{"id":18701,"date":"2014-09-18T14:45:02","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T12:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/kristiansund-opera-and-culture-house-2\/"},"modified":"2015-10-29T19:36:05","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T18:36:05","slug":"kristiansund-opera-and-culture-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/kristiansund-opera-and-culture-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Kristiansund opera and culture house"},"content":{"rendered":"

By amalgamating opera, library, school, voluntary cultural facilities, youth center, the new Opera and Culture House of Kristiansund represents culture in its most pervasive and innovative form. At the same time, mitigating the desire, needs, and potentials of its parts risks neutrality, a generic approach, solutionary and ultimately neither specific to a place, nor visionary. To create spaces for the unexpected, spaces to inspire us, spaces where the collective and individual can coexist, to inspire mutation, experimentation, invention, heterogeneity and freedom is to liberate culture.
\nThe new OKK needs to engender the same dynamics and freedoms as the 1928 production of Orfeus \u2013 total social engagement.
\nThe Kulturhus is all too often a conglomeration of disparate programs coupled into an overtly simplistic urban gesture. The public domain within is often a series of leftover residual cavities within a maze-like organization. Our strategy is a simple one: How to articulate a large mass from within while simultaneously disentangling the various programmatic elements and expanding their adjacencies. And in doing so, allowing for OKK to function as a single entity or as a series of smaller, more manageable buildings. OKK crystallizes the ambitions of several strong identities into one collective institution. This project consists of core synergies that will optimize the performance of each component. Our strategy goes further by developing a host of new synergies that reveal and take advantage of potentials, add value.\u00a0 By combining functions in a rational way based on their common interests and advantages, we establish 3 institutions in one complex \u2013 Kunnskap Core – Culture Core \u2013 Social core. Distribution of culture and knowledge through an extroverted and highly accessible presence in the city – maximizing friction, exploiting the in-between, strengthening identity – will inspire visitors for learning, play, search and discovery, entertainment and exchange. There are already two significant buildings on the site \u2013 Langveien ungdomskole and folkets hus. To engulf them by a third larger structure will be detrimental, diminishing the integrity of the existing buildings. Pederson\u2019s plan, the premises for the Gjenreisingby, stipulates clear strategies for public space, for axis\u2019, and for diversity. OKK overcomes the challenges of architectural blurring by introducing a new genealogy on the site \u2013 liberated and yet connected, complimenting the original vision of the Pedersen plan. One of the defining qualities of the new complex is the autonomy of each building, with its own front door. The individual structures form part of a greater whole through the space that they share. The front door of the youth center is along the walking street. We have created a bonus space in the form of an amphi-rehearsal hotel. The opera\u2019s back-of-house facilities are linked to the rehearsal hotel via a subterranean link that allows for sharing and support conditions. The opera building has its main entry at the intersection of Langveien and Skolegata, facing Festiviteten, extending Byens storstue on Kong Olav V\u2019s. \u2019Operaplassen\u2019 (Baccalao plassen) is filled with aficionados enjoying sun-drenched afternoons and early evenings. The collective memory and presence of Folkets Hus is preserved on Kongensplass, fulfilling its prophecy as house for the people mediated by library and school.<\/p>\n