Solheimsviken

In 2018, GC Rieber Eiendom began a collaboration with DNB and Storebrand to create Norway's most innovative finance and technology environment in Solheimsviken, a historic industrial area on Puddefjorden in Bergen. Nonspace's brief was to develop a shared brand that every actor in the area could take ownership of, from established financial institutions to startups and students.

The work began with an open workshop for tenants and partners in Solheimsgaten 7, and resulted in a place strategy and identity system that still defines the area today.

How do you give many actors ownership of one brand? A logo belongs to a single business, but Solheimsviken had to unite property developers, banks, technology companies, founders and neighbours behind the same vision. The working title “Bergen Tech City” carried the ambition but not the answer: the name would have drowned in the shadow of Media City Bergen, and the identity had to carry the area, not a single building.

There was also a real tension in the district. Solheimsviken was a prosperous development in a neighbourhood marked by social divides, and the brand had to invite people in, not build a wall against the local community.

The answer was already in the name. Nonspace broke Solheimsviken down into its three parts, sol, heim and vik, and translated them into Play, Stay and Work: the framework that defined the area as a place to live, not just work. The vik, the landform where people have set up camp and launched new ventures for thousands of years, gave the story depth, from the shipyard Bergens Mekaniske Verksteder to today's technology community.

Instead of a symbol, the area got a system. The \: mark is drawn from the V in the name itself, and around it Nonspace built a code language in which all communication is written as markup, set in custom typography. Like code and language, the identity sits beneath everything, independent of image styles, and can be used by every actor in the bay. The approach builds on Nonspace's method for placemaking, where the place itself, not the sender, is the brand.

The framework is still in use. GC Rieber Eiendom presents Solheimsviken today under “Play, Stay, Work”, and the area forms part of Bergen’s Innovation District, with StartupLab and a growing technology community.

The identity even named the building itself: Solheimsgaten 7 officially reopened on 16 September 2019 as the V-building, named after the brand's own mark, with Storebrand as owner and DNB as tenant. A brand commissioned as shared property in 2018 has become the district's own language.