
Kjelsåsveien
The Norwegian Collaboration Model
The Norwegian urban development model has sparked international interest. In Norway, the developers initiate the process and respond to the municipalities’ governing spatial plans through concrete development proposals. Thus, a larger part of the responsibility lies on the developers and on the architects who advice and design for them. A-lab faces this responsibility by challenging and investigating the plans and visions and the intensions behind them in order to find a common ground with the client and the municipalities, facilitating a close cooperation. Often, this process is triggered by reformulating the questions, asking «can we do more?», «what are the potential innovations to be made?», and most importantly, «what’s in it for the user?».
The consequences and innovations of A-lab’s experimental and inclusive approach can be seen in different scales of their projects – from urban plans to façade elements.
Vollsveien
Økern
Further information about the exhibition.
