Lead. A primary school for 800 pupils, completed in 2019. The architectural ambition was to organise an 11,450 m² building around a single daylit room — the atrium as social heart, assembly hall, and daylight strategy for the entire deep-plan section.

Site & brief. The school sits on the wooded edge of Ås — a university town south of Oslo — surrounded by mature pines, rolling terrain, and weather from every direction. The brief came out of a two-year public consultation with the municipality, teachers, and parents: a primary school, a fully equipped gymnastics hall, a dedicated department for special learning, and shared social facilities sized to host the school's major events.

Idea. Three stories of classrooms, library, special-learning department, gymnastics, and circulation wrap a generous central atrium — every room in the school opens onto it, every major event happens inside it. The atrium is daylit by a calibrated roof of north-facing light-catchers (lysfangere) that pick up indirect light and diffuse it deep into the section, so the heart of the building feels naturally lit even in mid-winter.

Resolution. The light-catchers are the project's engineering signature: a grid of pyramidal diffusers set above north-facing skylights, marked in the ceiling so they read as ornament and operate as daylight optics. Below, the atrium opens onto an auditorium-style amphitheatre stair and a network of social terraces that step up through the section. Classrooms group around the perimeter; circulation routes are punctuated by exposed cross-bracing — structure left visible as the building's signature graphic note. Outside, varying-width vertical timber cladding gives the upper volume a calibrated rhythm, set on a recessed coloured plinth so the heavy three-story mass reads as floating in the pines.