✎ Karina Tang

Is an architect with an interest in preservation and maintenance. She recently graduated from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.


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Good Neighbours (Indekshuset), 2020

preservation, transformation, public space

Good Neighbours is a proposal for a passage and small courtyard that passes through two buildings with very different histories and circumstances at Solli, Oslo.

Good Neighbours is a proposal for a passage and small courtyard that passes through two buildings with very different histories and circumstances at Solli, Oslo.

Indekshuset was designed by John Engh and opened in 1962 at Solli, Oslo. Built with modern materials (concrete), technologies (prefabrication), and optimism (the welfare state), it is an architecture that embodies the ideals of the post-war period.

The development is on the site of Det Engelske Kvarter, a former residential development in a historicist style completed in the 1880s. After the war, conceptions of social class were recognised as unfair and it fell out of style. in the 1960s the whole block was demolished in two phases – save for one building – la Belle Sole – which today is sandwiched in the development.

La Belle Sole is an odd anomaly in the urban block and some of its qualities seem to have been lost to keep the uniformity of Indekshuset. Yet Indekshuset's design and proposal had to work around the presence of la Belle Sole.

Proposed Observatoriegata elevation
Indekshuset situation
La Belle Sole, Indeksbygget
Proposed first (ground) floor plan showing passage through the two buildings
Study axonometric of the høyblokk
Study of prefabricated parts and reassembly
Prefab facade component index
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