Project: Finansparken, architect: Helen & Hard / SAAHA
Finansparken, the headquarters of the Norwegian financial institution SpareBank 1 SR-Bank in Stavanger, a 7-story wooden building completed in 2019, has been characterized as a .jewel in wood. The building was designed as a collaboration between Helen & Hard and SAAHA Architects, together with Hermann Blumer of Création Holz as specialist timber engineering consultant. This volume presents a curated set of drawings for Finansparken, as well as photographs documenting the structure and detailing of the building process, the project as a whole, and as a part of the morphology of Stavanger. In the essay Currency, Thomas McQuillan reflects on what made SR-Bank invest in an innovative architectural project, the potential and challenges of using wood as the main material in a structure of this complexity, and on what is achieved by the advanced use of digital technology in the design and building process: .when architecture is understood not so much expression as it is embodiment, when we ca