WAF 2021 Visualisation Prize

A-lab project Dyst is a new neighborhood to be created in the countryside in Ås, a fast-growing new suburb of Oslo, Norway. On a plot surrounded by forest and nature, we are creating a green, car free neighborhood for big and small families with common activity spaces both indoors and outdoors, promoting strong relationships between neighbors and a safe, friendly place to grow up and grow old. 

The project builds on a row house typology developed by A-lab over the years – playing with a hybrid atrium house - over several floors. The whole neighborhood consists of these four different family homes that vary in size from broad to slim, ranging from one to three floors

Focusing on materiality and colours we want to create a sense of belonging. It should be easy for kids to find their way home. The soft and natural colour palette for Dyst is inspired by our colour registration from historical Norwegian wooden architecture. Both colours and varied use of materials is used to create identity for the different housing units and rows of houses. 

Oslo is growing and Ås is one of the areas which are growing in popularity because of a new fast railroad connection soon to be completed. When Dyst is completed the area will have 138 new houses. Building of the first stage is to start around the turn of the year 2021-2022.

The video is made in-house by A-labs 3D Visualizer/Multimedia Manager based on a model created by our architects. We’ve been using the model directly from SketchUp combined with Lumion to develop this animation. This workflow resulted in a very small gap between architects and visualizers and opened for better collaboration and in the end a better final product. Postproduction has been a big part of this animation to mediate the feeling and the details of the project, which has been achieved in After Effects. The Norwegian Oslo based architect firm A-lab has about 130 employees, among them three 3D visualizers who work with still and moving images. All material from the video is made in-house by A-lab. 

Client: Solon Eiendom