A firestation and a water-mirror as new destination along the city waterfront promenade.

The project is located on Festallmeningen in Oslo. This is an important last stretch in a long planning and design transformation of the industrial part of the city into a thriving and ambitious future central neighborhood, famous for its opera, barcode and very recently beichmans library and Munch museum.

This allmeningen is important because it is stitching together 3 important facets of the districts identity: the new development and energy with the hvanepromenade and SALT, the historical with Festningen on the other side and the industrial with the container yard and the ferry terminal. To us they are all relevant when we think of our project for the city. Our proposal responds to these three scales.

The project is designed to address the sense of history by encouraging movement toward the city up the allemeningnen, while looking to the future and be part of the activities happening along havnepromenade. The proposal takes into consideration time and season, with a focus for a new permanent usage of the site as the Sentrum brannstatsjon but caring for more temporary, seasonal usage. The sites can welcome the widest possible range of people while being a well-thought, efficient, comfortable and inclusive workplace.

Our proposal for the new sentrum brannstasjon is focusing on a simple and efficient workplace layout on the first floor, the mezzanine on the second floor with a comfortable and well orientated living quarter on the third floor. Rather than a typical situation with a mono-orientated building toward the double height vognhallen, we imagined a volume that is open and double height on the front and back, and open to the public along the side toward the pond and the garden of the allmeningen. The T-shape of the building highlights the hall and storage functions, while the working and living areas are expressed into a more solid expression.The lower part and interiors are conceived as a wooden, warm environment providing qualitative working and living space. The choices of materials are carefully made to be both excellent for sustainable strategy and create a positive dialogue with the historical brick building of the surrounding.

The landscape follows both our urban strategy and sustainable goal to provide an integrated design that support biodiversity, integrate the building into short-circuits solution for energy and water management, or provide a desirable environment. The central part of the landscape concept is the introduction of a water feature connected to the building water management system, and provide a destination for different seasons and reasons, wether it is just a walk, or stay to read, play with water, look at the plant and insect or skate in the winter.

Our design strategy is focusing on delivering BREEAM Nord excellent standard, with foucus on material, construction process and the reutilsation of materials in the future.