Oslo Opera House by Snøhetta

How to gauge the value a country places on culture? The amount of public funding to the arts is one measure. Another is the public’s engagement in institutional art – that is, bums on seats. Attempting to gain United Nations recognition is another: the usual suspect in Europe recently applied to have ‘la cuisine française’ placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. In Norway, however, at the opening of the Oslo Opera House’s first season in August, Defence Minister Anne-Grete Strom-Erichsen said that “without culture we have nothing worth defending”, thereby elevating culture to an issue of national security.

It was a particularly poignant moment for the Norwegian government to make this observation: more than a century after the first proposals for a purpose-built opera house, after a decade of planning and construction, King Harald was finally opening Europe’s newest opera house.

Key cultural institutions play a defining role in a national psyche, and in this regard there are a number of parallels between Norway and Australia. Snøhetta, the architecture firm behind the project, is named after one of the tallest mountains at the heart of Norway which happens to be of similar height to Australia’s tallest peak, Mount Kosciuszko. Like Australia, it is only in the last hundred-odd years that Norway gained independence from its colonial power (Sweden). Like Sydney, the Opera House commands a sweeping harbourside location, at Bjørvika on Oslofjord. Like Sydney, the Opera House is a shimmering white monument of unique architectural design. Finally, like Australia, the Opera House of its principal city has quickly become a central thread in Norway’s national identity.

Back in the 1890s when a new national theatre was proposed for the Norwegian capital, composer Edvard Grieg suggested that it should double as an opera house. Playwright Henrik Ibsen put a stop to that. “Opera is the cuckoo in the nest”, he declared, and opera has been the poor cousin in Oslo ever since. This time around, the debate was democratised, rather than conducted merely at the level of the Oslo cultural elite. During the planning phase, the director of the Opera House travelled around Norway holding public meetings in every province to convince the people of the worth of the €455 million project their taxes would be funding. This dialogue between art and populace, the desire to make the Opera House a public monument rather than a space reserved for those versed in the language and love of opera, found expression in the architecture of the venue. The sloping roof invites picnicking, the artificial beach frolicking. Craig Dykers, the lead architect behind the project, called the Opera House a “social democratic monument, where people can do things unrelated to buying a ticket”. Its location is testament to its public purpose – in the revitalised urban docklands area, where it serves as a bridge between the wealthy west and the impecunious east. Through its architecture, the Opera House creates not just the impression but the reality of public ownership of the space.

Granted, it is a lot of space. The 36,000 hand-cut La Facciata white marble pieces comprising the roof (dubbed the ‘fifth wall’ for its sloping gradient) give the impression of standing on a slowly sinking ice floe. The roof’s eventual demise as a beach creates a sympathetic relationship with the fjord on which the structure is situated. Indeed, sympathy with the natural surroundings is the hallmark of the Opera House. In creating keynote pieces of architecture, many cities aim for pieces that are irreconcilable with the surrounding cityscape: think of the Guggenheim in Bilbao (undulating blob), the Pompidou Centre in Paris (space-age), or Paul Andreu’s National Grand Theatre in Beijing (curvilinear). It’s not that the Opera House looks natural, like an igloo or a yurt, but rather it looks like a necessary extension of the natural landscape – a means by which the good burghers of Oslo can better appreciate their city. The building channels the Viking spirit of yore, with a blunt bow breaking the ice lying in front, gliding through the floe and casting the broken pieces of ice backwards and upwards in a frozen wake. The Opera House’s colour scheme is quintessentially Nordic: polished white surfaces evoke a pure ice, deep blue glass an Arctic harbour, rich brown oaks a rugged forest. It is monumental in scope, but this monumentality is achieved on the horizontal plane, not the vertical. The structure is huge, with over a thousand rooms, but easygoing, appearing not so much a monolith as an adventure.

The warm heart of the Opera House contrasts with its icy exterior. Upon entering the outer sanctum of the lobby, the smooth contours of the timber wave wall create a simultaneously soothing and stark space. The effect is magnified by the squat furniture and paucity of colour. Inside the horseshoe-shaped central auditorium, the cavernous void is made intimate by the ornate woodwork. The dominant aesthetic is Baltic oak coated in Armagnac, to which the orange upholstery of the seats provides an interesting counterpoint. Seating for 1,370 spectators is divided between stalls, parterre and three balconies. When viewed in aggregate, the balconies resemble the structural support beams of a ship, harking back to both the northern shipbuilders who carved them and the central role occupied by the ocean in Norwegian culture. The balcony fronts serve an acoustic function, reflecting the sound back down to the audience, a task aided by an oval ceiling reflector. A massive chandelier made from 5,800 pieces of hand-cut crystal and weighing 8.5 tonnes occupies the central space, creating a slight dissonance with the earthy, carved aesthetic. Despite the natural feel of the chamber, the Opera House is certainly not primitive – text displays in the back of each seat allow audience members to read the libretto in many languages.

In providing a creative home for Norwegian opera and ballet, the Opera House channels Oslo’s natural and human assets, connecting fjord and city, landscape and urbanity. Its value as a piece of revolutionary architecture, however, lies in the attitude it embodies: a seamless fusion of the high art of opera with the everyday culture of relaxing by the foreshore. +

1 The central auditorium, with capacity for 1,370 spectators. The dominant aesthetic is Baltic oak coated in Armagnac, to which the orange upholstery of the seats provides an interesting counterpoint. Each seat has an individual text display allowing the libretto to be read in many languages. 2 A necessary extension of the natural landscape, a monumental adventure... Through its architecture, the Opera House creates not just the impression but the reality of public ownership of the space. 3 The roof, dubbed the ‘fifth wall’ by virtue of its sloping gradient, gives the impression of standing on a slowly sinking ice floe. It is comprised of 36,000 hand-cut white marble pieces, and meets Oslo harbour as a beach. 4 The warm heart of the Opera House contrasts with its icy exterior.... The timber ‘wave wall’ references Norway’s timeless love affair with the ocean and the endless forests of the north.

IMAGES courtesy and copyright of Helene Binet, Jiri Havran, Gerald Zugman