Europan Norway

First priority is to enhance Økern’s identity as the major fruit and grocery distribution centre in the Oslo region, and that this can coexist with possible housing development. The site becomes a testground for a new way of integrating infrastructure for possible futures intolight industry areas including an exploitation of such an existing program.

A dedicated public connector is the «Økern theme park»; the region’s biggestgarden centre, grocery outlet and large-scale arboretum. This «Plant-Land» islocated on public ground only, has an efficient access along the regionalinfrastructure and creates, connects and generates programs at a regionaland local scale.

This proposal visualises five new specificand unique enclaves, which will be densified in a combination of public investments and market driven projects. The enclaves will create and be part of an openpublic landscape, a local connector pro-grammatically dedicated to a regionaltheme park.Three public projects – the new ØkernTorvhall, the theme park, and the centreplatform – will be the main priorities, withor without housing development. These projects generate platforms and outlinesfor three of the five enclaves.

(Text by the winnerteamF/E*T Arkitektur)

There is nothing wrong with suburbia, but rather with how it is understood. By discussing
program instead of form, and dynamic connections instead of borders, suburbia will stand out as central in the functional city, and as the natural origin of new urban development.

The market and the site is part of an urban ecology which is much more than a cynical form of competition and survival. The project is based on an understanding of cohesion as an assemblage of specific extroversions, making powerful relations possible.We claim that the market has to be seen as a central part of a larger system. The marked is located in relation to an infrastructure,and constitute physical component of a dynamic system distributing fresh goods to the whole city.

(Text by team: Petter Kveseth, Guttorm Ruud, Espen Hauglin)

With our new valley, we extend the project, and establish a new low-speed connection (in contrast to the motorway) to the city and the “marka” (the ring of forest), which creates a sequence in the suburban context independent of the infrasystem. We introduce linear housing strips coming from the mountain north of the site with landscaped roofs. These create a green pedestrian route that continues towards the city. This roof almenning has several exit possibilities; you do not have to follow it to escape it. Public and commercial programs are contained in a system of individual city scale buildings. They interrupt the linear strips with layered urban programs and vertical connections.The public roofs provide a fl ow crossing the site at all times, and the public may enter or leave the roof at repeated exits. They can also walk along the inner communication streets within the strips. The roof almenning allows the site to be heavily built and still keep a totally public surface.

(Text by team: Anette Dahl,  Benedicte Kahrs, Kjersti Stensvaag, Mathias Tvedt, Nils Björling)