Office of the future: this humane and environmentally responsive complex of work spaces for Norway's leading telecom company is an inspiring and enlightened vision of corporate life

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 2003 by Michael Webb

The most vibrant new community in Oslo may be an office complex--the Telenor headquarters--where 6000 people come together to work and socialize, indoors and out, in free-floating groups. On plan, the 138 000 sq m development (that's net; gross is 158 000 sq m) resembles a tree, with an elliptical piazza as the trunk, eight projecting wings as branches, and 30-person work pods as leaves. That image captures the organic quality of this bold steel and glass structure, and the shift of scale from expansive to intimate. Two 260m long arcs embrace the travertine-paved piazza; within, concourses link multi-level atria, the 200 work pods, shared meeting spaces, shops and cafeterias. On summer weekends, families stream through the piazza on their way to the beach. Abundant natural light and ventilation, frugal use of artificial lighting, and a net surplus on energy use, make the building a triumph of sustainability.

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Telenor, the leading Norwegian telecommunications company, expanded rapidly as it was privatized over the past decade, and wanted to consolidate its 40 scattered offices. It was offered a site at Fornebu, the former airport on Oslo Fjord, which has been masterplanned as a residential community with high-tech plants. Telenor selected seven design teams to compete for the design of an 'office of the future'. It was to be an inspiring symbol of this cutting-edge company--open-plan, wireless, and paperless--where employees would interact freely, use work spaces as needed, singly or in constantly shifting combinations and communicate on laptops and cellular phones. The competition was won by a project team formed from NBBJ, the international Seattle-based firm, and two Norwegian offices, HUS and PKA. Peter Pran, a Norwegian-American architect who worked with Mies in Chicago and is now with NBBJ, was design principal.

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Several hands contributed to the original concept, which remained unchanged, even as the details and materials were modified. Pran extols the four-year collaborative process of design and construction in which the tension between two cultures and three different firms, plus a visionary client and expert consultants, created an audacious, richly layered complex. It occupies the end of the main runway, which runs east-west towards the fjord, providing a poetic symbol for a company that brings people together, as the airport did in the previous century. It also serves as a platform from which the ground drops away on three sides, allowing the wings to step down into the landscape.

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The principal facades front the piazza. The south arc rises three stories and is tilted back to draw in more light; the north arc is five stories high and tilted forward to cut glare. Two levels of parking are inserted below the piazza, though the 1750 places are rationed to encourage employees to commute by bus. A customer service centre and auditorium/classroom block punctuate the elliptical axis, which is half boulevard, half gathering space. Artworks by Jenny Holzer and Daniel Buren enliven the architecture.

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From afar, the fragmented perimeter of Telenor reads as a cluster of disparate structures rather than as a unified whole, and a lack of signage leaves first-time visitors searching for a point of entry. Project leader Scott Wyatt characterizes this as a 'typically Norwegian sense of understatement', but it's perplexing that so huge a structure should be hidden in plain view. It's the inevitable consequence of designing from the inside out and candidly expressing the product of that strategy.

Each of the eight wings has a separate entrance, though one has been leased to another company during the economic downturn that has compelled Telenor to trim its staff. You enter at a middle level, looking up and down into a glass-roofed atrium used both for vertical circulation and as a winter garden in the months when the piazza is covered with snow. The vertiginous drama of these skylit volumes might accommodate an open sushi bar or a meeting room enclosed by walls of poured concrete. Exhilaration, not awe, is the dominant feeling, as you gaze up at the sky or out to the fjord.

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The programme called for 6000 workstations for 7500 employees: a generous allowance, since this is a virtual office in which employees are grouped by division but move freely within each pair of wings, using workstations as needed, but conducting much of their business on the move in casual encounters, sitting at a cafe table, or even at the beach. The pods can be reconfigured in two hours by a crew installing or demounting partitions on a 2.4m module to create a group work space or 30 separate workstations. Each pod has its own service and meeting areas and is largely autonomous. The Norwegian mandate that no one may work a full day more than 9m from natural light dictated the 15.6m width of the pods.

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In a cold climate, heating is taken for granted, but protection from the brief summer is something of a novelty. Much of the floor-to-ceiling glass the architects proposed in work areas as a way of connecting the interiors to the landscape was eliminated as an economy, but also because of the client's concern about heat build-up. Woven synthetic blinds installed behind frosted glass rain screens are computer-activated to cut glare. A convection system substitutes for air conditioning. Cool water is circulated through ventilation ducts, creating chilled ceilings that draw up hot air, and warmed water is re-cooled by a heat-exchange system.