Abstract
The well-known and much investigated rise of urban entrepreneurial policies has fuelled a transformation of urban spaces and landscapes, and has led to changes in the social composition of city centres. This is the case for Oslo, Norway’s capital, where increasingly urban policies are designed to attract transnational companies and those in the creative class. A key strategy to achieve this has been to transform the city’s waterfront through spectacular architecture and urban design, as has taken place in other European cities. Transnational and local architects have been commissioned to design the Barcode, one of the most striking waterfront projects. This article investigates the role of architecture and architects in this process, because architects can be seen as influential generators of urban spaces and agents for social change, and because there is remarkably little published empirical research on this specific role of architects. It is argued that although there was an overall planning goal that the projects along the waterfront of Oslo should contribute to social sustainability, with the implication that planners and architects possessed information about the local urban context and used this knowledge, in practice this was not the case. It is demonstrated that the architects paid little attention to the social, cultural and economic contexts in their design process. Rather, the architects emphasized the creation of an exciting urban space and, in particular, designed spectacular architecture that would contribute to the merits of the firms involved. It is further argued that because of this the Barcode project will not contribute to the making of a just city.
Introduction
Since the 1970s, urban transformation and development have followed an entrepreneurial logic in many advanced capitalist countries (Tarazona Vento, 2016). In several cities, central districts and former harbour or industrial spaces have been converted into business quarters and high-end housing areas, as well as sites for museums and other buildings of culture in order to attract inward capital investments, possibly members of the so-called ‘creative class’ (as defined by Florida, 2005), and tourists. This paper makes a contribution to understanding the role of architecture – and, more precisely, the architectural design process – with regard to entrepreneurial urban regeneration, through a theoretical discussion informed by a singular empirical case study of an on-going waterfront transformation in Oslo. Because architects have been said to ‘have particular importance for the city’ (Short, 2006: 161), since they are the experts designing it, and ‘given professional architecture’s reliance on [powerful] clients’ (Jones and Card, 2011: 232), we investigate how architects explain their own designs, and how the design process relates to the overall planning and development goals, in this case specifically in the city of Oslo. We are therefore highlighting how architects, as influential actors with little formal power, are not only shaping the physical structures and elements, but also have a substantial influence on the social fabric of and possible social practices in the city.
In recent decades the waterfront of Oslo, the capital of Norway, has been radically transformed. In 1982 the shipyard located close to the town hall, in the area today known as Aker Brygge (the Aker Quay), was shut down and restructured into blocks of condominiums, offices, shops and entertainment outlets (Aker Brygge, 2012). Internationally, such transformations were first seen in the USA, for example the Inner Harbor in Baltimore in the early 1970s (Harvey, 2000), and later in several North American and European cities, for instance in New York, Vancouver, London, Hamburg and Copenhagen, where the former physical manifestations of the industrial epoch have to a large extent been replaced by cultural, financial and up-market consumer and residential institutions and structures (Sandercock and Dovey, 2002). This restructuring is linked with the well-known rise of entrepreneurial urban policies in many Western cities (Hall and Hubbard, 1996; Harvey, 1989), and increased regional and international competition over economic and human capital (Jessop, 1998; Ley, 2010).
In Oslo this has been translated into the step-by-step dismantling, rerouting and disappearance variously of highways, railroads, shipyards, port functions and warehouses, and the building of an iconic opera house, shopping centres, restaurants, museums, semi-public spaces, high-end residential developments and, not least, ‘high-rise’ office buildings for financial corporations and transnational producer services (Røe, 2015; Skrede, 2013; Smith and Strand, 2011). This is part of an overall policy and plan for making the waterfront area, renamed the Fjord City, a vibrant and ‘attractive new district’ (The Municipality of Oslo, 2008a). 1 The goal has been to create a waterfront for everybody to use (The Municipality of Oslo, 2008b), thereby meeting the criteria of the ‘just city’ as defined by Fainstein (2010, 2005), namely democracy, equity, diversity, growth and sustainability. The challenge according to Fainstein (2005) is to create synergies and handle contradictions between these goals. Based on previous research (Andersen, 2013; Aspen, 2013; Bergsli, 2005; Røe, 2015), however, there are reasons for claiming that the Fjord City is becoming an area designed for well-off inhabitants, tourists, visitors and investors, and to a lesser degree the lower classes of the city and socially marginalized groups. Much of the waterfront is owned and controlled by private interests. As Heringstad (2008) has demonstrated, the designers and owners have attempted to use the design of the buildings and spaces as a means to control the de facto access of welcomed and non-welcomed groups. Consequently, a substantial part of these waterfront areas does not qualify as a ‘truly public space’ as defined by Smith and Low (2006: 4).
The particular case discussed in this article is the most visible and most debated project in the Fjord City Plan, namely the Barcode project, a row of mainly office buildings, which is part of the development plan for the larger Bjørvika area (see Figure 1). We present an investigation of the initial phase of this building project, focusing on the work of the hired architects, the architectural competition and the immediate process thereafter. We question especially how the Barcode design was developed, and on what types of knowledge, specifically regarding the urban social context, it was based. Because it was a political objective to make the new waterfront a socially mixed urban space, our aim is to shed light on whether, and how, this goal was reflected in the work of the architects. To investigate this we draw mainly on in-depth interviews with architects, a former city planner, real estate developers and property owners; we also draw on newspaper articles and policy documents, as well as existing research.
Barcode under construction (‘Barcode Project, Bjørvika, Oslo, seen from Sørenga, June 2012’ photo by Helge Høifødt, licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barcode_June_2012_seen_from_S%C3%B8renga.JPG).
Oslo: the background
Oslo is a relatively small, but fast growing, capital. In fact, it has been estimated to be Europe’s fastest growing capital (Gundersen and Strand, 2014: 6). Between 2010 and 2014, the population increased by almost 50,000 so that in January 2014 close to 635,000 people were resident within its administrative borders, and in March 2015 citizen number 650,000 was registered. By 2035 the population is expected to have grown to 852,000 (Gundersen and Strand, 2014: 6). This growth is welcomed by local politicians who, equally, argue about how to plan for the future growth towards 2030, especially with respect to housing and infrastructure. Because of a national compact city policy and the political consensus on the conservation of the woodlands north of the city, the population increase is to be handled through densification within the built-up area of the city as well as in the suburban neighbourhood municipalities. The densification policy is spatially differentiated, and areas close to public transport hubs such as Barcode, which are located within walking distance to trains, buses, trams and the metro, are considered to be ideal for developing a sustainable Oslo (The Municipality of Oslo, 2015b: 45–46).
Central to the politicians’ and urban planners’ ‘visions’ of a socially and environmentally sustainable 2030 city is the desire to ‘prevent the development of a segregated city’ (The Municipality of Oslo, 2015b: 26). Notwithstanding this vision, and despite a national ethos of equality, historic and present patterns of socio-economic and ethnic residential segregation hint at a relatively unjust urban development in Norway’s largest city (Andersen, 2014; Andersen et al., 2015; Ljunggren and Andersen, 2014). Until about 1970, Norway was relatively homogeneous in terms of ethnicity. Today, however, about 30% of Oslo’s population has an immigrant background and about 21% are categorized as having a ‘non-Western’ immigrant background (The Municipality of Oslo, 2015a). The upper class and upper-middle class, and the ‘whites’, are over-represented in the area known as the West End and the lower classes, as well as non-Westerner immigrants, live mainly in the East End (Andersen, 2014).
The waterfront development at Bjørvika is taking place just a few hundred meters from the downtown section of the East End; that is, the districts of Grønland and Tøyen. Whereas these areas have witnessed some gentrification (Huse, 2014; Magnusson Turner and Wessel, 2013), Grønland and Tøyen still house some of the largest concentrations of disadvantaged people in Oslo (Brattbakk et al., 2015). A walk across the train tracks separating these two areas and Bjørvika takes you from the new, shiny architecture of Barcode to the somewhat older and worn out, but architecturally diverse and multicultural, Grønland. Arguably, the restructuring of Bjørvika represents an extension of the West End (historically where the elite of Oslo resided), or so-called new-build gentrification (Davidson and Lees, 2005), along the harbour, turning former parts of the ‘neglected east’ into a ‘respectable west’, to borrow from Harvey’s historical account of Paris (Harvey, 2006: 30).
While overall Oslo’s built environment is low-rise, Barcode in contrast consists of a row of, in a Norwegian context, high-rise buildings. All of the buildings have a relatively unique or distinct architectural aesthetic. Thus even though Barcode is a row of tall and slender buildings, the footprint, the height, the materials used and the design of the individual buildings differ. When finished, Barcode – or the Opera Quarter as the developers have renamed it – will consist of 12 buildings (see the timeline in Figure 2).
Timeline for the planning and development of Bjørvika.
Whereas only 400 dwellings will be located in these buildings, 10,000 individuals will be employed in the firms occupying most of the spaces in the 12 buildings. In total, Bjørvika will house about 5000 residential units and about 20,000 people will be at work there (Bjørvika Utvikling AS, 2015). The Barcode buildings are the most explicit physical, as well as political and symbolic, expression of the recent waterfront restructuring in Oslo. Barcode has been heavily debated mainly because of its scale and building height, and its architectural form. Moreover, the adjoining streets, pavements and squares are also the subject of discussions, with regard to their function as traffic arteries and public spaces. In addition, several commentators have been interested in the environmental consequences of this compact urban form (see for instance Foss, 2013; Tennøy et al., 2013). Some have also expressed concern about the social consequences of Barcode becoming a homogenous ‘office ghetto’ (as stated in Kjærås, 2009: 73), or that Barcode and the whole Fjord City are turning into an enclave for the rich/upper-middle class (Nordbø, 2013). Nevertheless, there has been remarkably little public debate concerning the broader social impacts of both the Barcode project and other transformation projects in Oslo.
Before discussing the Barcode project, we will review relevant findings from research on the role of urban architecture in the restructuring and transformation of other cities. We then turn to a short discussion of Norwegian urban planning, in order to provide a necessary social and political context, before shedding light on the planning and design process leading up to Barcode. We conclude the paper with a discussion of our empirical findings.
The transformative role of urban architecture – lessons from the literature
Urban scholars have emphasized how power relations and differently positioned actors shape cities (Galster, 2012). Whereas ordinary inhabitants create meaningful places, others plan and structure the spaces in which such place-makings can be done (Andersen, 2001; Røe, 2014). It is claimed that the dominant actors of urban capital investment and circulation, that is the owners of local business enterprises and transnational companies, as well as key politicians and other decision-making actors, are the ones with the most power to (re-) structure the city (Andersen, 2014; Bunce and Desfor, 2007; Flierl and Marcuse, 2012; Lukes, 2005; Marcuse, 2012; Røe, 2015). These actors are the most influential in organizing, making or shaping the urban spaces and their material features. As Brenner et al. (2012: 3) argued, capitalist cities are ‘intensively commodified’, implying that their architecture and their different districts, such as waterfront areas, ‘are sculptured and continually reorganized in order to enhance the profit-making capacities of capital’ (Brenner et al., 2012: 3).
Increasingly, urban investigations have focused on the role and meaning of architecture in urban restructuring and transformation, turning attention away from the study of architecture as signs and symbols in themselves, to the investigation of the social production and social construction of architecture. In a study of one of the major post-industrial transformation projects, London Docklands, Crilley (1992: 231) emphasized that architects were influential in image building and the selling of a place, and that architecture has a role ‘…in the mediating perceptions of urban change and persuading “us” of the virtues and cultural beneficence of speculative investments’. The role of architecture is also emphasized by Grubbauer (2014) in her study of Vienna, where the discursive and visual representation of a project with a decontextualized office architecture is part of a shift in urban political strategies towards attracting international companies and becoming a European metropolis, in addition to being an ‘Eastern gateway’. However, such strategies may give rise to debate and cause conflict. Desfor and Jørgensen (2004), in their investigation of the rebuilding taking place in the harbour area of Copenhagen, focused on a new ‘flexible’ governance initially producing an architecture which ‘…brought a public outcry that threatened to destabilize urban politics and fracture continuous economic growth’ (Desfor and Jørgensen, 2004: 493). This conflict also escalated because the waterfront project was placed in a working class area, as in the case of Barcode, where people felt alienated from the process and the result, and because no affordable housing was offered.
In studying the ‘ways in which corporate and state actors and institutions, mobilise architecture as one way of making political economic strategies meaningful’, Jones (2009: 2520) suggested using the framework of cultural political economy. This helps to distinguish between, on the one hand, the symbolic meaning and interpretation of architecture, and, on the other hand, the relationship between architects and the dominating classes and the powerful actors of urban politics and business. Dovey (2010) argued that there is a silent complicity between architects and the agendas of the politically and economically powerful, in contrast to the common conception of the architect as a free-standing designer or artist. Rather, according to Jones (2009: 2525), cultural forms (values attached to architectural forms and aesthetics) become laden with political-economic meaning due to the material strategies associated with their construction. Grubbauer (2014: 355) adds to this, stating that, ‘economic imaginaries might be installed more efficiently if they are discursively connected to and visually represented by buildings in urban space, as this enhances their plausibility and visibility’. This relationship between architecture and private capital may reach a higher emotional level, or even an erotic relationship, according to Kaika (2011), as depicted in the novel and film The Fountainhead (by Ayn Rand), when an architect is asked by a powerful New York media tycoon to design a ‘monument to his life’.
Although an increasing number of investigations focus on the production of architecture and the involved actors in such transformation projects, they seldom study the design processes in detail. One exception is Lees’s (2001) ground-breaking study of the design of the then new public library in Vancouver, as well as the heated discourse about, and the plurality of meanings and the habitual use and consumption of, the library. Although Lees studied the writings of the architects, she did not interview them herself about the design process. However, McNeill’s (2007) investigation of two premium office buildings (designed by two leading international firms) in Sydney is based on interviews with key agents involved in the commissioning, design and management of the two building projects, as well as design documents and media coverage. Hagen (2014), in her study of the Oslo and New York-based architect firm Snøhetta, did also study the working and creative processes of architects through long-term, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork. Other scholars, also focusing on premium or iconic buildings (Charney, 2007; Sklair, 2010), emphasized the role of high profile architects and transnational design firms, producing decontextualized architectural fragments and solitary buildings (Grubbauer, 2014). Nevertheless, Faulconbridge (2009) argued that the global homogenization of architecture, driven forward by global capital and glocal architects, may not necessarily lead to total decontextualization:
… the received wisdom that transnational corporations localize their services through in situ operations that allow access to ‘local’ knowledge which informs that adaption of products and services seems to be in need of embellishment and further consideration (…) members of the project design team are embedded in the cultural, economic, social and political context of the place in which the product is to be consumed. (Faulconbridge, 2009: 2551)
This may of course vary a great deal from city to city and between projects, including different consortia of architects and consultancies.
The societal context and the planning frame of Barcode
Following the Second World War, the Municipality of Oslo ‘acted like an urban developer’ (Andersen, 2014: 117). However, the city now has a planning regime in which private developers have taken over most parts of the detailed planning process (especially its initial phases), while the city government is more of a regulatory power. For example, of all the adopted zoning plans in Oslo in 2007, 82% were private proposals (Falleth et al., 2008: 21–29). As such, urban planning practices in Norway can be categorized as either adhering to a neoliberal logic or as being largely ‘deregulated’ (Røe, 2014: 510). It is also private actors or semi-private/semi-public institutions that, in the words of the former city planner we interviewed, ‘execute’ the plans. The City Municipality can designate an area as ready for development, but if a private entrepreneur does not find it profitable, plans will not be followed by construction. As one of the largest residential developers stated, when asked about the city’s ambition to develop environmental friendly housing in Oslo’s East End:
It is out of the question for us to build anything like that there. The demands formulated by the city makes it too expensive to sell as the prospective [East End] home seeker does not have the ability to pay for it. Even though we have a property there, we won’t develop it. (Interview, 2013)
In other words the ‘rent gap’ was not large enough. If the municipality does not have the political will to take more responsibility for planning, design and construction in Oslo, the market actors are de facto in the driver’s seat (Hanssen, 2010: 721).
Restructuring the waterfront in Oslo
As noted, Aker Brygge was one of the first waterfront areas to undergo post-industrial transformation. A former city planner looked back at this development when explaining how the ideas for the Fjord City came about:
I think it was in 1982 when they had this idea competition ‘The Fjord and the City’ … This was the first time Aker Brygge was no longer a shipyard (…) A master plan [for the larger harbour area] was designed. But the processes went off and on for some time. Then at the peak of the yuppie era at the end of the 1980s, Bjørvika was one of the sections they discussed. Some canal cities were drawn (…) Then, jumping to 1999, we started to collaborate with the Norwegian Public Roads Administration [the NPRA] to make new plans for Bjørvika (…) It was necessary to get the major roads there into [an underwater] tunnel. The NPRA was positive but viewed it as an urban development issue, and not a road issue. But [in 2000] the [parliament] decided that the National Opera was to be relocated to Bjørvika, and everyone knew that the opera could not have Norway’s largest intersection as it nearest neighbour. You know; in for a penny, in for a pound – the parliamentary resolution [to relocate the opera] implied [that the NPRA had to make big changes to the roads in Bjørvika]. Bjørvika involved considerable work, amounting to 7 or 8 agreements. (Interview, 2014)
According to Habhab (2013: 6), the Oslo Inner East faction of the Norwegian Labour Party persuaded its fellow party members in the parliament that locating the Opera in Bjørvika would be an ‘engine’ for renewal of the deprived Inner East. It was hoped that this redevelopment would improve the living conditions in the eastern downtown area. In addition, this development would ‘give the eastern neighbourhoods a new access to water’ (Grønning, 2011: 146). As noted, they succeeded in relocating the opera in June 1999 and, in the following year, the city council passed its ‘Fjord City Strategy’ resolution which stated that the remainder of the harbour activities should be concentrated further east and that the waterfront should be made ready for urban development. Despite the fact that much of the land was public property, and even though several of the major developers were controlled by public agencies, the Norwegian planning and urban development regime made sure that the development followed the logic of the market.
Visioning a socially sustainable community – developing an exclusionary enclave
According to Bergsli (2005: 109), Bjørvika was initially meant to be a ‘socially balanced’ environment. In other words, the whole area was to be socially sustainable as defined by the municipality (The Municipality of Oslo, 2015b). It was supposed to be a heterogeneous area in terms of class, ethnicity, household composition, and age. Moreover, it was planned to be ‘a diverse district with a vibrant urban scene and with many different cultural facilities’ (quoted in Bergsli, 2005: 109). However, both a representative from one of the largest property owners in Bjørvika and the former urban planner explained the ambition to set aside a part of the dwellings for affordable housing was not realized. The former city planner elaborated:
You know, this is a political game. The city council pass a resolution that they want 10% affordable housing, and then the municipality sign this contract for the development of the area and the developers are able to exert pressure on the politicians and end up committing to only 5% affordable housing units. And then they define what affordable housing shall be … Given the very high property price here none of the residences end up being truly affordable to rent for low-income groups (Interview, 2014).
The representative of the property owner who was interviewed added that they had agreed to set aside a property for student housing and because these units would make up 5% of the total housing units, the city government was satisfied since this then qualified as 5% affordable residential units. Of course, students may not be affluent; but equally they can hardly be said to represent the socio-economic and ethnically mixed population of Oslo. In other words, the vision of social sustainability remained a vision in the sense of a dream. It was not to be realized.
The architectural competition and conceptualization of Barcode
While architects and thus their practices are localized or emplaced, the local settings in which they operate ‘are connected to much broader economic, political, and cultural developments by linkages so complex that they defy summary’ (Larson, 1993: 67). We cannot untangle these complex relations, but acknowledge that the question of where ideas originate, and what factors or mechanisms are involved in the planning and final development of such a project, is an issue too complex to be reduced to a single coherent narrative of the Dutch and Norwegian architects that met and collaborated in the design of Barcode. Their ideas and their design are part and parcel of a much larger context, or structures and practices of actors, rules and regulations, knowledge, representations, which in large part (consciously or not) influence their work. Jones (2011), drawing on the works of Bourdieu, stressed that the work and designs of architects are not the result of the efforts of autonomous artists. Similarly, Dovey (2010: 38) referred to Bourdieu when claiming that ‘there are no zones of neutrality in which to practice’ as an architect; this also holds true when considering the making of Barcode. In addition to their participation in or knowledge of the transnational architectural discourse on urban architecture and planning (Pløger, 2001), framing the practices of firms taking part in prestigious competitions like the one that would result in Barcode, the architects had to fulfil the expectations of real estate actors and developers, as well as relate to, adjust to, or in some cases oppose, policies, planning assumptions and formal regulations. The designers conceptualizing Barcode were, for instance, taking part in a competition where certain regulations on how to develop the properties had to be adhered to. Although the Barcode project would deviate somewhat from these regulations, the architects had to try to make their proposal fit the preferences of the competition jury and, especially, the needs of the property owners/developers.
The property owners had formed a consortium called OSU (the consortium consisted of three major real estate developers: Entra Eiendom AS, Linstow AS and ROM eiendom). Important elements were infrastructure and streets, the number of dwellings and offices, and building heights. It was mainly the building heights, which in the original development plan were set to a maximum of 12 to 13 office storeys, that caused antagonism. This is not surprising because this regulation is important for the building design (the creative outcome of the architectural design process) and the market profitability (because, in general, higher densities and taller buildings create more income per investment cost). The consortium of architectural firms that won the competition and OSU suggested a new maximum height at the equivalent of 17 office storeys or 22 dwelling storeys. Despite protest initiated by the Directorate for Cultural Heritage, arguing that the consequences would be severe for the visual landscape and the remnants of the medieval town of Oslo, the proposed building heights were retained.
A break with Norwegian urbanism and architecture
When the architectural competition for what would become the Barcode area was announced in 2003, two Norwegian firms, Alab and Dark (belonging to the same company group), contacted MVRDV, a renowned Dutch architectural firm. Dark was an established Norwegian firm, but Alab was then relatively unknown. One of the architects at Alab described the firm thus: ‘We were a Wild Card office at that time, we were very young’. He explained further that they wanted to submit something innovative to the competition, but to be able to do that the Norwegians needed a partner. A team of architects from the new Alab, the more established Dark and, not least, the ‘futuristic MVRDV that turned European cities upside down’ was to become, the Norwegian architect claimed, ‘an interesting mix for Norway’ (Interview, 2014). In an interview the MVRDV architect who led the design process for the Barcode concept explained:
[We] developed very clear urban rules. If you build a tower your neighbour has to do something else – if you use brick then your neighbour cannot use brick anymore. When an architect does building A, he cannot do building B anymore. The reason for that was because at that moment the Barcode was the first step in development of a new city-centre around Barcode. (Interview, 2014)
The Dutch architect said that they viewed Oslo as a somewhat uninteresting city and they wanted their project to be different, by ‘…offering topologies that stimulate differentiation and almost force a new type of urbanism in Oslo’. The Norwegian collaborating architect from Alab elaborated on this, and said that the MVRDV architects considered Norwegian architecture and urban planning as traditional:
They [i.e. other Norwegian architects] are preoccupied with Norwegian fjords, cabins … The narrative about the new, dense Oslo with a lot of noise and people is absent. [But] if we are to succeed with Oslo, then we have to succeed with the new, dense, future-oriented and democratic Oslo. That points towards the future (…) When people first saw the Barcode plan, it caused a public outcry. They didn’t like the heights and the density that we proposed. However, Barcode has now become the illustration of the new Oslo that more and more people like. In 2003, we said to ourselves that what we’re going to be criticized for Barcode in 2023, is that we didn’t build taller. I still think that. Also, I don’t think Barcode would have turned out the way it did if it wasn’t for our collaboration with the Dutch – they had a very different urban planning competence. Additionally, how they worked with knowledge differed compared to what we traditionally do here in Norway. In Norway, we are used to work in a master-apprentice kind of way, where the chief architect will teach the others who will then digest what they have heard. Then they will follow the master’s instructions. When we met the Dutch, they worked very differently. It was ‘go wide, go deep.’ (Interview, 2014)
He continued, saying that at MVRDV everybody discussed everything until they were finished. They made as many good proposals as possible. Key to this process was an analytical approach in which they used different kinds of information compared to what the Norwegian architects had done in their work. The Dutch architect also stated that MVRDV had a different competence and that their analytical approach was very different to that with which the Norwegians were familiar. The MVRDV architect explained their own practice:
We started working in the Netherlands, but quite soon we started doing projects [abroad]. MVRDV is a research-driven office, we have a clear analytic way of working, an analytic methodology, and we describe architecture and urban planning as a tool, a device. With every project we clearly try to analyse and formulate what we try to contribute to a specific context, location or urban situation. Although we work all over the world, the result is that none of our buildings look like the buildings we made before, which was in a different area. We try not to have a specific style, but to adapt to the needs of the location.(Interview, 2014)
Asked whether there were projects made after Barcode that resembles Barcode he said that,
You can recognise elements of it in our projects, but also in urban planning in general. The quality of densification, the quality of intimacy, the quality of densification and vividness on the street, Iconographic architecture maybe. These are generic tools you can say, that can also be recognised in other places in the world. (Interview, 2014)
Replying to a question about whether Barcode was either ‘anchored locally or more internationally oriented’, the Alab architect suggested that Barcode was ‘a symbol of big-city growth.’ For the architects it was important to see Barcode as part of non-local processes and tendencies. It could ‘be recognized in other places in the world’ and was a symbol of global urbanization processes.
When the team members met, the first thing they did was to gather information on urban growth and demographics. The Norwegian participant admitted that he did not know why they needed this information, as the representative from Alab told us:
But the Dutch had a detailed list of what they needed. And they made these diagrams that showed how Oslo would develop. This was to make sure that we did not just make the best physical [solutions] for the area, but to go behind that and find out what they really wanted and what the city needed. (Interview, 2014)
Both the Dutch and the Norwegian architect stressed how MVRDV, and thus the whole project team, worked analytically. It is relevant here that when designing and making Barcode the team members were doing their work in the Netherlands. In addition, the architects at MVRDV did not have substantial prior knowledge of Oslo, and certainly not about Bjørvika. Moreover, although the architect at Alab stressed that they tried to understand what the clients truly sought, it was the architects who defined the needs of the city; or, in other words, the design needed to make this a project that could fit the urban socio-spatial context. Of importance is that, as the architect from Alab said, they asked themselves what it was that the clients wanted, ‘what do they want for their future users, that is, a Central Business District?’. The architects had to make their proposal fit the needs of the developers. Apart from this ‘obvious’ instruction, the architects were interested in creating ‘…buildings that are very emblematic’, or ‘…an architecture that is hyper-direct – extremely visual and communicative’, as the Dutch designer explained. He also stressed that they had succeeded in designing something new or innovative in a ‘slightly boring’ Oslo. They had, he said, offered topologies that stimulated ‘…differentiation and almost force a new urbanism in Oslo. [It] has really paid off if you take a look at how Barcode has been featured in all magazines and newspapers of importance’.
When asked whether or not more tall buildings would be a good idea for Oslo, he replied:
It is a good idea for different reasons […] By densifying you are able to improve your cities, you are able to make cities more valuable and more attractive for people to live. [We aim] to create cities that are more vivid, to be able to increase the amount of bars and restaurants and cultural amenities. Densification is clearly a tool for making the city more attractive and valuable to live in. (Interview, 2014)
The Norwegian architect also referred to ‘physical’ factors when clarifying what their aims were when designing Barcode: ‘[We wanted to create] a vibrant urban place […] What we did was a modern version of the harbour in Bergen, with streets and roads to pull the activities out’. When asked, ‘what is Barcode?’ the answer was simply, ‘It is houses that look different, but that are organized according to a pattern … with a passage through. The main thing is that they address a front side’.
Barcode, a case of decontextualized urban development project
The interest of the urban designers of MVRDV and their Norwegian partners lay in creating what they saw as interesting architecture and an exciting urban space, as well making Barcode a practical or convenient space for the businesses to be located there. They spoke in terms of density and heights and emphasized how Barcode as a built form was innovative and a success. Despite the political ambitions of making Bjørvika/Barcode an integrated part of the existing city, and despite the initial political vision of creating a ‘balanced’ and ‘diverse’ social and cultural environment, the architects developing the conceptual design of Barcode paid scant attention to the local social setting, including the social implications of such a large-scale restructuring. Instead, they were interested in making an impressive architectural project that was not necessarily ‘iconic’ but which was at least distinct. Moreover, Barcode was seen as representing urban development in general – not necessarily anchored in the local context. It was also planned and designed for the business elite.
If socially decontextualized projects and socio-spatial enclaves are to be avoided, as quite clearly were the ambitions in Bjørvika as well as in the Fjord City Plan, architects and urban planners should consider carefully the impact of their designs, not only with respect to landscape aesthetics and sightlines, but also regarding social inclusion and justice. As Dovey (2010: 38) argued, ‘design is the practice of “framing” the habitat of everyday life, both literally and discursively’. Because architects are key actors in determining these very frames, their work does have significant social consequences. If they are to be able to reflect on and consider the outcome of particular urban projects, the designers need to gather relevant information or to develop particular forms of knowledge. Of relevance here is that, as Barth (2002: 1) pointed out, ‘knowledge [is] what a person employs to interpret and act on the world’. Architects ‘acting on the world’ have greater material impacts than many other groups because their material designs not only enable but, as Dovey (2010: 38) stated, also constrain the acts of people in general. Consequently, not only should architects and planners generate data about the urban socio-spatial context of a project, as well as the wider urban area, but also they need to interpret and use this information consciously during the design processes.
Concluding discussion
The aim of the larger Fjord City master plan has been to design a waterfront that all of Oslo’s residents can make use of, and new urban districts that are varied socially and culturally. It was specified that Bjørvika would be ‘accessible to the inhabitants of the city’ and that this seaside space would ‘contribute to its neighbouring parts’ (quoted and translated by Berg, 2007: 24). For the adjacent eastern areas, it was hoped that the relocation of the opera, and the subsequent urban development at the seaside, would benefit these neighbourhoods and their residents. How Barcode and the development of the rest of Bjørvika would contribute to the larger city and the adjacent areas in terms of accessibility, equity, social sustainability or the improvement of living conditions was not, however, either part of the architects’ vision or their concern. Consequently, we argue that the Barcode project can be seen as a case of socially insensitive and decontextualized urban design. Whilst the potential of the waterfront areas as a public urban space open for a variety of groups and practices should not be dismissed, we agree with Aspen (2013: 198) that there are indeed ‘few traces of how the city’s existing social and cultural diversity’ informed the planning and design of the new waterfront. The architects stated that they worked ‘analytically’ and tried ‘to contribute to [the] specific context’; but it is difficult to see any indication of how or if the architects actually included knowledge of the local social context in their work. The heterogeneous social environment and the vernacular architecture are not reflected in the final design. In other words, neither the planning process nor the final design of this large-scale architectural project was ever informed by the kind of knowledge that could situate and integrate the project within the wider socio-spatial urban context. Today, the Barcode buildings make up a business district that targets a very limited group of people. The ‘frame’ constructed by the architects enables some practices more than others: or, rather, using their knowledge and through their design, the architects ‘acting on the world’ have created a habitat or a place of work mainly for the ‘upper classes’, thereby fitting into a political economic strategy of positioning culturally the new districts of the city centre in a transnational sphere of competition.
While we do not subscribe to any kind of architectural determinism, we nevertheless see the built environment as being an expression of power relations (Flierl and Marcuse, 2012), as a spatial framework for urban spatial practices, and as an influential factor in (new-build) gentrification processes that change the social composition of urban districts (Lees et al., 2008). Architects, politicians and, not the least, property developers and property owners are all clearly influential or powerful city makers. We have also documented that even if local politicians formulated certain ‘visions for [the] new waterfront’ (Bunce and Desfor, 2007: 258) and urban development in general, other key actors, such as internationally-oriented and design-focused architects and profit-seeking developers, did not operationalize these visions into detailed plans and designs. Similar to Schmidt’s (2015: 171) observation, it is possible to question if the visions formulated in (master) plans, or the urban development strategies following from these ambitions, are something politicians want to ensure developers and architects adhere to (see Christiansen, 2014). If social sustainability includes developing a just city, minimalizing residential segregation, then this part of Oslo’s waterfront can hardly be said to support such an ideal. Just as important – and recall here the ‘negotiation’ over the amount of affordable housing in Bjørvika – the politicians did not seem to have the will, and thus the means, to realize such visions in this case.
In conclusion, we therefore argue that Barcode represents more than an ‘aesthetic break’ with, or a ‘physical barrier’ to, the inland (eastern) city behind it. Located adjacent to the traditional working-class and today’s ethnically mixed East End, Barcode is a visible manifestation of the financial elite and the so-called ‘creative class’, thereby contributing to ongoing gentrification (Magnusson Turner and Wessel, 2013), socio-spatial segregation (Wessel, 2000) and the development of visibly exclusionary enclaves (Andersen, 2014). The lack of an analytical approach taking social issues into consideration in the work of the architects designing Barcode, focusing instead on the architecture and physical layout, has contributed to the general lack of attention to social issues in and the social context of this large-scale urban transformation project.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Joar Skrede and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions on how to improve the previous draft.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article presents some of the results from the research project ‘Governance and Learning’ (project no. 143762), funded by the Norwegian Research Council’s programme ‘Democratic and Effective Governance, Planning and Public Administration (DEMOS)’.