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TOURS - Guided tours of Oslo,

Saturday September 13:
You can book a tour when you pay the registration fee
by credit card,  see the registration page;
    
   
You can also book a tour by email - audun.engh@gmail.com - , and pay cash on site in Oslo. Additional tours will be arranged if they are sold out.
    
Description of the tours:
 
Tour 1:  09.00 - 13.00 Walking tour, Downtown Oslo with expert guide. (main street Karl Johan, University, City Hall, Parliament, the downtown 17th  century grid, the harbour regeneration,  the new opera house)  NOK 200 (approx. EUR 25, USD 40).
 
 

Tour 2:  09.00 - 13.00 Bus tour, The Urban Neighbourhoods of Oslo (19th century urban development in wood and  brick, neo-classicist social housing projects from the 1920s)  NOK 300 (approx. EUR 37, USD 60).  
 

Grünerløkka,  an urban extension from1880-1890,
with the four-story apartment buildings very typical for Oslo. (Tour 2)
 
 
 

Tour 3:  09.00 - 13.00: Bus tour, Highlights of Oslo, including:
 
The Viking Ship Museum:  Ships built 800 -900 A.D.  found in  large burial mounds, with burial furnishings http://www.khm.uio.no/utstilling/faste/vikingskipene/index_eng.html
 
Norsk Folkemuseum - Norway's largest museum of cultural history featuring the world's oldest open air museum  http://www.norskfolke.museum.no/en/  The vernacular wooden architecture of Norway; stave church built in the 12th century, medieval and newer farm houses from various rural districts in Norway and the Old Town with the 19th century Apartment Building. 
 
NOK 325 incl. admission) (approx. EUR 40, USD 65
 
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MEETING POINTS FOR TOURS:
 
Walking tours: University Square, Karl Johan Street, across the street  from the National Theatre   
 
Bus tours: Fridtjof Nansens Plass, the sircular square behind the City Hall.   
 
 
PRE-CONFERENCE SEMINAR:
 
Hosted by ESUA;  European School of Urbanism and Architecture. 
 
Saturday, 13 September,  14.00 - 18.00.

Håndverkeren Conference Center, 
Rosenkrantzgate 7 (the CEU conference venue).


 
The European School of Urbanism and Architecture: a model curriculum for     
an age of globalisation                           
 
ESUA, a partner organisation for the Oslo Congress,  will present and discuss the results from a two-year pilot project, 2006-2008, funded by the European Union "Leonardo da VInci" programme in vocational education and training, to develop a curricumum for integrated European urban and architectural study.
 
Speakers and panelists will include
 
Michael Mehaffy, Gabriele Tagliaventi, Chuck Bohl, Sandy Sorlien, Joanna Alimanestianu, Harald Bodenschatz, Tigran Haas,
 
The ESUA programme features:

*  The latest advances in best practice on sustainability and climate change
*  integrated study of urbanism with architecture
*  inter-disciplinary education
*  immersive, project-based learning
*  exchange studies across national boundaries
*  emphasis on local and historical resources as a basis of sustainable
   economics
*  first-hand studies of local architectural, urban and cultural histories
*  the economic and cultural value of local identity and tradition
                                                                                                                 
Read more: www.esua.org
 
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CLOSING PARTY - TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 16:
 
20.00 - 02.00: Closing party, hosted by the Cuban and Norwegian chapters of C.E.U.
 
CLIMATE EXCHANGE - A Scandinavian - Caribbean Evening.

Cajun and Norwegian food, Cuban music, welcome speech by  Julio Cesar Perez,  Chair, C.E.U. Cuba.
 
Venue to be announced. Tickets will be for sale at the registration desk during the congress.
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POST CONFERENCE TOUR
 
Wednesday, September 17 - Saturday, September 20:
 
Optional rail tour of Norwegian fjord country, coastal towns like Bergen and vernacular settlements.  We will examine the impact of climate change; and the value and embodied energy of traditional and regional architecture. Please contact Audun Engh, audun.engh@gmail.com for further information and  if you would like to reserve a place for this tour.
 
Departure from Oslo in the morning September 17, return to Oslo in the evening September 20.
 
 

 

One of the neo-classicist social housing projects from 
1920-1930, built by the City of Oslo
  

 

 
 
1890s housing apartment buildings, Frogner

 

    

 

 

 
  
THE NEW OSLO OPERA HOUSE
- OPENED APRIL 2008
 
 
 

The sloping marble roof of the Oslo opera house may be perfect for snowboarding. But, for Jonathan Glancey, the warm heart of this stunning building is just as thrilling

Jonathan Glancey
Monday April 21, 2008
Guardian

I walked into the auditorium of the new Oslo opera house last week and, as if on cue, a chorus of 430 amateur singers, one drawn from each of Norway's municipalities, appeared to step towards me in the half-light, while the orchestra struck up the Slaves' Chorus from Verdi's Nabucco. It was an enchanting moment, as if I had pressed a button at the door and the chorus had appeared, deus ex machina. I was lucky: this polished rehearsal allowed me to hear something of the acoustics of this surprisingly intimate theatre, lined throughout in Baltic oak.

I say "surprisingly" because the Oslo opera house is one of the most determinedly modern - and different - buildings of its type. To find a warm and traditional horseshoe-shaped auditorium gathered around a proscenium stage at the heart of this breathtaking building is unexpected.

Its Norwegian architects, Snøhetta, are best known for their stunning new library of Alexandria, or Bibliotecha Alexandrina (2002), a huge cultural centre built on the shores of the Mediterranean in the guise of a giant, half-sunken sun. More recently, the practice designed last year's winding, gyring summer pavilion for the Serpentine Gallery in London. The practice takes its name from the 2,286-metre mountain at the heart of Norway - for Viking warriors, the setting for their icy Valhalla.

Even if opera is not your thing, and you have little interest in the finer points of auditorium acoustics, this is an unmissable building, and immense fun to engage with. Here is a public building - "a social democratic monument," say its designers - that captures something of the spirit of Norway's snow-smothered mountains and icebergs, with its white marble and clear glass exterior. The opera house can be walked over, and generally occupied by anyone and everyone who cares to come this way.

The roof, along with the aluminium-clad fly tower, is very much the dominant feature. In fact, from the water side, the roof is the building. This vast undulating plane, or sequence of planes, comprising 36,000 individually cut slabs of Carrara marble, slopes down from the heights of the fly tower, covers the auditorium and ends up, very deliberately, under water. In the winter, the roof is covered with snow, and, while it is not exactly encouraged, young people will be tempted to snowboard down it.
Whenever the sun comes out, local people will strip off and sunbathe on its marble slopes.

In freezing weather, the building really does look like a man-made iceberg. In fact, it is firmly anchored, and protected from errant ships by a new sea barrier, solidly built and designed to last at least 300 years. Just as well. Last weekend's opening of the building by King Harald was described by the Norwegian press as the country's biggest cultural event since the completion of the impressive Romanesque-meets-gothic Nidaros cathedral in Trondheim in 1300. Although it was completed five months ahead of time and on budget, the opera house has cost £340m. Inevitably, in a country of just 4.5 million people, the project - paid for through the public purse - has been viewed with a mixture of anticipation, trepidation and concern, especially by conservative, rural politicians.
Kjetil Thorsen and Craig Dykers, two of Snøhetta's founding partners, work from a studio in a dockside warehouse near the opera house. Dykers, an Anglo-American raised in Germany and California, believes Snøhetta won the international competition to design the opera house "because we knew Oslo well. We had thought through how the building could be something special, while connecting the divided east and west sides of the city, and reviving the area immediately around it.

"It will take another three years before the urban landscaping flanking the building is complete, but this is a very ambitious project for Norway." The competition was anonymous, Dykers adds, "so there was no favouritism".

Thorsen, who was born in the remote Karmoy region on Norway's north-west coast and trained as an architect in Austria, agrees. "It was also, from the beginning, very much a building about the ways people would own it, and walk through and over it. We were thinking of how we could make a monumental building that was also somehow truly democratic. A building for everyone - opera lovers, those who enjoy all kinds of performing arts, and those with no particular interest in the arts." He says he was inspired by "the way you watch a giant ship move very slowly across the horizon. I thought we could have an opera house that was big, animated and effortless all at the same time."

The director of Den Norske Opera, Bjorn Simensen, says he is thrilled with his company's new home. "It's a wonderful idea for a building, this great snowline roof that covers a working village of some 600 people, drawn from across 34 nations and representing at least 50 crafts or trades. Along with the main [1,350-seat] auditorium, we have a 400-seat performance space as well as a 'black box' where anything can happen. There are 1,100 or so rooms in the building. It's a complex undertaking, full of activity, and yet it seems effortless. That's because of the architecture."

It is true that, while monumental in terms of scale and ambition, this opera house is a decidedly friendly, easy-going place. The main entrance - a crevasse-like slit in its white marble facade - leads into a happily meandering, informal lobby wrapped around the auditorium. Timber ramps, with superbly crafted detailing made by traditional Norwegian boat builders, lead up from cloakrooms clad in hexagonal screens by the artist Olafur Eliasson, and extraordinarily beautiful lavatories (really), to bars and lobbies, and finally to the hush of the auditorium. Suddenly, the city and its roaring dockside traffic vanish. By 2011, the traffic will have been channelled into a new underwater tunnel linking east and west sides of the city, while the Opera House will face inland to a new urban park.

Norway won its independence from Sweden in 1905. The idea of building a great national opera house was there from the beginning, and even before - a way of expressing the country's character in an architecture and music that would be recognised and respected worldwide. Perhaps then, the choice of Verdi's Slaves' Chorus as a rehearsal piece made perfect sense. It expresses the longing of the Hebrews enslaved by Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon for homeland, a desire to go their own way.

The Oslo opera house is a powerful and beautiful statement, radiant with music and song, one that announces Norway's arrival as a cultural centre. Most of all, it's a building to be shared: anyone who travels to Oslo will want to see, and climb, Snøhetta's marble mountain.

 

  


About C.E.U.
 Council for
European Urbanism
    
Previous
C.E.U.
congresses
 

Sponsoring
organisations

Some of the participating
organisations

NGO's

IPPC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

 EEA- European Environmental Agency

UN-Habitat

CNU - Congress for
the New Urbanism

INTBAU

Wuppertal Institute
for Climate, Environment and Energy, Germany

Duchy of Cornwall, UK

Leibniz Institute
of Ecological
and Regional
Development

American Planning Association,

The Princes
Foundation for the 
Built Environment,
UK

Netherlands Institute
of Spatial Research
   
Lincoln Institute
of Land Policy, US

Academy of Urbanism, UK

Urban Renaissance Institute, UK

Urban Land Institute

National Resources Defense Council, US
 
National Trust for
Historic Preservation, US

Oslo Byes Vel


  
 Universities

University
of Oslo

NTNU - The Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  
Bauhaus University 
Weimar

Technical University
Berlin
 
Chualongkom
University, Thailand

Columbia University

Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm

Timisoara University, Romania

Universidad
Autonoma Baja California,
Mexico
 
University of
British Columbia
 
University College
London - Bartlett School

University
of Florence

University of
Hong Kong

University of Illinois

University IUAV
of Venice, Italy

Universidad
Politecnica de Madrid

University of Porto

University of Sumatra

University of Sydney

Victoria University
of Wellington, NZ

Virginia Polytechnic Institute

University of Miami

University of Notre Dame, US

University of Oregon

University of Havana


 
Government / municipalities

 

Riksantikvaren -
Norwegian Directorate
for Cultural Heritage

City of Oslo

London Borough
of Brent

City of Modesto,
California

City of Tshware,
South Africa

City of Gerbsen, Germany

City of Sundern, Germany
 

 City of Santa Fe