作者：弗兰克·达菲

尼尔斯·托普的故事：他参与设计的建筑项目类型广泛，他多才多艺，富有创造性，热爱奥斯陆这座城市的历史建筑并且对其有深刻的认识。在一个卓越的建筑时代背景下，他取得了辉煌的成就。他对建筑工艺和施工的相关方面具有高度的实践热情，对大海和祖国的风景怀有浪漫情怀。

但是，我个人的预测是：五十年后，当一切都成过眼云烟，一切都将尘埃落定，尼尔斯·托普将因其对建筑和城市化的卓著贡献而被铭记。首先，他在单个建筑形态——办公楼——的演变中所担任的突出角色；其次，他对如何重塑城市以适应知识经济时代多层面、多样化和不断变化的需求的富有想象力的见解。

本文的目的在于探讨尼尔斯·托普办公楼设计方法的社会和政治先例，解释为何他在办公建筑设计项目方面的影响力已经远远超出了他居住的斯堪的纳维亚环境，并将他的办公楼设计特别是室内补充设计方面的想法与增强城市设计的魅力联系起来，并展示尼尔斯·托普对办公场所设计和城市设计两方面的超强的结合，对21世纪最适宜的城市物理建筑的迫切创新任务是何等的及时和相关。

挪威数据公司（1986年）

首先让我来说说最早我是如何认识尼尔斯·托普的。那是在1987年，《建筑师杂志》请我写一篇关于尼尔斯·托普新完成的位于英国纽布利附近的挪威数据公司办公大楼的评论文章。这是关于尼尔斯·托普的作品的最早的评论之一。这个相对低调的英国总部特殊项目（挪威数据公司位于英国纽布利的分公司）最初受到《建筑师杂志》的关注可能是因为他对坐落于起伏不平的公园环境中的18世纪优雅绅士住宅的重要转变。虽然显而易见的是，尼尔斯·托普对这座最初由亨利·赫朗德设计具有重要历史意义的房子做了精美的重新装修。但我很快就清楚地意识到，该项目真正显著的特点不是它对历史遗迹的保护，而是他在老房子的一旁低调地增加了三个办公楼的创新设计。起初我对三组对比感到惊讶：对赫朗德设计的住宅庄重正式性的研究和对三个新办公楼不拘小节的研究；老房子内的直接循环层次结构模式和办公楼倾斜边道进入模式；18世纪的严肃风格和20世纪适宜高科技办公的斯堪的纳维亚概念的温暖家居风格。

作为英国人，我还有几个令人惊讶的发现：一个是挪威数据公司高比率的可用空间——超过三分之一——分配给集体活动，如会议室、培训室和其他不太正式的场所，为公司内部的社交生活提供了空间。令人惊讶的还有尼尔斯·托普高度象征性地突出了集体用途，例如，把一部分老房子中最优美和最庄严的房子用作此用途。此外亲密的互动空间被大方地设置在三座办公楼中每一层的中心区域，直接靠近每个被玻璃幕墙包围的办公室，这些办公室根据各层的长度排列。显然销售复杂的电子产品被挪威数据公司视为一个集社交、知识、教育和商业于一体的活动。这需要宽敞的空间标准和富有想象力的设计，而且，也许更重要的是，社区感受的表达以及每个人对整个不同工作环境的自由进入。

挪威数据公司是斯堪的纳维亚“综合办公室”理念在英国的第一个案例，一种融入了非常具体的社会和政治具体工作事项的新型办公规划形式，这与在英语国家的大多数办公室设计相当不同。尼尔斯·托普那时作为一名挪威建筑师在英国和美国几乎完全不为人所知，但却是他将这一概念引进到盎格鲁 - 撒克逊办公建筑的神秘世界中来。

尼尔斯·托普如何发展办公场所作为城市的理念

正是在不断实践和一贯具有民主倾向的斯堪的纳维亚地区，而非德国，首次出现了完全开放和完全隔离二者的办公楼折衷解决方案。该综合办公的广泛影响在今天变得越来越明显，因为工作的日益虚拟化和移动化——知识工作的新地理位置和时间表特征——正在从根本上转变用户对不同办公布局类型的需求。

三个极其重要的因素：第一，规模的巨大变化；第二，信息技术效应削弱了上班族和他们各自工作场所之间的联系；第三，更加精明、要求更高和快速变化的客户的影响。这些因素结合起来说明了尼尔斯·托普对办公场所思考的发展模式：从纽布利的文明而低调的挪威数据公司办公楼项目（1986年完工）到斯德哥尔摩附近弗洛桑戴维的SAS总部大楼（1989年完工），从希思罗附近哈蒙斯沃斯的英国航空公司总部大楼（1998年完工）到他最新的作品之一——奥斯陆的挪威商学院（2008年完工）。

在弗洛桑戴维的SAS总部大楼，尼尔斯·托普的伟大贡献是创造了一个规模非常大的布景内饰建筑布局。我说布景不只是空间规模大，而且与整个建筑设计相得益彰，显得充满活力。非常重要的是，尼尔斯·托普也在阿克尔码头（他的家乡奥斯陆的一个全新场所）的设计上超越了城市设计的传统，通过采用更大规模、同样壮观的想象以及相同的适应渗透性、移动性和流动性原则。他正是在信息技术开始明朗的时候实现了这一办公设计的突破，信息技术以其强大性和普遍性，不但会使个人办公场所变得老套乏味，也会让办公楼本身变得荒废。

在哈蒙斯沃斯的英航总部大楼的设计中，尼尔斯·托普将办公室内的布景视觉效果复制为城市至关重要的一部分，但对于一个已经打算借用信息技术来鼓励更加移动化的工作方式和强化空间使用的激进公司组织，这有着额外的优势，因此对个人独有办公室的完全放弃，是英航决心使用其新办公楼作为驱动业务和文化变革的标志。

在奥斯陆BI挪威商学院的设计中，大的突破是工作场所作为城市缩影的愿景的进一步发展，要找到工作、学习、社交之间的界限已经成为不可能。办公室已经变成城市，而城市已经变成办公室。

斯德哥尔摩弗洛桑戴维的SAS总部大楼（1989年）

挪威数据公司办公楼设立一个场景，也无疑是尼尔斯·托普的建筑杰作——斯德哥尔摩的SAS总部大楼的原型。1989年3月，我有幸为《建筑评论》写一篇关于这座大楼的评论。

斯德哥尔摩的SAS总部大楼完全不同和具有更加优越工作环境的是它没有像街边建筑那么多的中庭。这个世界到处是死气沉沉的中庭：呆板、痉挛的脖子和死气沉沉的意味涌上心头。尼尔斯·托普在SAS总部大楼的创新辉煌是确保SAS的中庭和它的使用者都看起来好像他们要实现——当然是他们真正至少在内部复制一个非常令人满意的完整的都市体验。这条街足够长，而且有足够的目的地和活动连接到五个单独办公空间。更重要的是，通过将街道与目的地（包括咖啡厅、会议室和培训室、商店）成一条直线，托普以他天才般的建筑布景，确保它始终是充满活力的。

整个SAS大楼由一个很有特色的管理日程来驱动、激励和推动。办公楼各楼层个人办公空间和共享群体空间之间的关系，是各主要部门和街道关系的缩影。不言而喻，这属于每个人和整个组织。在每一个组织层面——个人工作场所、小团体、部门和总部作为一个整体——每个部分都最为微妙和灵活地在加强组织连接的总体专栏内得以说明。

在SAS总裁卡尔森所表达的目标中，弗洛桑戴维的SAS总部大楼设计为一个管理工具而非仅仅是一座大楼，他把这个大楼称为：“作为行政的主要任务……是为前端提供服务，并发展和制定愿景、战略和目标。我们想把这一切放进这座建筑中”。再者，“创意开发不会在一个人独坐在办公桌前的时候发生的。创意开发来源于两个人相遇，开始交谈，交流思想和经验的时候。新的想法涌现出来即是一切的开端“。

英国航空公司，哈蒙斯沃斯(1994年)

SAS总部大楼竣工五年后，英国航空公司的新总部大楼复制了许多前辈的特点。然而，综合办公室的理念已经因为支持工作场所之间更大的流动性和可互换性取消。英国航空公司那时正经历管理变革，这对作为建筑师的尼尔斯·托普具有吸引力，因为他被评定为具有不只是创造一个办公楼的能力，而且能支持并加速文化和组织变革的迫切需要的计划。如SAS总部大楼一样，英国航空公司总部的规划和局部也被赋予了加强内部沟通的许多功能。

这两座大楼的内饰显然来源于尼尔斯·托普对城市形态的终生兴趣和迷恋。然而，具有讽刺意味的是，这两座大楼都孤立地建在郊区的公共用地上。

然而，英航作为一个客户能够进一步发展SAS总部大楼的模型，在这个过程中有两个非常重要的情况。首先是英航投入该项目的大量管理精力。航空一直是一个国有化的行业，甚至在人们的记忆中是一个半军事组织，最近私有化的英航利用项目时间表所提供的每一次机会，一步一步地向世人展示这家航空公司决心成为世界最先进的，客户友好的和服务响应最快的机构。第二个进程方面的优势是因为信息技术的迅速进步而成为可能。乔迁之时，2500名英航员工搬进了大楼的工作场所。如今，增加流动员工数量已上升到超过4000人。这个简单统计的有力证据就是人与人的关系、他们的时间表、他们的位置和他们的工作场所之间的关系如何迅速变化。

阿克尔码头：城市形式作为布景

到八十年代后期，尼尔斯·托普不仅是国际上具有特殊天赋的著名建筑师，创造了如SAS总部大楼和英国航空公司总部大楼的建筑物。它们不仅是强大的商业工具，在建筑上也具有重大意义。两栋大楼都具有神奇的，准城市化的内饰品质。毫不奇怪，尼尔斯·托普以其优秀的布景技巧在奥斯陆证明他振兴城市设计的能力。

今天重读我在1990年7月发表在《建筑评论》上的对尼尔斯·托普的著名城市设计项目（奥斯陆阿克尔码头）的评论，让我感触颇深的是我不能在英国的城市项目中获得相同的流动性、亲密感和综合运用的证据。

阿克尔码头及其随后的向西扩建是如此有趣。有趣和巧妙的并非完全是建筑，而是使用的布景法组合，给阿克尔码头一种强烈的地方意识，特别是在间质性空间中建筑内和建筑之间。“参观阿克尔码头的最佳时机”——我在第一次参观后为《建筑评论》写的另一篇文章——“是在早春或秋季黄昏时。最佳观赏点在内部，从办公室走廊到中庭或从一个公寓，向下看并且向对面看，从综合大楼的一部分到另一部分。办公室的灯熄灭，公寓灯光亮起来的时候，你之所见全是最让人兴奋的透明——一层一层的空间，有些亮着，有些是漆黑的，一层叠一层；一个有人的办公室，看看有人在准备晚饭的厨房，购物人群在喝咖啡和听钢琴曲的一楼中庭”。

尼尔斯·托普的办公楼室内设计和城市设计之间的共同因素是他对建筑、街道和场所布景方面的思考能力。将它们设计为场景，作为精心策划的壮观活动的基本背景。就像一个戏剧或电影制片人，尼尔斯·托普已经能够找到在物质上使得SAS总部大楼和英国航空公司总部大楼的内街，以及阿克尔码头的间质和重叠空间变得栩栩如生，既具有吸引力，也有多种多样的功能，充满魅力，引人入胜。

就这个观点而言，是什么帮助了尼尔斯·托普？ 毫无疑问，他既是富有想象力的城市设计师和精美绝伦的内饰创造者，两个至关重要的经历成就了他：首先是他在罗马的经历，十几岁时，他的建筑师父亲让他在罗马与一个意大利家庭生活了半年，那时他接触了意大利非常靠南城市的街道和广场的建筑和多姿多彩的生活；其次，他是一个建筑学生，但对表演和戏剧具有很大的热情，恰巧，这两者的联系颇有渊源：scenography，毕竟有两个本意，一个是建筑的再现，另一个是风景绘画，尼尔斯·托普的手法是二者的巧妙结合。

BI 挪威商学院作为一个艺术作品

奥斯陆尼达伦新商学院校园是尼尔斯·托普的设计项目中最清晰地体现建筑和戏剧之间联系的一个项目。这所学校——地上六层地下三层——占了整整一个街区，两条有顶部照明的玻璃内街从顶部到底部将街区一分为二，而两条街道在街区中心的右角汇合。两条较小的街道与更重要的大街平行。这些内街连接的三维空间让人惊讶：从街区任何层次的任何地方都可以看到整个商学院的所有活动——本科生，研究生和管理人员培训等教学活动、礼堂、图书馆，研讨会和小组讨论，个人和小组工作。空间同时具备多种功能：餐饮、交谈、休息，但最重要的是学生、员工和游客之间的正式和非正式的见面和交流。电梯和开放式楼梯（主要的螺旋楼梯能容纳三个人并排行走）实现的水平和垂直（尤其是垂直）流动是尼尔斯·托普作品的一贯风格，瞬间可以理解。进出是分层的，因此可以选择进入或者退出。声音的环境充满活力和刺激，是令人激动的社交环境。布景规模非常大：每一个平面、立面和剖面的建筑变化、每一个细节和大小都告诉人们：“这就是学习的地方，这就是要参观的地方，这就是要去的地方。”

改造城市

尼尔斯·托普已经展示了办公楼和公共机构建筑的室内设计，如SAS，BA和BI，都可以设计成支持偶然的企业和教育文化的创建。他曾在阿克尔码头项目中展示了如何综合，事实是不断的综合，甚至在城市范围内，更加综合的功能是可以相互补充的。整合这些举措是一个重任，但尼尔斯·托普已经证明了想象力和天赋可以使办公楼和商学院从整体上看作是充满活力的体验。还有哪位建筑师具有更好的知识展示工作和学习的新方法的创新如何用布景方式结合起来以振兴建筑本身还有整个城市区域？

Many stories could be told about Niels Torp: the versatility and inventiveness he has displayed over a very wide range of projects, his deep knowledge and love of the historical fabric of the City of Oslo, his own achievements within the context of a distinguished architectural dynasty, his highly practical passion for all matters to do with craft and construction, his romantic fondness for the sea and the landscape of his native country.

However, my personal prediction is that in fifty years time, when all is said and done and everything will have settled into place, Niels Torp will be best remembered for two very specific and very important contributions to architecture and urbanism: first, his outstanding role in the evolution of a single building type — the office — and, second, his imaginative insights into how cities will have to be reshaped to accommodate the multifaceted, varied and ever-changing requirements of the knowledge economy.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the social and political antecedents of Niels Torp's approach to office design; to explain why his office design projects have become highly influential well beyond his immediate Scandinavian environment, to relate how his ideas about the design of offices and particularly their interiors complement and reinforce his fascination with urban design, and to demonstrate how the uniquely powerful combination of Niels Torp's propositions on both workplace and urban design is particularly timely and relevant to the urgent task of inventing the most appropriate physical fabric for the cities of the twenty-first century.

NORSK DATA (1986)

First let me explain how I first came across Niels Torp. It was in 1987. I had been asked to write a review for the Architect's Journal of his newly completed Norsk Data offices near Newbury in England. This was the first of several such reviews of Niels Torp's work. What had probably initially attracted the Architect's journal's attention to this particular project, the relatively modest British headquarters near Newbury of a Norwegian IT company, was that it included a major conversion of a fine eighteenth century gentleman's residence set in rolling parkland. While it was immediately obvious that this historically important house, originally designed by Henry Holland, had been beautifully refurnished by Niels Torp,it soon became clear to me that the really significant feature of the project was not its conservationist dimension, but rather his innovative design of the three new office pavilions that had been added unobtrusively at one side of the old house. Initially I was struck by three contrasts: between the studied formality of Holland's mansion and the equally studied informality of the cluster of three new office building; between the direct and hierarchical pattern of circulation within the old house and the oblique,sideways path that led to the offices and, thirdly, between the austere of the eighteenth century and the warm domesticity of the twentieth century Scandinavian notion of what was appropriate for hi-tech workplace.

Several other surprises met my British eyes: one was Norsk Data's allocation of a very high proportion of the available space — over one third — to collective activities such as meeting and training rooms and other less formal spaces that accommodated the social life of the company. Also surprising was the high degree of symbolic prominence Niels Torp had given to these collective uses, for example, by locating some of them in the finest and stateliest rooms of the old house. Moreover intimate interaction spaces had been generously located within the centre of each of the floors within the three office pavilions, immediately adjacent to the enclosed, glass-fronted,individual offices that lined the perimeters of these floors. Selling complex electronic products was obviously seen by Norsk Data as a social, intellectual,educational and commercial activity demanding generous space standards and imaginative design but also, and perhaps more significantly, the expression of a senses of community combined with free access by everyone to a whole range of different work settings.

Norsk Data was the first example in the UK of the Scandinavian idea of the"combi-office" — a novel form of office planning loaded with a very specific social and political agenda very different from the values expressed in most office design in the English-speaking world. It was Niels Torp, a Norwegian architect, then almost totally unknown in the UK and USA, who was responsible for introducing the concept into the hermetic world of the Anglo-Saxon office.

HOW NIELS TORP DEVELOPED THE IDEA OF THE OFFICE AS THE CITY

It was in ever-practical and always democratically incline Scandinavia, rather than in Germany, that a generic, compromise solution between totally open and totally cellular offices first emerged. The wider implications of the combi-office are only becoming fully apparent today, as increasingly virtual and mobile ways of working — symptomatic of the new geographies and chronologies of knowledge work — are radically shifting the balance of user demand for different types of office layout.

Three critically important factors are at work: first, a massive change of scale;second, the effect of information technology in dissolving the link between office workers and their individual workplaces; and, third, the influence of more sophisticated, demanding and rapidly changing clients. These factors taken together explain the pattern of the development of Niels Torp's thinking about the design of the working environment from the civilised but modest Norsk Data project in Newbury (completed in 1986) to the SAS headquarters at Frösundavik, near Stockholm (completed in 1989), to the British Airways headquarters at Harmondsworth near Heathrow (completed in 1998) and to one of his latest works, the BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo (completed 2008).

At SAS Frösundavik, Niels Torp's great contribution was creating scenographic interior architecture on a very large scale. By scenographic I mean not just space that is big in scale, but space that is choreographed and alive. It is sure significant that simultaneously Niels Torp was transcending conventions in urban design at Aker Brygge, a whole new quarter of Oslo, his native city, by deploying on an even larger scale the same theatrical imagination and the same principles of accommodating permeability, mobility and fluidity. It is significant that he generated this breakthrough in office design at precisely the same moment as it began to be clear that information technology, with all its power and ubiquity, has the potential to make not just individual office workplaces obsolete but also office buildings themselves.

At BA Harmondsworth, Niels Torp replicated his scenographic vision of the office interior as a vital urban quarter, but had the additional advantage of coming to terms with a radical organisation that was already intent on taking advantage of information technology to encourage more mobile ways of working as well as intensifying space use — hence the complete abandonment of the individually owned office room, a sign of BA's commitment to using its new building as the engine for driving business and cultural change.

At BI, the Norwegian Business School in Oslo, the big breakthrough is that,in the further development of the vision of the workplace as a microcosm of the city, it has become impossible to trace the boundaries between working,learning, socialising and studying. The office has become the city and the city has become the office.

SAS FRÖSUNDAVIK, STOCKHOLM (1989)

Norsk Data set the scene and was the prototype for what is undoubtedly Niels Torp's architectural masterpiece, the SAS headquarters in Stockholm— which in March 1989 I was lucky enough to be asked by the Architectural Review to criticise.

What makes SAS in Stockholm a completely different and superior working environment, is that it is not so much an atrium building as a street building.The world is full of dead atria: connotations of dullness, cricked necks and lifelessness spring to mind. Niels Torp's brilliant innovation at SAS was to ensure that the SAS atrium and its occupants both look as if they are going somewhere — which, of course, they really are, replicating internally at least,a really satisfying and complete urban experience. The street is long enough and sufficiently full of destinations and events to link the five separate office pavilions. More importantly, by lining the street with destinations — cafes,meeting and training rooms, shops — Torp, with his genius for architectural scenography, has made sure that it is always animated.

The entire SAS building is driven, energised and animated by a distinctive managerial agenda. The relationship on each floor of each pavilion between individual office rooms and the shared group spaces is a microcosm of the relationship between each major department and the street, which self-evidently belongs to everyone, to the whole organisation. At each organisational level — the individual workplace, the small group, the department and headquarters as a whole — each component has been given,with great subtlety and flexibility, within the overall rubric of enhancing organisational connectivity.

That SAS Frösundavik was conceived not so much as a building as a managerial instrument is well documented in the objectives expressed by Jan Carlzon, the Chief Executive of SAS, who called the building into being: "Themain task for the administration ....is to provide service for the front line, and to develop and formulate visions, strategies and goals. We wanted to put all this into the architecture." And again, "Creative development doesn't happen when a person is sitting alone at his or her desk. Creative development occurs when two people meet, begin to converse and exchange thought and experiences. That's when new ideas emerge. When things start to happen".

BRITISH AIRWAYS, HARMONDSWORTH (1994)

Completed five years after SAS, BA's new headquarters replicates many of the features of its predecessor. However, the concept of the combi-office has been dropped in favour of greater mobility and interchangeability between workplaces. BA was undergoing its own managerial revolution at the time and was attracted to Niels Torp as architect because he was judged to have the capacity to create not just another office building but a total environment capable of supporting and accelerating an urgently needed programme of cultural and organisational change. Like SAS the plans and sections of the BA headquarters are endowed with many features intended to enhance internal communication.

The interiors of both buildings are obviously derived from Niels Torp's lifelong interest in and fascination with urban forms, and yet, ironically enough, both buildings stand isolated on suburban parkland sites.

However, in two very important matters of process, BA as a client was able to take the SAS model further. The first is the enormous amount of managerial energy that BA put into its project. Having been a nationalised industry and even, within living memory, a semi-military organisation, the recently privatised BA used every opportunity that the project timetable offered, step by step, to demonstrate that the airline was determined to become one of the most sophisticated, user-friendly and responsive service organisations in the world. The second advance in terms of process at BA has been made possible by rapid advances in information technology. At move-in, 2500 BA staff occupied workplaces in the building. Today's increasing mobile population has risen to over 4000. This simple statistic is eloquent evidence of how rapidly the relationship between people, their timetables, their whereabouts and their workplaces is changing.

AKER BRYGGE: URBAN FORM AS SCENOGRAPHY

By the late eighties Niels Torp was not only famous internationally as an architect with a very special talent for creating buildings such as SAS and BA that were not only powerful business tools but also architecturally highly significant. Both buildings share a magical, quasi urban, interior quality. It should have been no surprise that Niels Torp had already used his considerable scenographic skills in Oslo to demonstrate that he was also capable of revitalising urban design.

What strikes me today on rereading my commentary in the July 1990 issue of Architectural Review on Niels Torp's famous urban design project, Aker Brygge, located on the waterfront in Oslo, is evidence of my frustration at not being able to achieve the same fluidity, intimate scale and mix of uses in urban projects in the UK.

Aker Brygge and its subsequent extension to the west are so interesting. It was not so much their architecture, interesting and skilful as it is, but the scenographic mix of uses that gives Aker Brygge such a strong sense of place,especially within and between buildings in the interstitial spaces. "The best time to see Aker Brygge", I wrote in another piece for the Architectural Review after my first visit, "is at dusk in early spring or autumn. The best vantage points is from within, from one of the office galleries onto the atrium or from one of the apartments, looking downwards and across from one part of the complex to another. As the lights of the offices go off and the apartment lights come on, what you see is transparency of the most exciting kind —layer after layer of space, some lit, some dark, and layer on layer of use: an occupied office, a glimpse into the kitchen of an apartment where someone is preparing supper, a crowd of shoppers having coffee and listening to a pianist on the floor of the atrium."

The common factor between Niels Torp's office building interiors and urban design is his capacity to think of buildings, streets and places in scenographic terms. They are conceived as stage sets, the essential background to carefully planned theatrical events. This is a very special and unfortunately very unusual kind of imaginative skill. Like a theatre or film producer, Niels Torp has been able to find ways of physically conjuring up the mix of attractions and activities that makes the internal streets in SAS and BA and the interstitial and overlapping spaces in Aker Brygge vivid, attractive and entrancing.

What could have helped Niels Torp to this point of view? Two crucial experiences may have helped to make him, as he undoubtedly is, equally effective as an imaginative urban designer and as the creator of fabulous interiors: first his experience in Rome, where his architect father despatched him as a teenager to live with an Italian family for half a year to draw the architecture and experience the colourful life of the streets and piazzas of that very non-northern city; the second, his passion, as an architectural student,for acting and the theatre. Incidentally, there is an ancient connection between the two: scenography, after all, originally had two meanings: one as architectural representation and the other as the painting of scenery. Niels Torp's modus operandi neatly combines both.

BI, THE NORWEGIAN BUSINESS SCHOOL AS A WORK OF ART

In no projects is this connection between Niels Torp's architecture and the theatre clearer than in the new business school in Oslo, the Nydalen Campus.The school — six storeys above ground and three below — occupies an entire city block, which is bisected from top to bottom in both dimensions by two major, glazed, top-lit, internal streets, which meet at right angles in the centre of the block. Two minor streets run parallel to the more important of these major streets. The three dimensional spatial impact of the conjunction of these internal streets is amazing: from practically anywhere at any level within the block all the activities of the entire business school — undergraduate,graduate and executive education, auditoria, libraries, seminars and discussion groups, individual and group work — are visible. Multiple opportunities exist for eating, drinking, talking, relaxing, but, above all, for meetings and interactions, formal and informal, between students, staff and visitors.Horizontal and especially vertical circulation, by lifts and open stairs — one major spiral stair is generous enough to accommodate three people abreast— are, as always in Niels Torp's work, instantly comprehensible. Accessibility and permeability are layered so there is always choice to engage or withdraw.The acoustic environment is vibrant and stimulating, the social environment electric. This is scenography on a very large scale: every architectural move in plan, elevation and section, every detail, large and small, says: "This is the place to study; this is the place to be seen; this is the place to be."

REINVENTING THE CITY

Niels Torp has shown the interiors of office and institutional buildings such as SAS, BA, and BI can be devised to support the creation of serendipitous corporate and educational cultures. He has shown at Aker Brygge how mixed and, indeed, mixing and ever more mixable uses can be made to complement each other at the urban scale. The task of integrating these initiatives is huge, but Niels Torp has demonstrated what a high degree of imagination and talent can make of the office and the business school when they are conceived holistically as dynamic experiences. Which architect anywhere is better equipped to demonstrate how innovation in new ways of working and learning can be combined scenographically to revitalise not just architecture but entire city quarters?