The splash image of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, by Snøhetta, on the architect’s website is a powerful one. In that photo, taken after a snowfall, the building looks like: mountain, iceberg, fortress and ocean liner. When the building is approached on foot from the city center, on a temporary steel footbridge, over a road that will be eventually channeled underground, the building is actually lower, broader and less imposing. It looks like: spaceship, folly, and something-still-under-construction. It has no center and no front, no strong image at all. It just barely looks like a building.
While the artfully sloping structure (this sloping is Snøhetta’s signature) feels as if it’s going to tumble into the water, it actually directs one back to the city. Its roof, clad in blindingly-white travertine tiles, can be occupied like a landform. As one steps up and walks the perimeter Oslo emerges all around as a modern commercial city, thick with with towers and cranes. And as one turns back to the building itself, its peaks emerge and recede cinematically in a way that’s pleasingly disorienting. The roof is public park, promenade and theater. The evening I visited people sat facing a floating stage listening to a soundcheck for the following evening’s Justin Bieber concert. To get back to our hotel, where The Biebs was in residence, we had to navigate a crowd of swooning, screaming and stampeding pre-teen girls. It’s impressive that such a cerebral, elegant building could host, comfortably, this kind of pop-cultural happening.