Norway must have a Nationaltheater!

When will an adult come on the field who can say that we should sort this out, as a cultural nation and people?

This is a chronicle. Any opinions expressed in the text are the responsibility of the writer. If you would like to send an article proposal, you can read how here.

The Nationaltheatret stands and is decaying in the middle between Stortingsgaten and Karl Johans gate at one of Oslo’s and Norway’s most central traffic hubs, Nationaltheatret station.

The building weathers and cracks where thousands of people pass every day. If they stop and look up, they see that parts of the building are propped up with exposed steel beams, statues are wrapped in tarpaulin and veneer sheets and netting are hung to catch pieces of plaster, stone and brick that come loose from the facade and threatening to fall to the pavement.

Under the ground, the situation is even worse. The theater is founded on a raft of unreinforced concrete and a “pincushion” of hundreds of logs on a ground of sand and clay. It has sunk many centimeters since it was new almost 130 years ago. The distance to the mountains below the sandy bottom varies from about 5 to 40 metres.

The steel piles have lost their bearing capacity

Since the building was new, a lot has happened in the ground around the theatre. Sporveien and Bane Nor have established tunnels for their tracks. The foundation is stiffened with steel piles that are pushed into the ground through the basement and form a new “pincushion”.

But due to the work on the culverts or tunnels, the sand and clay have moved sideways, and the steel piles that were placed there about 40 years ago have lost their bearing capacity.

To top it off, Bane Nor has plans for a new tunnel under Stortingsgaten within a decade or two. It goes without saying that if nothing is done, the National Theater will be irreversibly destroyed in the foreseeable future.

In 2019, a design competition for the rehabilitation and temporal renewal of the National Theater was announced by Statsbygg. A group consisting of Ratio architects, Origo architects group and Futhark architects together with Sweco engineers won the assignment and started planning up to the preliminary project.

The prerequisite was resoundingly clear: the theater was to be renovated into a contemporary repertory theater with renewed stage technology, modern “back of house” facilities and universal design.

Two significant deficiencies

The alternative of turning the National Theater into a “theatre museum”, et peephole theater peephole theaterTheater form where the audience sees the performance through a frame that separates the stage from the auditorium. as it was in the beginning, was considered and rejected. In addition, the possibility of expanding the theater underground under the forecourt (where Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson stand on plinths) had already been investigated.

It was concluded that the area could be used, as there were no culverts or major technical installations in the ground in that area. This plot could then solve the theatre’s need for extra areas, a new amphitheater and a much-needed new goods reception and pavilion for the public.

So far so good. But it came with a budget, or estimate, with two significant flaws:

• Firstly, reimbursement of the building was not included.
• Secondly, no money was set aside for the temporary operation of the theater while the existing venerable building was rehabilitated and renewed.

Admittedly, there were ideas about establishing a temporary stage at Tøyen in the old Munch Museum, but without money and with unclear agreements between the state and Oslo municipality, that project fell through.

The budget that the planning group had to deal with was approximately NOK 1.5 billion.

During the design process, the group of designers could not do anything other than recommend refunding the entire building to the mountain as the only sensible thing to do. Admittedly, a culvert or tunnel under Stortingsgaten for the railway would trigger requirements for securing all buildings along the route, but that work was not planned until a renewed Nationaltheater was completed anyway.

It was also uncertain whether Bane Nor’s responsibility extended to refunding the entire building or could be limited to securing the foundation wall and foundation facing Stortingsgaten.

In any case, if the National Theater cut the cord after seven years of renovations and Stortingsgaten was dug up the next day, the first thing that would happen would be new cracks and damage to the building.

Bad urban idea

The tragedy here is that the project started with a flawed estimate without the consequences having been investigated. The reality of the project meant that the plans were shelved, instead of taking on the need to do the job properly and with a lasting result as the goal.

When a new minister of culture came on board, the project was changed to be buried at Tullinløkka. That in itself could have solved the problem of the need to have a place to play while the National Theater is being renovated. But burying an entire theater between two listed buildings and only leaving the least attractive part of the building, the stage tower, to stick up seems like a bad urban idea, to say the least.

Placing the foyer underground in conflict with Bislettbekken and other buried infrastructure, and with restrictions imposed by city and national antiquities in terms of interaction and joint use with the National Gallery, becomes expensive, delays and reduces the main building’s opportunity to develop into a contemporary theater like the whole of Norway can be proud of.

Actor Thorbjørn Harr asks in Aftenposten on 25 April if we can afford it. But if we as a nation, in competition with defence, police and social and health budgets, do not take care of culture, then what are we as a nation (to paraphrase Winston Churchill)?

Should we move the National Theater to the Folk Museum on Bygdøy so that we can enjoy the joy of form and the details detached from life itself? Or should we wait until it falls due so that the budget has to be increased even more before the seriousness dawns on us?

Now the building, a major work in the Norwegian New Renaissance (or Mannerism), is partially wrapped up. The roof leaks. You cannot enter the parquet in a wheelchair. Requirements for the working environment are not met. “Young Saber Tiger”, one of the wonderful lush sculptures on the roof, is hidden behind plates and plastic. Actors, directors, theater lovers and the public in general can only despair at the state of affairs.

When will there be an adult on the field who can cut through and say that we should sort this out, as a nation of culture and people?