Unique solutions for urban balconies and terraces. Even in an apartment block in the middle of a dense city, it is possible through careful design to feel connected to nature. Recently I have noticed that there is an astonishing number of boring balconies in the city. I live and work in Oslo, but this observation applies to pretty much all modern cities. Such balconies can be found everywhere: uninteresting concrete plates that protrude from the sides of apartment blocks like ruffled pages from a notebook, usually without any plants and without any real spatial qualities or character. In the best of cases the inhabitants have set out a couple of patio chairs and a small table on them, but most often these balconies are empty spaces exposed to noise and wind that have been hung onto the side of buildings as an afterthought, and they become completely unpleasant whenever the sun disappears. I have always considered it somewhat insulting that this type of standard balcony is considered to

There is a lot of unrealised potential in existing cities, which for whatever reason I happen to notice. While walking home from my studio in the west of Oslo every day, I happen to climb up this weed-covered hill. It lies to the side of a building which is used partly by a local university. It houses also offices for Selvaag, a research laboratory and a training centre, which entails a lot of pedestrian traffic in the local area. For some reason the original planners placed the only constructed path that leads up to the entrances on the second level to one side of this long building, meaning that if you come from the other side (as most visitors seem to do), you are asked to walk about 200 meters along the lower level first, up a path, and then about 175 meters back in the opposite direction to get to the door. Naturally no one does this, and instead a typical "desire path" has been created here by people that choose just to take a shortcut up through the grass. This trail has actuall