What if? Third Sector Housing at Lille Tøyen

Norway needs more housing. The Government has announced an ambition to build 130,000 new homes, while housing production is slowing down. At the same time, public buildings are left empty. In Oslo, around 100 municipal buildings stand unused, some for years.

What if we began with what we already have?

This project asks how vacant public buildings can become part of a future housing strategy. It tests how a former municipal nursing home can be transformed into third sector housing through a flexible internal system.

In the third housing sector, dwellings do not have to be prepared for individual sale in the same way as market housing. If apartments are publicly owned and rented over time, the dwelling can be understood less as a finished product and more as a framework for living.

The project is tested in the former Lille Tøyen Nursing Home. Today, the building stands empty, fenced off and marked by decay, caught between political and economic interests. If sold, the municipality loses direct control over the building and its future. If kept, it can become part of a long-term housing strategy.

The architectural proposal begins with an added internal structure, placed inside the existing building almost like scaffolding. It creates a spatial framework that residents can use, adapt, and occupy in different ways. The system makes use of the generous ceiling heights typical of institutional buildings from this period.

The dwellings are organized through a combination of ground floor, mezzanine circulation, sleeping platforms, storage, and flexible zones. Rather than making every apartment identical, the project accepts that housing needs change over time.

Each building will require its own negotiation between structure, heritage, regulation, technical demands, and spatial potential. Still, the project argues that vacant public buildings should be taken seriously as housing resources.

If a building has stood empty for sixteen years, if it is already owned by the municipality, if it has already been used for living, and if Oslo needs more affordable housing, the question becomes direct:

Why sell it? – Why not use it? 

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Contact

Ask Valde 

+4795453504 / trondaskvalde@gmail.com