Fantastic Norway: The Latest Architecture and News

Back in 2009 when Norway’s Kunt Hamsun Center was unveiled, the faceted volume topped with an a-typical vertical grass roof gained international attention for its reinterpretation of Nordic aesthetics complimented by Holl’s fascination with interior light quality. This year, Holl + Oslo-based LY Arkitekter, have been awarded the prestigious 2011 Byggeskikkprisen for their collaboration on the project; rising above over 90 submitted buildings. The prize, which is granted by the Norwegian government for outstanding architecture, was presented by Local Government and Regional Development Minister Liv Signe at the Norwegian Design and Architecture Center in Oslo. “The Hamsun Center is a piece of original architecture that is deeply moving on many levels and meets all of its functions in exceptionally exciting and unique ways,” said the jury. “It both provokes and delights through its strong, clear and non-traditional form, and it finds its natural place in the dramatic skyline of the northern landscape.”

“House of Families” is a project for the Greenland Self Government and Kommuneqarfik Sermersooq to provide housing for disadvantaged young women with children in Nuuk, Greenland. The architects, Fantastic Norway, who designed the building are part of a larger group led by Dahl & Uhre architects and TNT Nuuk architects and including MDH arkitekter, 42 architects + Regional associates, M: ARC and Arkitekti Helena Lennert in the development of Nuuk.

For more on this project read on after the break.

On November 17th Fantastic Norway was awarded the 2010 Iakov Chernikovs Architecture Prize by the ICIF. We here at ArchDaily have previously featured the work of Fantastic Norway and wish to congratulate them on their accolades and share with our readers some examples of their work.

More after the break.

The exhibition ”Eurovisions”, designed by Fantastic Norway, features the winners of Europan 10. It recently opened at the Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture in Oslo.

“Eurovisions” consists of a vast number of hovering cityscape profiles, portraying the three current Europan sites. Together the silhouettes create a vast graphical landscape, creating a pseudo-3D or “two-and-a-half-dimensional” effect as you walking through it. This technique was widely used in early Disney movies (as well as in classic theatre scenography) to create the sensation of depth and movement through 2 dimensional drawings.

Runner up – and winner projects were exposed at the back of these silhouettes. In addition to this the exhibition features an educational area where information, facts and models of the Europan cities are exposed. Projected onto the walls, fake TV-news clips (set in a not to distant future) reports a variety of stories portraying possible futures for the cities at hand.

More images after the break.

The “Cardboard Cloud”, an exhibit design by Fantastic Norway, opened this weekend in Oslo to the public. The exhibit was designed for the Center for Design and Architecture (DogA, previously featured on AD) and will display the works of Norwegian design students.

More information about the cloud and more images after the break.