Just north of the polar circle, Danish studio ALL (Atelier LorentzenLangkilde) has designed a contemporary city hall for the municipality of Bodø, Norway.
The 12,000 m2 City Hall consists of a new building and the transformation and linking of two existing, preserved buildings. The new town hall unites the three buildings into one flexible plan, organized with a circular flow around a spectacular wooden atrium.
The new city hall is a crystalline stone volume, with facades that slope towards the lower, existing buildings. The angles of the façade are drawn from the existing rooflines. This unique faceted facade geometry catches the dramatic changing light conditions north of the polar circle.
Bodø, Norway is situated on a peninsula north of the polar circle. The city is bounded by mountains and the harsh Norwegian Sea. In the city center, the old city hall has been transformed and extended with a new iconic building to a 12,000 m2 modern workspace for 400 employees.
The new building is a keystone linking and transforming the flow of the existing buildings to create a flexible, circular flow around a tall and dramatic atrium. This atriums acts as The Citizens’ Forum. The Citizens’ Forum is a public square with meeting rooms and public services. Workspaces extend up five floors in connection with the atrium. There is a canteen on the 6th and top floor with magnificent views towards the surrounding ocean and mountains.
The existing buildings on the site are the old city hall, with a brown plaster façade, and the old national bank, clad in a richly patterned natural stone. Both facades are preserved. The new building is shaped with sloping facades mirroring the roofs of the existing buildings. This creates a unity between old and new which is further emphasized with the brownish Jura Gelb stone used for the facade of the new building. The color resembles the color of the old city hall while the stone pattern resembles that of the national bank facade. The new, faceted façade is a modular system with horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines that create a singular volume as a whole and in detail. The different angels of the stone catches the light and cast shadow for an ever-changing play of light.
The interior is lined with light ash wood, both on the walls and ceilings. The uniform wooden lining creates a warm, Scandinavian home-like feeling and is combined with an office layout based on new ways of working. In this way the home workspace has been brought to the office.
The atrium around which the workspaces wrap recalls a Piranesi drawing, with the staggered balconies, setback atrium fronts, varied floor heights, and a vertiginous art piece, “DikttilByråkratiet” (“Poem for the Bureaucracy”), by the artist: Per Kristian Nygård, mounted on the wall and spanning the full height of the atrium.
The landscape around the city hall consists of beautifully shaped public areas and squares with seating. These are covered in natural stone.
Where did the concept for lighting design come from?
A modern workspace under the Polar Starry!
The interior lighting concept is inspired by the beatiful starry in Bodø, Norway, north of the Polar circle. During the long winter nights the starry is visible during both night and day. A beatifull spectacle above the dark mountains and seas.
This scenary is transformed into a configuration of circular ceiling lights with 3 different sizes lightfixtures possitioned in a random patteren like pale and bright stars.
In the 6 story high atirum the patteren of stars create a vivid image across the floors. The light concept underlines the special shaped balcony fronts that step forward and backward creating a picture of small and unique shaped spaces desiged for at vary workday.
Fromthe streets outside the city hall though the big windows there natural and artificial stars bleend together. In her speech at the official opening day the mayor of Bodø, Ida Maria Pinnerød, told this storyand how inspirring its going to be to work under the Polar starry!
What are some of the ‘problems’ you solved with lighting?
The project consist of three differant buildings, two existing and one new construction. The new building merge the buildings into one continuous modern officespace with many differant size areas and pocketspaces designed for new ways of working with free seating.
All other technical equipment in the ceiling, like ventilation, are also circular. This creates a directionless pattern in the ceiling.The directionsless pattern is a perfect flexible concept for the differant sizesand shapes of the spaces and for the possiblity to adjust the amount of light depending on the usages of the spaces – The stars are dimmed up and down.
What was your biggest challenge? And how you tackled it?
The light starry ceilings demands more light fixtures than a traditional grid or liniar configuration which again is a challange regarding the energy usage in the building as a whole. Therefor it is very important to have the right scale of the stars. If the stars are to small it would demand to much energy to light up the building and if the lightfixtures got to big the picture of a star covered sky would disapear.
A lot of designeffort was put into getting the right size of lightfixtures and the right scale jumps between the lightfixtures, both in the pretender designphase as well as during construction and development of the final light fixtures.
The challange was solved by a intergrated design process between architect, electrical engenieer and lighting experts as well as supplieres resulting in a energy effecient office light system with a great architectonical dynamic between smalle and bigger lightfixtures.
Are there any ‘out of the ordinary' stories tied to the construction?
The stars are flush mounted in a wooden veneer ceiling. The wooden veneer ceilings and walls has a yellow glow coloring the light and creates a homely feeling in the office along with the furniture selection, colors and down scaled spaces it shapes a unique and progressive new public office building as the biggest living room in Scandinavia with a cozy or as we say in Scandinavia Hyggelig – feeling!
