The new headquarters was built in the Oslo suburb of Forneby, best known for the fact that it was there that until 1998 was the main airport of the Norwegian capital. After the new airport of Gardermoen was put into operation in Oslo, Forneby began to serve only a few domestic flights, and most of its territory was freed up for renovation. The construction of the Statoil headquarters was one of the stages of the redevelopment of the former airport lands: a site for its creation was allocated on the site of a multi-level parking lot intended for demolition. The main requirement for the authors of the project was strict adherence to the existing building area, since most of the site was planned to be turned into a green public space.
When designing the headquarters, the architects could hardly confine themselves to the building block, which was the parking lot, so they looked for the most expressive form within the existing constraints. The solution to this problem was a composition of five parallelepipeds stacked on top of each other. In fact, the building acquires three tiers: the two lower "bars" are placed parallel to the road, the two middle ones are placed on them perpendicular to the carriageway, and the fifth one covers them diagonally. The consoles resulting from such a compositional solution not only set an expressive architectural image of the building, but also serve to create cozy public spaces. Video installations become an additional design tool for these small plazas: the architects installed LED screens in the lower part of the consoles.
The dimensions of all parallelepipeds are the same: the length is 140 meters, the width is 23 meters, and the height is 3 floors. They are connected to each other by lifts and staircases, as well as a central atrium created with curved fully glazed walls, which the architects have given resemblance to the blades of a giant propeller. The space between the parallelepipeds fenced off in this way has been turned into another pedestrian plaza, from which you can get to any of the buildings via a spectacular metal tower-staircase.
The laconic outline of each of the buildings is compensated not only by a dynamic composition, but also by the pattern of the window openings. The height of the windows here varies greatly, due to which each floor acquires an expressive "cardiogram", which is especially readable in the dark when the office lighting is on.
