Completed 2021
Vik School Library
A school library and assembly room built from cross-laminated timber, with a stepped reading stair at its heart.
Location
Oslo, NO
Sector
Year
2021
Client
Oslo Municipality
Area
1 600 m²
Budget
€7.4m
Programme
Library, assembly hall
Photography
J. Lindqvist
(A-088) Overview
Sheet 01 / 06
01.1 — Brief
Competition
1st prize, 2018
Design
2018 — 2019
On site
2019 — 2021
Opened
August 2021
A stair for reading, a hall for everyone.
The library is one big stepped room: children read on the stair, classes gather at the bottom and the whole school fits in for assembly.
The structure is cross-laminated timber left exposed, so the room smells of wood and stays calm and quiet.
(A-088) Gallery
Sheet 02 / 06
Fig. 01 — The reading stair at lunch
Fig. 02 — Morning assembly
Fig. 03 — Early sketch of the stair
(A-088) Drawings
Sheet 03 / 06
A-102 — Ground floor plan · 1:200
A-301 — Section A–A · 1:100
Step 01 — Grid and axes
Step 02 — Walls and structure
Step 03 — Openings and finishes
Step 04 — Rooms and labels
Step 05 — Dimensions and title block
(A-088) In numbers
Sheet 04 / 06
m² in timber
pupils
embodied carbon vs. baseline
stair, 200 seats
(A-088) Materials
Sheet 04 / 06
Four materials, chosen to weather.
Hover a material to bring its specimen forward. Every surface was sampled on site for a full winter before it was specified.
(A-088) Client note
Sheet 05 / 06
“The stair is where everyone wants to be. We have had to make a rota.”
Marit Solberg
Head teacher, Vik School
(A-088) Credits
Sheet 06 / 06
Architect
Hallform Architects
Partner in charge
Ida Kjær
Structural engineer
Søe & Kirk Engineers
Services
Nord MEP
Landscape
Field Office
Lighting
Lumen Atelier
Contractor
Brink Byg
Photography
J. Lindqvist
HALLFORM
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