Oslo sandwich

Architectural Review, The, March, 2005 by Sutherland Lyall

Apart from Per Kartvedt who recently retired from the chair of architecture at Strathclyde, I have had a bit of a down on Norway. It was that press trip long ago at the end of which our host came round and said quietly, 'Gentlemen will you please settle your bar bills before you go'. The entire press corps went pale and in revenge wrote not a word when it got home. Now the Architectural League of New York has put up an Oslo site at www.worldviewcities.org/oslo/main.html, which goes a long way to dissipating those old, bad thoughts. The site is part of the Architecture League's continuing set of city perspectives. Earlier cities accorded this treatment are Caracas in Venezuela and Dhaka in Bangladesh. The Oslo site runs conversations with some local academics and architects, some discussions of the issues the city faces, a timeline, plus profiles of 18 local practices and their work, which is interesting rather than world-beating. Still, when you go to one of the featured architects, A-Lab, whose site is at www.a-lab.no, you get to see a somewhat Alsopesque single-storey building on angled stilts, a somewhat OMA extruded structure also on stilts with what look like some crisscross exoskeleton buildings in the background. OK, Oslo isn't the West Coast and clients tend to be small town-conservative--not surprising when your country's url suffix is .no.

Sutherland Lyall forages among the dankest corners of cyberspace to gather a fragrant bouquet of goodies.