Reading Socio-Spatial Interplay - Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i ...

R E A D I N G S O C I O - S P A T I A L I N T E R P L A Y P A R T 2The long, straight, perspective street spaces of the 19 th century avenues,reinforced by the visual rhythms of the long façade-rows of 19 th centuryapartment buildings, provided Oslo with potentials for new kinds of sociospatialexperiences: the users were exposed to the dense bustle of the mixedactivities of a rapidly growing, but already reasonably large and dense urbanlandscape: The image of a young European industrial city (for better and forworse).All the buildings that filled the perimeter of the relatively large blocks onthese relatively small plots were realized as singular projects, as variations ofthe same type. The end result was a distinct visual rhythmic variation in thefaçade ensembles: The design of the street level façade indicated the(potential) different use rights related to the private spaces at the ground levelof the building, directly connected as they were to the public streets: Thegeneral layout of the floor plans could accommodate both for apartments(more often in side streets and back streets), smaller businesses and shops(more often in main streets and at the corners/crossroads in back- and sidestreets).An apartment at street level could quite easily be reconfigured into ashop or vice versa.The blocks from the 1860s and 1870s (lower Grünerløkka) were internallyfunctionally mixed: Both workshops, smaller industry, stables, shops andapartment buildings were located in the interior of the deeper blocks, all ofthem with street entrance through gateways. The three to four-storeyedapartment buildings at the perimeter of the blocks mostly containedapartments (and had shops and smaller businesses at street level) and werequite uniformly designed. The workshops, storage buildings and differentbusinesses in the backyards were architecturally more diverse. 267Grünerløkka was built in three periods: the first phase was just before theextension of the urban border in 1859, a second phase with most pronouncedbuilding activity in the 1870s, and a third phase culminating in the 1890s.The architectural differences between the areas that were built in these threeperiods can easily be distinguished: If we take a close look at a detailed citymap from 1947, 268 we can observe differences between the blocks that wereconstructed during the boom in the 1890’s and the blocks built between 1850and 1890 (most pronounced in the 1870s). The 1890s-blocks are denser,functionally more segregated and spatially more hierarchical. Furthermorethe detailing of the facades supports the spatial differences between mainstreets and side and back streets. The gateway from the street often serves267 The differences in the uses of the interior of the block in the broader and functionally more mixed 1870’sblocks(south) and the mono-functional, domestic 1890-blocks (north and west) can also be read out of thedetailed 1947 city map, Oslo City Archives.268 Or at a registration map documenting the spatial distribution of jobs, people, shops, industrial enterprisesetc. in 1930s Oslo: Sund, Tore & Isachsen, Frithjov 1942: Bosteder og arbeidssteder i Oslo, Oslo kommune.147