These photos reveal the new Oslo: architecture, landscape, and environment

Oslo, the capital city of Norway, is in constant transformation. Here, sustainability translates into built landscapes, public spaces and an urban life in deep harmony with the environment: projects in which technology and nature, rather than being placed in opposition or antithesis, coexist in a dialectical relationship in which they can confront and merge with each other. 

Marco Buratti, an Italian photographer, has captured the spirit of Oslo with his reportage Oslo. La città del presente (Oslo: the city of the present). His images are the result of meticulous research and composition: here, the life takes comand, while buildings remain in the background like a theatrical backdrop, framing and containing people's everyday lives. In his photos, the slanting light of the northern summer transforms Oslo into daylands, a luminous counterpoint to the northern nightlands. Shadows lengthen on the outlines of buildings, highlighting details and structural textures, while the city unfolds like a laboratory of experimentation that intertwines technology and environment.

Among the buildings symbolising the new Oslo captured by the photographer, the Deichman Library in Bjørvika – designed by Lundhagem and Atelier Oslo – is the manifesto of a city that invests in culture as a place for people to meet and exchange ideas. Bright, inclusive and open, the building overlooks the sea with large windows and terraces, offering panoramic views and quiet corners for reading and studying. Not far away, the Operahuset, designed by Snøhetta, emerges from the sea like a slab of ice: its roof is a wide architectural promenade that blends natural and man-made landscapes, directing the gaze towards the fjord so often depicted in the paintings of Norway’s most famous painter.

The Aker Brygge waterfront is an example of successful regeneration: where once there were containers and port traffic, today there are piers and parks with benches as deep as a bed, frequented by families, young people and the elderly for a utepils (a Norwegian neologism meaning a beer enjoyed outdoors in the company of friends). Tjuvholmen and Sørenga, with their public saunas by the sea and communal spaces for swimming and socialising, also attest to how water – a central element of Norwegian identity – has become an integral part of the shared urban landscape.

From a technological point of view, Oslo is currently undergoing a massive transition to electric power, with ambitious climate neutrality targets by 2030. Over 70% of new cars are electric, ferries on the fjords are zero-emission, and the entire public transport system – trams, buses, underground – is moving towards total electrification. Waste management also follows circular logic: the biogas produced powers buses and district heating, while biofertilisers are reused in agriculture. But this sustainability is part of a rather ambiguous context: Norway remains the main oil producer in Europe and its economic stability is still mainly linked to the extractive industry.

The Norsk Folkemuseum, opened in 1894, is an open-air museum located in Bygdøy that collects examples of the country’s vernacular architecture, with wooden houses, grass roofs and buildings that tell the story of centuries of symbiotic relationship between man and nature. the green roofs bear witness to a thousand-year-old building tradition capable of coping with harsh climates by naturally mitigating extreme environmental conditions. They demonstrate how sustainability is not only a future goal but also a legacy of the past. From the post-industrial Grünerløkka to the eco-neighbourhoods of Vulkan and Barcode, Oslo is experimenting with new forms of people-friendly urban development: the Barcode project alternates public spaces, cycle paths, linear parks and panoramic terraces with twelve tall buildings that form a giant barcode on the ground plan.

Another significant example is Losæter, Oslo’s first urban farm: on reclaimed land in a former industrial area, every Wednesday the community gathers to harvest vegetables and cook together: a collective practice that combines urban agriculture, environmental education and socialising, giving concrete form to the concept of friluftsliv (outdoor life) so central to Norwegian culture.

In this Nordic journey, Marco Buratti gives us the image of a city – a living organism, in which architecture and nature are in constant dialogue – that does not merely coexist with the landscape but constantly reinterprets it and inhabits it with respect. Like the light that touches the facades and glides over the water of the fjords, his photographs invite us to look deeper: to see in the urban landscape the fabric of relationships between man and the environment, between past and future, between what is built and what endures, a place where the genius loci still finds its voice.