Off to Venice till next Monday

risky childhood

Outside the Art Hall at Tullinløkka, Oslo. Something you will never find at a playground in Singapore.

holmen kollen

more urbia/suburbia

crit 1 : doubling drabantbys

crit 1 : Pantone Warm Red C

*picture not photoshopped, all the seminar rooms have orange windows with red curtains on the south side, so everything gets bathed in this reddish hue during daylight. Best used as an educational tool, a lesson in specifications.

plush

architecture for the masses

Outside the Art Hall,
part of the The National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design

zah(a)ho

OMG!!!

aho studio

This a picture of my studio by request. One of 8 "Tegnesal"s, different studios share and work in the same space.

reviving asplund

Call for proposals for an extension to the Stockholm City Library, designed by Gunnar Asplund and completed in 1928. It is one of my favorite buildings in Scandinavia, second, I think, only to Jørn Utzon's Bagsværd Church.

More info here.

The pictures are from Sveriges Arkitekter. I'm quite ashamed to say that I had not managed to take a single good picture of the building when I visited it 2 years ago. In spite of it's simplicity, the building manages to exude a dignifid presence, without resorting to the overt classicism still common at the time it was built. The library is accessed through a grand central stairway from the main road, which leads to a overscaled entrance. Once past the entrance, the main reading room slowly reveals itself as the visitor makes his way up the final flight of steps. And upon entering the reading room, the heart of the building, the visitor is surrounded by a wall of books placed on the three storey high curved stacks wrapping around the inside of the central rotunda. The experience of being in this building cannot be distilled through the static frames of a camera nor the words of a visitor. I promise myself that I'll make a trip down to Stockholm in the coming months.

peopleful

It seems that the city of Oslo has given me a slap on my face for my last post. With the temperature hovering above 20C, the whole population of Oslo decided to turn up at Majorstuen, a major shopping street in Oslo for the street market. It's the first time I felt any city vibe in Oslo.I'll be here to stay if the city is more like this.

I'm not sure if this is a weekly thing though, feels more like a once-a-year end-of-summer market as the stalls were actually put up by the existing shops there selling off season stock with shocking discounts. Snagged a few bargains myself but the food stalls, as with anywhere else in Oslo, is horribly overpriced (10Kr/$2.50 mini springrolls anyone?).

peopleless

I just realize that almost all the pictures that I showed of Norway have no people inside.

romsås

5kr coffee outside the Romsås elderly centre