Oslo, practising since 2009
An architecture of
quiet, exact rooms
Atelier Nord builds in timber, board-formed concrete and daylight. Thirty-four completed buildings across Norway and Denmark, each drawn by the two people who will stand on its site.
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- Buildings completed
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The studio
Ingrid Halvorsen founded the practice in a sail loft on Sjøgata
Atelier Nord began in 2009 with a single commission: a 46 square metre boathouse in Vestre Vika that had to survive both the fjord wind and the planning committee. It was built in larch and granite, and it is still standing, unpainted, in its sixteenth winter.
Since then the studio has stayed small on purpose. Ingrid Halvorsen and a team of five work from one room above the harbour, and every drawing that leaves it has been made by someone who has walked the site in more than one season.
We do not keep a house style. We keep a method: measure the ground, find the light, choose four materials, and remove everything that is not carrying weight.
- 01Five architects, one office, no satellite studios
- 02Sites surveyed in at least two seasons before a line is drawn
- 03Timber sourced within 400 kilometres of the build
- 04Every project detailed by the architect who designed it
Practice
Four kinds of work
The studio takes eight to ten commissions a year across these four categories, and declines anything it cannot draw in full.
- 01
Private houses
Single dwellings and cabins from first survey to handover, typically 90 to 240 square metres, built for clients who intend to stay.
- 02
Cultural and civic
Chapels, libraries, viewing rooms and small museums, usually won by open competition and delivered with a public client.
- 03
Adaptive reuse
Warehouses, barns and post-war housing blocks brought back into use with their structure kept visible and their history legible.
- 04
Interiors and furniture
Fitted joinery, stairs and single pieces drawn at 1:1 and made by workshops in Hallingdal and Jutland that we have used for a decade.
Selected work
Four buildings that explain the practice
Each was drawn for one site and would be wrong on any other. Photography is withheld until a building has been lived in for a full year.
Hallingdal Cabin
Ål, 2021. A 112 square metre cabin in heartwood pine set on nine concrete pads, so the ground beneath it was never levelled.
Vestre Boathouse
Bergen, 2016. Larch and Larvikite granite at the waterline, rebuilt from the footprint of the 1912 boathouse it replaced.
Grünerløkka Infill
Oslo, 2023. Fourteen apartments in a nine metre gap between two brick blocks, in board-formed concrete and patinated zinc.
Nordnes Chapel
Tromsø, 2024. A 180 seat chapel with one north window, lime-plastered inside and clad in blackened steel against the salt air.
Questions
What clients ask before the first meeting
A fixed fee for the concept stage, then a percentage of construction cost for the remaining stages, declared in full before you commit to anything. The concept fee is deducted if you continue.
Fourteen to twenty months from first survey to handover, of which roughly six are drawing and planning. Sites requiring a dispensation from the municipality add three to five months.
Yes. The studio has completed four projects in Denmark and one in northern Sweden, always with a local engineer and a contractor we have met on site before the tender.
Usually. We ask to meet them during the concept stage, because a detail drawn for one workshop rarely survives being handed to another without being redrawn.
Every project is modelled for heat loss before the plan is fixed. The studio builds to passive house airtightness as a matter of course and states the measured result at handover rather than the predicted one.
Enquiries
Tell us about the site
The studio reviews new commissions on the first Monday of each month. A plot number, a rough budget and a photograph taken from the road are enough to start.
- Studio
- Sjøgata 12, 0150 Oslo
- studio@ateliernord.example
- Telephone
- +47 22 55 01 34
- Reply
- Every enquiry is answered within two working days