Upcycled green
1958 office building upcycled with 80% reclaimed materials. The architects’ biggest piece of advice for reuse: know your materials – “Everyone thinks the building industry revolution is digital. It can be. But it’s also very much physical” – finding value from unlikely sources.
📍Location
🏢Building Details
43,000 sq ft, 8-storeys
Completed 2021
Winner of 2021 Norwegian State Prize for building quality
👷🏾♀️Developer & Contractor
Stein Stoknes – Program Leader @ FutureBuilt
✍️Architects & Engineers
Åshild Wangensteen Bjørvik – CEO of Mad arkitekter
Noora Khezri – Architect @ Mad arkitekter
Trond Elverum – Partner @ Mad arkitekter
Sunniva Baarnes – Manager @ Ramboll
Anne Sigrid Nordby – Former Environmental Advisor @ Asplan Viak AS
Ståle Kristiansen – Regional Manager @ STENI
🌱Sustainability
Made of 80% upcycled building materials: design team sourced materials including steel, tile, bricks, wood, cladding panels + windows from 25 demolition sites around Norway – called “donor buildings”
3 of the additional floors built with slabs recovered from the Regjeringskvartalet government offices that were damaged in a 2011 terrorist attack
Embodied carbon reduced by 70% compared with baseline new construction – with 9,200 sq ft addition
Cladding panels fastened with a simple screw system = easy to repair or replace
Green roof made with recycled peat-free soil (no artificial fertiliser) – porous lava rock from Iceland = main component
🥦 Wellbeing
Eclectic and welcoming space: decorated with a mosaic salvaged from the 1958 office interior plus warm timber furnishings throughout
Includes communal bar, kitchen and outdoor terraces to serve as social spaces
Entrepreneurial coworking community equipped with super-fast WiFi, support staff and flexibility to grow
🎈Bonus feature
Hurdles were manifold: the marketplace for reused materials is not well established + coordinating the construction schedule with demolition schedules of dozens of other projects required patience and flexibility. So 80% is remarkable. The building provides a new pathway for circular projects. Check out the architects’ Key Findings Report here.
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