.creative commons.

Over the last fifty years Norway’s prosperity has been tied to oil reserves. With a depleting price per barrel (an over 50% depreciation within the last few years), Norway is undergoing a tremendous economic shift. Dependence on oil has resulted in an unstable economy, requiring a significant reevaluation of political attitudes and source capital.

     Early discussions led to conclusions that an emergent creative class could offer sustained economic health. The creative class is a socioeconomic population comprised of artists, engineers, scientists, designers—and the like—leveraging intellectual and creative expenditure; invention their industry. The preeminence of the intellectual class has the potential to provide stable, sustained, growth, and more significantly, foster a culture valuing innovation over the exploitation of natural resources.

     In the city of Stavanger high real estate values make it difficult for young creatives and thinkers to purchase housing and work space. My intervention is a live / work / play model; a reinterpretation of the business incubator, challenging the idea of work as utilitarian effort. Posing the question, what if work was regarded as play?
 
     Program is divided in two masses; a living tower and work bar. Residents are connected to their work spaces by a circulation core, eliminating dependence on automobile and local transit. All public spaces in the residential tower and work bar are shared, to sponsor spontaneity, dialog, and collaboration.