Wesselkvartalet

“It’s difficult to build housing for the average person if you give the architect free rein.” This is how a major Norwegian housing developer explains their apparent lack of attention to architectural quality. Urban growth and the attraction of local real estate as a superior investment object, has since the early 1990s led to a building-boom in the metropolitan area of Oslo. Despite the huge volume, few of these housing projects display significant architectural quality.

Wesselkvartalet (2022), in the center of Asker just outside of Oslo, apparently contradicts this practice. With sculptural volumes, appealing proportions, high quality materials, and refined detailing, the building sits naturally in the existing urban context, establishing an attractive new neighborhood.

In his essay “Free Rein” Børre Skodvin interviews key actors of the project and discusses lessons to be learned from Wesselkvartalet. Have excessive financial expectations come to obstruct the developers’ role in supporting the intentions of public planning?

This volume of asBuilt presents the full set of drawings for Wesselkvartalet, and a recent photo documentation by Nils Petter Dale.

Essay by Børre Skodvin in Norwegian (this is the only essay in the asBUILT-series that is not in English)

Edited by Karl Otto Ellefsen and Dagfinn Sagen.