Beneath the slopes, whirring furnaces, steam, and turbines convert , tons of waste annually into enough clean energy to deliver electricity and district heating for , homes. The power plants infrastructure, from ventilation shafts to air-intakes, helps create the varied topography of a mountain; a man-made landscape created in the encounter between the needs from below and the desires from above.
The plan identifies four thematic areas to position Oslo Science City as a leading center for innovation, knowledge-based value creation and sustainable solutions based on existing and future activities: Health and Life Sciences, incl. Norway’s largest Life Sciences building for research and teaching to be completed by and an expansion of Oslo Cancer Cluster. Climate, Energy and Environment, establishing a campus and a power center for research and innovation between the countrys leading research institute SINTEF, The Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI), the Norwegian Institute for Energy Technology (IFE), the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) and the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) amongst others. Digitalization and Computational Science, fostering collaborations between organizations such as the Department of Informatics (IFI) at the University of Oslo, The Norwegian Computing Center (NR), NORA – Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Research Consortium, which explores artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics, and many others; and Democracy and Inclusion where new knowledge will be developed about the threats and solutions to strengthen democracy, the role of democratic institutions in a time of technological disruption, increased economic inequality and anti-democratic forces.
Rather than a single hermetic entity, BIG has dissolved the ESET Campus into an urban village of interconnected buildings, framing public paths and urban squares. The diverse cluster of individual pavilions is unified by the undulating solar roofs – forming a single silhouette rising from the forested park like a man-made addition to the Little Carpathians mountain range. The ESET Campus is expected to open in .
BIGs third proposal for the new Kimball Arts center is designed as a series of gabled roofs, oriented on site for best daylight conditions and creating a volume that is compatible with the vernacular of the Park City area. Layering the program and mitigating the height difference between the site edges, the geometry steps back from the busy road at the upper level and extends towards ground plane to create a unified roofscape that houses galleries, classrooms, art studios, restaurant, and administrative spaces.
The building’s tallest corner is lifted up to m in order to maximize the inflow of natural daylight as well as views towards Gärdet and the Frihamnen port for most of its units. The modules cascade down to the building’s lowest profile at just m, gradually extending the wooden development into the park. &Park appears like a gentle hillside, seamlessly blending into the nature around it.