A-Lab wins competition with Eco-Office design
06
Mar 2009
By Sebastian J — Filed under: Architecture News ,Awarded Competitions ,Sustainability , A-Lab, Norway
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The green folks at Inhabitat sent us this interesting project. This stunning energy-efficient office recently won a competition to design the 2012 location for Norway’s oil company StatoilHydro. Conceived by Oslo’s A-Lab, the modern and flexible office compound took the winning bid from a pool of some 40 entries. The new site and office center brings together two previously separated buildings, opening up more efficient communication and reducing the need for cross-town travel and courier services. Five separate wings lie on top of each other in the shape of a star, keeping particular offices regionalized while still attached.
For more information, click here. More images, after the break.
excellent….i just love boxes..i wish i would do this project!!! Simple yet extremelly powerful!!!
Please post some more info and drawings, can’t make my mind up based on views posted here
What is so energy-efficient about it?
I agree with “blk”, I don’t know what makes this biulding so green. It would be great if you could post drawings explaining how the building works, or add more information in the text.
Thanks.
green? My theory is they’d hardly have to put the the heating on during the day, look at all those windows. If it’s well insulated in the right places there would be a storage/release effect from the thermal mass of the walls. A solid glass wall on the other hand wouldn’t store much heat at all.
there´s no way to know how “green” is a project based on renders… “the facades are cool”, that´s all i have to say about it.
Rubbish, there is nothing eco about this building.
Another Norwegian firm just ordering their illustrations from some vizualisation company. No materiality, no real sense of what the site is like, and no architectural intent in any of the drawings. Just real unpersonal and cold. It would have been more interesting to se a model picture of five wooden sticks put together, than theese renders.
As for the facades, jippykayei-graphcis is everywhere at the moment. Instead of actually taking a risk, and trying to invent something and then build it, it’s just graphics, it can be binned if it’s no good, -except this building will actually be made and be there for a 100 years.
If they are actually going to build this shit for an oil company, they should spend some serious bucks investigating how huge triangle-based trusses are made, and then come up with a fascinating facade. But that takes an engineer, not an architect … pherhaps ?
Mr Cheap, get your facts right, you sound bitter…I have worked with A-Lab and they are a division of Dark Architecture, which just happens to be one of the largest and most respected firms in Norway. They work on concepts and are guided by one of the best Architects in the country. And no they don’t order there illustrations from another company, they do some themselves and others by Placebo Effects which is part of the same company.
If you are questioning Dark’s credibility, have a look at what they are doing at Bjørvika now, that all came from their office…
A great design by a great group of architects…