Supervisor:
Beate Hølmebakk
Chris-Johan Engh
Verdalsøra is situated at the confluence of Verdalselva and Trondheimsfjorden. With Norway’s entry into the petroleum era in the late 1960s, large-scale industrial expansion transformed the town into one of the country’s largest offshore production sites, with extensive infrastructure built for steel fabrication, transport, and assembly. Today, Verdalsøra’s industrial sector remains central to the regional economy, and the industry has become an integral part of the towns identity.
Rather than responding solely to immediate architectural demands, the project examines the site within a larger temporal framework. By considering forces that may reshape places such as Verdalsøra in the future, global trajectories, like material depletion, climate change and migration patterns, were used to form a unified speculative scenario in which new programmatic requirements arise. The project proposes three structures that together address the site as a whole.
I Material Shelter
The material shelter is a space for storage and redistribution of reclaimed materials, as extraction of new materials becomes increasingly unviable, and reuse becomes standard building practice. The structure consists of reused steel columns, standardized steel profiles and polycarbonate panels. These elements together form a modular shelving system that can adapt to changing material flows over time.
II Polytunnel
The polytunnel provides stable climatic conditions for crop production, as arable land becomes increasingly unviable due to climate change. The structure consists of a series of repetitive wooden frames, constructed from reclaimed timber elements. A PVC tensile fabric is stretched between the frames and anchored in both ends by two pillars of stacked concrete blocks. The structure is designed for manual assembly, disassembly and relocation, while leaving minimal imprint on the ground.
III Multipurpose Hall
The multipurpose hall is a space for accommodating various social functions, as migration leads to rapid population growth and civic expansion. The main structure consists of reused concrete sleepers, I-beams and double tee slabs. The building offers a flexible space equipped with basic secondary functions like sanitary facilities, administration and storage, that can adapt to different forms of public use as programmatic demands evolve over time.
The three structures represent an alternative approach to Verdalsøra as a case, working across temporal, material and tectonic scales as part of a broader investigation into how architecture might engage with a site undergoing rapid change. Overall, the project illustrates how architectural form can emerge from the past, present and future conditions of a place.
Contact
Marius Soløst / marius.solost@gmail.com / +47 413 61 157 / LinkedIn