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.

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.