On a nordic air

The faculty of fine arts, music and design, KMD, located in Bergen, Norway, opened its doors to accommodate 350 students from different artistic fields. Signed Snøhetta, this project remains the second largest construction in the country.

With an impressive budget, the KMD stands on a site in the former industrial zone, on the Norwegian coast. The plot was previously housed by a crane factory, the relics of which remain to commemorate history. In 2005, the multidisciplinary firm Snøhetta won the competition to build a composition of various artistic faculties in a single space. The geometric building, trapezoidal in shape, remains open and welcoming despite a sturdy shell. By the way, it is in direct relation to the piazza and the city center of Bergen, thanks to a cantilevered volume of ice, emerging from the main facade exhibiting the intramural social activities. On the other hand, the objective of the multipurpose central hall is to unify the entities in a single ecological and functional volume and to bring the distances between the domains closer together, to blur the limits and encourage interdisciplinarity. So, and so that they allow students to translate this artistic communion and intervene at the level of their workplace, the designers do not complete the interior space. Finally, the assembly of around 900 raw aluminum panels on the glass facade creates this kind of thick, rhythmic and raised cover, to cope with all kinds of weather and allow total luminosity to the space.