2_3_ScanMagazine_Issue_81_Oct-Nov_2015_Scan Magazine 1 15/10/2015 21:36 Page 72
Photo: Trond Jølson
Space to meet face to face When firm partners Odd Klev and Geir Haaversen founded A-lab in 2000, their main goal was to have a fun place to work. Having fun has proved to be a recipe for success, and 15 years and three World Architecture Festival (WAF) awards later, Haaversen sits in the jury of this year’s WAF in Singapore. By Andrea Bærland | Photos: A-lab
“Taking part in events such as WAF is an incredible opportunity for young, midsized firms like us to reach out internationally,” says Klev. A-lab’s presence at WAF and similar events in the past has garnered attention from far-away places such as Asia, Australia and India. “We are always ready for a challenge in new and exciting places,” Klev says. While the company, which started out with a desire to build office buildings for IT companies, has won prestigious Norwegian commercial design projects such as the Statoil headquarters and the head-
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quarters of DNB (one of Norway’s largest banks), it has also adapted to the changing market and taken on residential projects both at home and abroad.
Scandinavian design concepts to India,” he says. Since its first award-winning project in 2001, a shopping centre in downtown Oslo, A-lab has grown quickly in size and now counts 40 architects of nine different nationalities. “It has definitely been a great advantage in the Mumbai project, but also more generally, to have colleagues who did not grow up in Norway and who bring fresh ideas to the table,” Klev says.
Scandinavian with a foreign flair So far, the project furthest away from home was in Mumbai, where the architects designed a development of ten 50storey apartment buildings, a project Klev describes as an interesting challenge. “India and Norway have very different cultures when it comes to design, construction and space, and it has been fun to merge the two and bring some of our
Water-cooler conversation The architects at A-lab put a great deal of thought into how their buildings will bring people together. “Although we live in a digital age, people still need to meet face to face, and we want to create spaces that have a bit of a water-cooler effect, a place where people can meet and exchange information,” says Klev.