While the hip, vibrant life is a recent development, the neighborhood dates to the Middle Ages, when it was a longstanding trading hub. During the industrial revolution of the mid-19th Century, the area evolved into a manufacturing center, where several of the city’s foundries could be found. Then, in 2004, after much of the neighborhood’s industry had vanished and the once-thriving Vulkan Factory – so named for Vulcan, the Greek god of fire and handiwork – closed, morphing into simpler warehouse space, city officials asked themselves: why not build a city within a city, one that can re-envision what a cities of the future can and should look?
The project started in 2004 when a pair of property developers – Aspelin Ramm and Anthon B Nilsen – purchased the land that would become Vulkan; land that was, at the time, severely blighted.
“Kids were not allowed to play here,” said Sverre Landmark, a former commercial director for Aspelin Ramm. “Glass windows were damaged, there was a lot of graffiti, drug addicts were hanging around. It was really nasty.”
Within a few years, Vulkan started to take shape. By 2008, the country’s national contemporary dance theatre, Dansens Hus, had opened on the fast-developing square. In 2012 came neighborhood cornerstone Mathallen, Norway’s first food hall, located in a former cast iron factory. Today, Mathallen boasts more than a dozen restaurants, bars, bakeries cafes and shops: my dinner there included a dozen oysters from a fishmonger, a pair of small pork bao, a plate of homemade cacio e pepe pasta and a few locally brewed beers. Just steps away, Vulkan Arena, a 950-capacity music venue that has hosted artists such as Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, indie rock stalwarts Mercury Rev and long-running metal band Downset, adds even more cultural clout.
But Vulkan isn’t just buzzy, it was built to be sustainable. A series of 300m-deep geothermal wells lie deep beneath the square and the low-rise buildings above it. Along with the ubiquitous solar panels, Vulkan can create almost all its own heat during the long, cold winter and cooling throughout the country’s abbreviated summer. Meanwhile, eco-friendly architecture includes a neighbourhood-defining office building with an exterior solar array used to heat the building’s water. And rising above the square, a few steps up a wide staircase, is the 149-room Scandic Vulkan, an uberhip, design-focussed hotel that is Norway’s first energy class A hotel, the highest energy efficiency rating awarded by the European Union.
Mathallen, Norway’s first food hall, is a cornerstone of the neighborhood
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