Den Norske Opera, Oslo

Competition proposals for the Norwegian Opera House, including ballet school and urban fjord-side park.
The project is the culmination of a spatial journey from city to fjord and a catalyst for new development in Bevrika. The Opera is indentifable by the luminous mass of small auditorium and ballet school. The fjord frontage is an edge condition with outdoor performance space, projected images, cafes and walkways on floating decks, of moored boats and harbourside activity.
The principal auditorium is framed within a glazed foyer, where lifting floor planes, canted stairway and hollowed ground plane lead to seating levels. The auditorium is veiled in atertiary surface, to postpone revelation as a prelude to the suspension of disbelief and the crucial curtain rise.
Idealised reduction of form, solidity, transparency, light and texture provide diaphonous frameworks for participation, expression and creativity.
A rational alignment of stages, assembly hall and workshops form a flexible central spine, and a compact set of functional adjacencies.
Landscape-roofed workshops in the new park are light structures on existing built up land. The bulk of the building is a floating structure restrained to bed rock using oil rig technology, thus avoiding extensive land reclamation and disturbance.