An understated and flexible office building in the heart of Oslo

Hille Melbye Architects’ Y3 is an austere architecture, but its interiors can adapt, with the slightest changes, to the needs of the different tenants that it might host over time.

  • Alessandro Benetti
  • 11 March 2021
  • Oslo, Norway
  • Hille Melbye Architects
  • 1,450 sqm
  • office building
  • 2019

Y3 is an office building recently completed by Hille Melbye Architects in the very center of Oslo, and it certainly doesn’t strive to catch the eye. On the contrary, it is a small scale volume, seamlessly completing the existing street alignment. Furthermore, its brick cladding, alongside the regular layout of its façade openings, make it a rigorous, almost austere presence in the Norwegian capital’s urban landscape. It functions as a sober wing to the neighboring, way more monumental headquarters of the national Labour Party.

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Niels Nygaard
Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Niels Nygaard

Y3’s main quality resides in the flexibility of its spaces. The latter is to be intended not just as the possibility of an instant reconfiguration, but more importantly as the capacity to adapt, with the slightest changes, to the needs of the different tenants that it might host over time. The relationship between the actual offices and the full-height, naturally lit atrium that they overlook is crucial in this respect. The construction and the position of this threshold, either directly delimiting the void, or set back from it in order to create a distribution corridor, is up to the final users. At the moment, renters on the first floor opted to leave the hall’s ground level as a hybrid place, available for multiple activities such as co-working, conferences and other events. As a result, Y3 opens up to the city as an indoor “ballroom” to be used all year round, a rare presence in a capital that is historically lacking in public spaces, for both climatic and urban reasons.

Read also: A small-scale urban intervention in the historic centre of Oslo reinterprets a piece of the city as an urban ‘village’. Domus talks about it with its author, architect Reiulf Ramstad, founder of the Norwegian studio RRA.
Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Niels Nygaard
  • Youngstorget 3
  • office building
  • Oslo, Norway
  • Hille Melbye Architects
  • iARK
  • JM Entreprenør AS
  • 1,450 sqm
  • 2019
Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Niels Nygaard

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Joachim Midjo Andersen

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Joachim Midjo Andersen

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Joachim Midjo Andersen

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Joachim Midjo Andersen

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Joachim Midjo Andersen

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Niels Nygaard

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Niels Nygaard

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Niels Nygaard

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Niels Nygaard

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Niels Nygaard

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, Oslo, Norway, 2019. Photo © Niels Nygaard

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, ground floor plan

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, elevations

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, main section

Hille Melbye Architects, Youngstorget 3, diagrams

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