High rise strategy for Drammen

bachelor assignment - winner of AHO award for “excellence in urban design”
Assignment: Create a high rise concept for the city of Drammen with a self-designated program
Teachers: Jørgen Tandberg, Espen Vatn, Gro Bonesmo

Drammen is a rapidly expanding city in the vicinity of Oslo. Its city council is considering the use of high rise buildings as a tool to help with the growth. This assignment looked for new ways to insert the skyscraper typology in a traditional low rise cityscape. 

Due to the city’s central position among the cluster of technology firms that stretches from Oslo in the north to Kongsberg in the south, the program of the project sought to benefit Drammen by establishing a regional hub for science studies in Norway. The projects contains a college for computer and electronic sciences, student welfare rooms, housing and office space.

The main challenge of the assignment was how to design a large and attractive college campus (close to 150 000 m2) and at the same time preserve and enhance the area’s existing role as a public space for Drammen. The suggested solution envisions a large “mat building”-, stretching across the entire site, from west to east. It acts as a safeguard that the site will always remain open. It leaves the visual communication and freedom of movement between the city in the north and the mountains in the south open for the public.

The high rise buildings give the campus its visual profile and stand as bookends on each end of the site. They are split between a residential and office function, with some public functions in both towers. The “mat-building” is the designated college area, projected as an open form space, split across a 60 000 m2 concrete grid. This space is intended to be totally flexible and accessible from all directions, to facilitate a free flow of people through its many rooms and corridors. The roof is left open as a public park which absorbs some of the sport activities that were located on the site before, and adds many new ones. 
 

The combination of high rise buildings and a mat typology form an overall effective use of the site, but also contributes a large amount of unique and easily accessible public space to the city. 

Although similar in size and construction, the two towers have completely different plans. The western tower is designed as an apartment building with a series of student collective apartments and different sized family apartments at regular intervals. The east tower is an office tower with a science museum and planetarium. Both towers have fire escapes that function as public walkways to the top floor observation deck in opening hours.

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