Project Details
Project Description
Netherlands-based MVRDV—the firm started in 1993 by Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries—has completed the DNB Bank Headquarters in Oslo. The 17-story headquarters is part of a three-building master plan called Bjørvika Barcode, commissioned in 2007 by Norwegian developer OSU, to consolidate DNB’s 20 locations into three buildings with a shared basement. MVRDV collaborated on the master plan with DARK and A-Lab to develop an urban concept for three volumes totaling 80,000 square meters (861,113 square feet), of which 36,500 square meters (392,883 square feet) are in the MVRDV-designed headquarters building.
Design for the DNB Headquarters is based on the size of an ideal workgroup for the bank, which MVRDV found to be a ‘pixel’—a cube measuring six meters per side. These pixels are then manipulated to create spaces, with several subtracted from the façade to form a sheltered entry , and a public passageway through the building at ground level to connect the adjacent Oslo Central Station to the fjord that the bank overlooks. Inside the building, glass pixels provide small conference rooms and communal spaces that are scattered along a meandering internal circulation route above a central 250-station trading room.
The three-building Bjørvika Barcode cluster will hold its official opening on May 14, 2013.
