Oslo is quickly ascending the listing of locations for cultural and design-minded guests. The large Nationwide Museum – at present residence to a playful Laure Prouvost set up – opened in June 2022, lower than a yr after the newly relocated Munchmuseet, residence to a top-floor cocktail bar that provides views onto the Snøhetta-designed, glacier-like opera home, in direction of the sculpture-filled Ekebergparken, and throughout the Oslofjord – the shoreline of which is residence to the elegant modernist Henie Onstad Artwork Centre.
Past the visible arts, design saturates town, and might be skilled all through the culinary and cocktail scene; with rising sustainable vogue designers; and as ever within the high quality of Scandinavian furnishings and merchandise.
Common Wallpaper* contributor Will Jennings stayed at The Thief, subsequent door to and borrowing artwork from the Astrup Fearnley Museum; an Antony Gormley sculpture greets guests on the entrance, a Richard Prince hangs within the foyer, and much more beautiful artwork is unfold all through the lodge’s corridors and bedrooms.
Oslo tour: our design-led information to town
The Thief spa
Sauna on the The Thief spa, Oslo
(Picture credit score: Images: Studio Dreyer Hensley)
The Thief has its personal spa in an adjoining constructing on the Tjuvholmen peninsula, although company on the lodge have their very own personal passage to keep away from going outdoors – a glass carry connecting the lodge to an atmospheric underground hall that emerges into the spa complicated. As soon as there, chill out into your most popular remedy or therapeutic massage, or just luxuriate within the pool, sensorial showers, steam rooms and sauna – I had a facial remedy with ZO Pores and skin Well being merchandise, deeply cleaning then exfoliating with magnesium crystals, earlier than oils and lotions had been massaged in to replenish the pores and skin. With a brand new face, I retired to the spa, flitting between cold and warm, refreshing myself forward of town to return.
thethief.com (opens in new tab)
Torggata Botaniske
Silk and Satin cocktail served at Torggata Bokaniske, Olso
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Torggata Botaniske)
Absolutely revitalised, I headed to a cocktail bar bedecked in vegetation and foliage. Not solely does nature grasp from the ceiling and partitions, turning the area right into a floral grotto, but it surely additionally finds its means into the menu. I began with a Torgatta Botanical in a Bottle, fusing mint, lemongrass, and a lemony rum which felt like a naughty smoothie. The Fig Previous Customary which adopted was a stronger, extra sturdy style of the pure world. Described as ‘a traditional served with a botanical twist’, the fig was warming and deeply boozy, good preparation for the chilly stroll again to the lodge.
torggatabotaniske.no (opens in new tab)
Lulu
Lulu is a restaurant with belief as a substitute of a menu. No excruciating dilemma of what to select from a dish listing that every one sounds too scrumptious to choose from, right here the cooks take possession, presenting a sequence of seasonal small plates based mostly on no matter culinary concepts they’ve brewing. The salty horseradish oil which drenched the scallops of my first plate was so scrumptious I needed to down what was left. As I sat on the bar watching the chef create the following dish, hake ceviche with crunchy plantain crisps, he struck up dialog and advised me it was ‘a tribute to Japanese affect in Latin America’, a theme underpinning Lulu’s creations. After that, the elegant mussels on high of a mussel butter-soaked Japanese milk bread, topped with pickled fennel and mussel purée, left me a mussel fan – and eager to return for extra.
lulu.no (opens in new tab)
F5 idea retailer
Inside of F5 Idea Retailer in Oslo
(Picture credit score: Images: Magnus Nordstrand)
Three artistic brothers – Emil, Benjamin and Alexander Krystada – are behind this retailer, created not solely to promote their very own model of sustainable designer clothes, but additionally to help different native designers of their technology together with ILAG and IBEN. It’s a small however fastidiously fashioned store with a curated vary of woollen, woven and crafted vogue, hung and sat on show furnishings the brothers personally designed by way of F5 Company, the inside and furnishings component of their artistic ecosystem which additionally publishes {a magazine} to showcase Norwegian artistic expertise.
f5conceptstore.com (opens in new tab)
Kollekted By
Interiors at Kollekted By retailer in Oslo
(Picture credit score: Images: Johanne Log)
Alessandro D’Orazio and Jannicke Kråkvik created Kollekted By to supply the general public a curated mixture of the design, furnishings and merchandise used of their inside styling enterprise, Kråkvik&D’Orazio. They’ve created a sequence of rooms reflecting home areas, fitted out to supply the most recent and highest-quality designs on your residence, together with assertion Swedish Fogia ‘Bond’ shelving, Japanese Hasami Porcelain, Italian Lumina lights, and a complete vary of Frama merchandise from delicate scents to the large marble and cork ‘Sintra’ eating desk. The homeowners additionally help the design ecosystem and rising designers – I used to be proven round by Bjørn van den Berg, an Oslo designer beforehand chosen by Wallpaper* as one to look at, and who has items on the market within the retailer.
kollektedby.no (opens in new tab)
Inventarium
Exterior of the Inventarium store, Oslo
(Picture credit score: Images: Fin Serck-Hanssen)
Tone Dalen used to curate artwork for cruise ships and company environments earlier than deciding to observe her coronary heart and arrange Inventarium, a tiny and delightfully eclectic classic store only a brief stroll from Kollekted By, however with a wholly completely different shopping expertise – although no much less artfully curated. Dalen spends her free time monitoring auctions and attending gross sales to discover a distinctive vary of lighting, posters, ornamental arts and design to resell at inexpensive costs. In summer time months, the store spills into the road, however in the event you can’t make it alongside in particular person, you may browse the everchanging provide on-line.
inventarium.store (opens in new tab)
Vaaghals
Vaaghals, Michelin starred restaurant in Oslo
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Vaaghals)
Whereas digging foundations for the Barcode growth adjoining to Oslo Opera Home, builders encountered the buried stays of a 400-year-old cargo boat. Known as Vaaghals (which suggests ‘daredevil’), it lent its title to this Michelin-listed restaurant, the primary restaurant to open within the design-led district, and which has been packed each day since. Head chef Christer Rødseth (who has develop into one thing of a star, frequently showing on Norwegian TV) presides over unpretentiously refined seasonal dishes, beneficiant in measurement and ideal for sharing. One thing so simple as a piece of cabbage transforms with pan-fried barley and BBQ sauce. A hen salad elevated with Jerusalem artichoke crisps and Haukeli goat cheese. And a pan-fried turbot with oxtail ragu was a welcome twist on surf and turf. You might even simply need the do-it-yourself bread with hen liver pâté and wealthy, salty butter, which I may have eaten all day lengthy. The restaurant is immaculately refined with an inside by Radius Design, which softens the glass and metal shell by way of pure wooden and heat lighting, whereas a wine-laden staircase leads company to the first-floor views in direction of the fjord.
vaaghals.com (opens in new tab)
Himkok
Cucumber cocktail at Himkok, Oslo
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Himkok)
Himkok is an ideal place to complete your Oslo journey. An understated speakeasy setting with an in-house distillery (viewable from the bar) used to create gin, vodka and Scandinavian spirit aquavit, all of which gas its distinctive cocktail choice. I began with a drink known as Bun which had – floating on high of bourbon, Cocchi Americano and sherry – an precise waffle-mix-and-coconut bun. It’s a play on a deal with acquainted to all Norwegians who as soon as took one to highschool each day, although this model was altogether boozier and extra grown-up. The Smokey Beetroot which adopted was equally as intriguing – a beetroot distillate (created in-house) blended with mezcal, sherry and a reindeer lichen wine discount mixed right into a flavour the likes of which I’d by no means had earlier than. That final ingredient, fashioned from a type of moss, illustrates an experimental playfulness that’s imagined in a small room on the high of the Himkok constructing, the place state-of-the-art scientific gear concocts new flavours from probably the most unlikely sources.
himkok.no (opens in new tab)
Supply: Wallpaper
