An enormous white iceberg lodged in the Bjørvika Peninsula, the Oslo Opera House melts into the fjord. Its angular marble roof slopes and slides, inviting visitors to walk all over it. Equal part public plaza and state-of-the-art home of the Norwegian Opera & Ballet, the bold architectural statement instantly sheds opera’s snooty, high-art image. It’s welcomed thousands since it opened in April, encouraging passersby to peer through its glazed auditoriums and lobbies.

Internationally celebrated local architects Snøhetta won the competition to design the programmatically complex facility in 2000. With more than 1,000 rooms – many below sea level – the envelope contains extensive back-of-house and workshop facilities, six ballet studios and three stages, three auditoriums, rehearsal spaces, a banquet hall and restaurants. Despite the building’s complicated nature, the ­competition-winning concepts are evident throughout: an interior oak wave wall dividing inside from outside, and water from land; a metal-clad “factory” housing production spaces; and the white stone “carpet” of the wrap-around plaza. All of these erect the monument along horizontal rather than vertical lines.

“We knew early on we wanted the roofscape and metal cladding to be integrated artwork,” says Simon Ewings, the design team leader, “as well as performing as the building’s fabric.” Local artists Jorunn Sannes, Kalle Grude and Kristian Blystad employed more than 19,000 square metres of Carrara marble to sculpt the roof’s undulating topography. The factory’s stamped aluminum cladding was designed by local artists Astrid Løvaas and Kirsten Wagle, who fashioned eight types of concave and convex panels, most visible on the roof.

A tactile element of the building, they resemble Braille lettering. A light installation and water sculpture by Monica Bonvicini – made of metal with jutting, angular forms – will soon be placed in the fjord at the foot of the building. “But rather than being integrated, as the cladding,” says Ewings, “it plays off the building’s forms.”

Snøhetta has in effect crafted a symbol of Norway, projected on a local and global scale. The opera house is a key component of this industrial quarter’s renaissance as a dynamic new cultural centre: a public park is in the works, as is a plan to bury the nearby four-lane motorway under the fjord. “It’s a changing place,” says Ewings, “and the opera house is the first real pinprick on the map.”

By Terri Peters