Stage 2

Stage 2 can, depending on the chosen seating configuration, house an audience of up to 400. It will be used by both opera and ballet, as well as for banquet functions, rock concerts, experimental performances and children’s theatre. It is a multi use hall where the seats, which are on large wagons, can be repositioned in a number of different configurations. There are 2 large elevators which form an amphitheatre, orchestra pit and transport seating wagons for storage in the basement.

The area which is normally the stage is made up of removable floor elements. The auditium has no flytower but rather an extensive motorised pully system to hang and transport scenery, backdrops and acoustic reflectors when necessary. A 9m high sliding gate connects the stage area with the back stage zones and scenery stores. The reverberation time in the hall can be damped down for amplified performances.

The client required an auditorium with the flexibility of a black box but with an amount of architectural quality and identity. These to requirements are generally considered to be mutually exclusive, but after close discussions with the end user, a solution was found where of a black box has a high quality cotrasting, freestanding structure placed inside it.

This ‘object’ has rounded, high gloss, red paneling on the outside and a cooler metallic silver finish in towards the stage.

Four technical bridges span across the space at high level housing lighting and ventilation and forming an important visual and acoustic ceiling.

Between the columns, large, black painted doors and removable panels are used to adjust to different configurations. These panels have also been given acoustic consideration.

Interiors

The exterior of the operahouse becomes diffuse as night falls. The large timber ‘wave wall’ in the foyer is illuminated and the building takes on a completely different character. The interior becomes the façade. It shows how interdependent the interior and exterior of the building are.

The building’s architectonic ideas and concepts have also been used in the buildings interiors. The task has included considerable interior planning based on the schedule of rooms, functions, colours, materials, and surface treatments, coordinating lighting schemes, technical instalations, built in furniture, wet rooms, kitchen solutions, elevator cars, fittings and fixtures.

It has also encompassed design and coordination of the end user equipment and loose furnishings.

Cooperation between the various architectural diciplines has been vital.

Interiors concept, public spaces

The experience of the buildings exterior clearly requires that the interiors be of equally high architectural quality.

On entering the building one is first lead in under the lowest part of the sloping roofscape. Where the ceiling falls to meet the floor.

This area is used for the public cloakroom where a copse of slim columns hold the visitors coats. Further out into the foyer, four volumes hold up the roof. The perforated, illuminated cladding of these is another example of integrated artwork. In this case by Olafur Eliasson. These white form house the public toilets. Moving out into the open space of the foyer one is below an expance of white, sloping cailing held up by angled white columns which meet in clusters at floor level.

The grand staicase is peeled out of the wooden wall and leads up to 3 galleries around the auditorium. Thus providing access to the upper levels of the hall.The interior of the wooden wall has an intimate feel in contrast to the open, white foyer.Dark light locks lead the audience into the heart of the building. The main auditorium.The feeling is of being inside a carved out piece of timber, or perhaps within a musical instrument.

Furnishings and equipment in the public areas

The interior, from cloakroom to auditorium can be described as a formalistic journey which takes the visitor from the open unknown to the enclosed and secure. The level of abstraction to be seen in the outer spaces ahs made it natural to minimise the number of recognisable builing elements and details.

At the same time it has been a clear aim that the furniture elements use the same design language as the building as a whole.

Larger elements such as bar counters, shop fittings, ticketting desk, and cafè interiors are either integrated in larger building forms or designed as free standing sculptural forms in white corian. These can be completely closed down when not in use.

The cloakroom and foyer are further furnished using simple seating forms and high tables made of steel plate coated with industrial rubberized black lacquer. Upholstery is with flat sheets of felt and sheep skin. Signage is made of the same black steel and white glass surfaces complete a number of the interior elements.

Furnishing of the production areas

These zones are designed around eronomics, functionality, and experience. The harde workshops are rational rooms where the logistics of mechanisation dominate the design. Wig and make-up workshops have been provided with specially designs workstation modules specific to the user’s requirements. The costume department, which is a hectic space full of activity has been given solution specific to its complex logistics.

The three artforms; Ballet, opera, and orchestra all have their requirements for changing rooms fulfilled with standardised but purpose built furniture. However, the orchestra have larger, 10 man changing rooms with areas for unpacking instruments, rest, and changing prior to a performance, amd with shared access to toilets and showers. The Ballet, choir and soloists have smaller 4 or 6 man rooms with person specific places and showers shared with the neighbouring room.

For the ballet these rooms function as a home base in a day filled with training and rehearsals.

All the changing rooms are specially design with fitted, standardised furniture, make up tables, day beds and cupboards.

A great deal of work has gone into designing the rehearsal spaces for the different groups. These are important working spaces, with optimised acoustics, ventilation, and lighting. The intention has been to provide a great deal of spacial quality and the acoustic wall panelling in particular contributes to this.

Material use in the production areas

The brief for these area specifies that they should be simple and inexpensive. This means that they are of general office quality with painted walls and linoleum flooring. This works well as a neutral background to the opera’s colourful costumes and stage elements which enliven the spaces.

The colour palette is therefor quite simple and neutral.

The open courtyard forms a central reference point to the production areas and the corridors which encircle it are given a dark colour to make orientation easier.

The rehearsal rooms have different characters for ballet, opera and choir.. The ballet spaces are light and airy with views over the fjord to the south. Whilst the choir space is more introvert with daylight from a high clerestory window facing east. Enclosing the musical experience. Colours and materials have a warmer, darker hue.

Furniture and end user equipment

Even though the building is large, there is little loose furniture. We have attempted to to simplify and standardise the choice of furniture and relate it to the building’s architectural design. A small number of quality furniture producers have been chosen and the pieces have a clean, contemporary design which is simultaneously classical enough to be timeless.

Landscaping

The opera’s landscape comprises of the marble roof, additional marble clad areas, and the areas between the building and the surrounding streets. Access to the plaza and the main entrance is over a marble clad footbridge over the opera canal. The plaza forms a part of a public promenade and cycle lane which continues around the west and south sides of the building, and eventually coming to a planned bridge over the Aker river to the east.

As early as the competition entry, Snøhetta proposed that the roofscape should be openly accessible to the general public and that it should be clad with white stone. Today the building’s defining feature is the characteristic geometry of the roof as it rises from the fjord and is laid out like a carpet over the public areas. An important move has been to introduce channels along the roof edges with ramps and steps. This allows the integration of regulation height balustrades with raising the line of the roof itself.

To achieve enough acoustic volume in the auditorium, the roof has been raised indepently inside the line of the balustrades. This has created a new viewing point from which the city and the fjord can be experienced. The roofs are mostly too steep for wheelchair use but access to the near flat, upper areas is provided via a dedicated elevator.

The surface treatment of the stone, its pattern, cuts and lifts which create a shadow play, have been designed in close collaboration with the artists. The white marble is ‘La Facciata’ from the Carrara quaries in Italy. The north facede and all the stone cladding which is in contact with water is a norwegian granite called ‘Ice Green’

Prototypes and tests at full scale were studied at the contractor’s facitities before the final choices were made for colour nuance and surface texture. A running quality control regime has been implemented throughout the production process

Adjacent areas During the building period it became clear that rapid and considerable settling of the ground level around the building would need to be addressed.

Large areas of gravel which is designed to take local vehicular traffic have been laid around the building footprint. This is easy to adjust as the ground sinks relative to the building which is founded on the bedrock. Trees are planted in the gravel areas, and a zone of street furniture is located along the pavement line with cycle parking, benches and specially designed streetlamps in stainless steel. The pavements are of asphalt with black granite edges and larger areas of granite paving wto highlight the entrances to the restaurant, opera street, and stage entrance. The dark grey colur palette is a clear contrast to the light stone and aluminium of the building itself within a cool monochrome language.

Landscaping of the surrounding areas has been designed in collaboration between Snøhetta and Bjørvika Infrastructure who have been responsible for the planning of the street around the operahouse.

Courtyard

The courtyard is a garden in the middel of the production area of the building. Surrounded by facades of black glass, aluminium and timber and open to the sky. There is direct access to the courtyard from ground and basement levels while the upper levels experience it as a green lung deep inside the building. In front of the sound insulated rehearsal rooms at basement level, vegetation has been planted to form a screen. The floor of the courtyard is a composition of timber dekking, white marble, and green areas. A marble cladd stair connects the two levels. Grasses, climbing plants and perennials are planted around clusters of cables reaching up to the upper levels and providing shade to the facades.

奥斯陆歌剧院