The Former American Embassy in Norway

In the work we have focused on highlighting the original qualities of the buildings and facilitated for new use in a manner that adapts to the spirit of the former embassy building. The project includes a modern office building with 400 workplaces, meeting rooms and conference facilities. In addition, the building will contain dining areas with restaurants, bars, café and kitchen areas. Under the entire building a new basement has been excavated to make room for new conference areas. The former technical floor on the top is transformed into a restaurant with magnificent views over Oslo.

The project has been developed in close contact with the Norwegian conservation authorities: 'The embassy building is an important monument in Norwegian post-war modernism with very high architectural and cultural-historical values.' Riksantikvaren (Director of Cultural Heritage). The work has also entailed building up an archive of original drawings and construction methods for the restoration work. When we started the work, the building was in quite bad shape, both technically and in terms of materials and there was little of the original atmosphere left. We studied old drawings and photos to recreate the architectural quality and atmosphere the building used to have and all the new additions were made to fit in with the old. Almost 80 per cent of the interiors are new but reconstructed from old photos or historic references from that period.

More significant insertions and changes to the building are a massive new 14m-deep basement. The gestures combined have allowed the building to extend its floor space by 50 percent and its capacity tenfold, and the building now houses four floors of office space. From outside the building has become a great deal more porous too, with new exterior spaces. Creating the basement section involved excavating 16,500 cubic meters of rock and stone and installing 256 steel piles. The air intake was moved away from the building and doubles up as two light atriums bringing daylight into the new basement floors. Remarkably, this major extension did not alter the building's external appearance. But this wasn’t just important for listing and aesthetic reasons, it was as if the building demanded it. The building itself has such a strong character and geometry, so we always had to go with the building’s logic and not against it.