After 20 months of construction, the Statoil regional and international offices at Fornebu outside Oslo, Norway is now complete. A-lab received the commission after winning first prize in an open competition in 2008. Statoil is a Norwegian energy producer, the 57th largest company in the world by revenue, with about 30 000 employees in 37 countries. From October 15th, 2500 of these employees will work in the new building -including Statoil’s international department.
The new office building stands on the site of the old airport’s multi-storey car park, most of the site being given over to the development of a new 5-hectare public park. One of the main goals of the Mikado inspired design has been to minimize the footprint of the building in the park, whilst creating a flexible and stimulating workspace- offering views over the fjord from most parts of the building and a spectacular view of the park, artworks and the fjord from the communal atrium space.
The project consists of five similar office modules, each 3 stories high, approx 140 meters long and 23 meters wide. Stacked on top of each other they form a climatized atrium and a multipurpose space on the ground floor. Due to the very short construction period, most of the building, including steel and concrete superstructure, facades and glazed structures, was prefabricated off-site. This lead to a high degree of precision despite the extremely fast on-site production. The steel superstructure enables the different office modules to cantilever up to 30 meters. Northern Europe’s biggest mobile crane was used for the assembly of the steel trusses.