Norway's Opera House took five years to complete and sits on the bank of the Bjørvika district, near the stock exchange and the central station. It is the largest cultural building to be built in Norway since the construction of the Nidarosdomen Cathedral in Trondheim at the start of the fourteenth century.
A cultural gem
The floor area of the base of the building is equivalent to four international standard football fields and measures more than 38,000 square metres. The building boasts three stages and a total of 1,100 rooms.
When you enter the main doors you arrive in the main foyer - a huge open room with a minimalist décor, using simple materials such as stone, concrete, glass and wood. Here you will find seating areas, bars and restaurants.
The main classical horseshoe shaped auditorium, which is one of the most technologically advanced in the world, offers great scenographic flexibility and fantastic acoustics. The stage area measures several thousand square metres and parts of it are as much as 16 metres below the surface of the water.
In contrast to the light foyer, the main auditorium is decorated in ammonia-treated Baltic oak. The seatbacks of the 1,350 seats contain individual screens with subtitles in eight different languages. Boat builders from the northwest coast of Norway have carved the balconies, and hanging from the ceiling is Norway’s largest circular chandelier. It is 7 metres in diameter, weighs 8 tonnes, has 5,800 crystal glass elements and was produced by the Norwegian firm Hadeland Glassverk.
Walk on the roof
From the outside, the most striking feature is the white sloping stone roof which rises directly up from the Oslofjord allowing visitors to enjoy a stroll and take in views of the city.
If you see the building from the fjord you will notice a façade of solar panels. In fact, this is Norway’s biggest area of solar panels supplying the building with some of the energy its needs.
Celebratory reviews
After opening in April 2008, the Opera House, designed by the acknowledged Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta, has received massive attention and many celebratory reviews, both in Norway and abroad.
- The Oslo opera house is a powerful and beautiful statement, radiant with music and song, one that announces Norway's arrival as a cultural centre. Most of all, it's a building to be shared: anyone who travels to Oslo will want to see, and climb, Snøhetta's marble mountain, writes Jonathan Glancey from The Guardian.
Whilst The Times’ Richard Morrison declares: - I am in love. She's Norwegian, gorgeous, full of fun, yet with surprising hidden depths. She's the new Oslo Opera House, an amazing marble and granite vision that rises out of the fjord like a giant ice floe.
The culture house of the world
In October 2008 the Opera House won the Culture category of the inaugural World Architecture Festival. Jury members Sir Peter Cook, Christoph Ingenhoven and John Walsh judged the Opera to be a highly proficient work of architecture that realised a complex programme with coherence and clarity.