Oil and water - Statoil A/S's research center in Rotvoll, Norway - Norway: Special Issue

Architectural Review, The, August, 1996 by Julia Gleeson

Yet these are an architect's aesthetic criticisms and perhaps more a matter of taste than substance. At a practical level, the building appears to work well, and could in many ways be taken as an example of how a large institutional programme can be made into a sympathetic building.

1 See for instance Rasmussen, Svein, 'Statoil pa Rotvoll', in Byggekunst 3, 1995, p194.

2 All the glass, both here and in the foyer, raises questions about energy control. In fact, virtually all the energy needed for cooling comes from the fjord, as does much of that for heating. Again the comparison with other oil company buildings, particularly in the Middle East, is telling. But Rasmussen (ibid) rightly criticises the separate heating of the air-conditioned glass volumes and suggests that as in many very successful glass atria in the north, use of waste heat from the other areas should have been considered.