Light
on water
Fjordhalla, a coastal culture house on the Hardangerfjord.
Fjordhalla
Cultural · Hardangerfjord, Norway
A culture house that belongs to the water more than to the road. Under one long timber roof, Fjordhalla gathers a concert room, a reading room and a public bath, held open to the fjord by a colonnade that stays out in the weather all year.
Year
2024
Area
3,400 m²
Program
Concert, library, bath
Status
Completed
Client
Hardanger Kommune
Role
Lead architect
The concept
One roof, three rooms
Rather than three buildings competing on a tight shelf of rock, Fjordhalla is a single low volume that the community can read at a glance. A concert room sits at the deep, quiet end. A reading room takes the long window to the water. Between them, a warm bath opens straight onto the fjord. The colonnade that wraps all three is the real front door: a covered edge where people gather before and after, in any weather the coast sends.
See how we work
The making of
Four moves that shaped the building
01
Read the rock
We spent a full season on site, mapping how light, wind and tide crossed the shelf. The building sits exactly where the rock is calmest, turning its back on the prevailing weather.
02
Tune the room
The concert room was modelled acoustically before a single wall was drawn. Its timber ribs are structure and instrument at once, holding sound the way a bowl holds water.
03
Cast in place
A low-carbon concrete base was poured against sawn local timber, so the walls carry the grain of the shuttering. Nothing is clad, nothing is hidden, and little needs maintenance.
04
Leave the edge open
The colonnade was kept deliberately unheated and unglazed. It costs almost nothing to run, and it gives the town a free, sheltered room on the water for the other fifty weeks of the year.
Gallery
In the client’s words