So Ella did something unusual. She invited Kari and three other neighbors into the design process. Together with Nansen’s project leader, Tomas, they spent three Saturday mornings in a community center, sketching on tracing paper. “What do you actually need?” Ella asked.
In the autumn drizzle of Oslo, architect Ella Myhre stood on a patch of neglected land between a disused railway line and an old brick factory. For ten years, this site had been a no-man’s-land—a buffer of weeds and forgotten gravel. But now, her client, a forward-thinking eiendomsutvikler (property developer) named Nansen Eiendom, had bought the plot. Their brief: build 120 homes, a kindergarten, and a grocery store. bolig og eiendomsutvikling
Ella and Tomas stood by the rail line, now a planted footpath. “You know,” Tomas said, “I used to think eiendomsutvikling was just square meters and financing. But it’s really about time—the time people spend waiting for a bus, watching their kids, growing old in a place that fits.” So Ella did something unusual