The town hall site is situated at the highest point in the centre of Mo, at the upper end of the town’s pedestrian street and main axis – with Havmannen (The Seaman) from 1995, a contribution to “Sculpture Landscape Nordland”, standing out in Ranafjorden at the other end of the axis. The complex spreads over an extensive locality, but the building mass is broken up into several areas of different shape and height. The town hall section’s three blocks are set together in a right angle, with their walls facing north and towards the centre of town. The cinema theatre and community centre are built as a freer organic form towards the outer, traffic areas to the south. This varied and asymmetrical locality stands without any defined façade image. With unfinished concrete as the material throughout, large picture windows and red-coloured woodwork for all the windows, the site is bound together as a whole.

The town hall site in Mo was an attempt to establish a modern public centre in a heavy industrial town – to counterbalance the Ironworks positioned on the large plateau above the town.

1968-1979

Telje, Torp, Aasen Arkitektkontor as

Rana municipality

Town hall, offices, assembly hall

Concrete

town hall

concrete

glass

functionalism

Hage, Ingebjørg, Elin Haugdal, Bodil Ruud &

Sveinulf Hegstad (eds.): Arkitektur i Nord-Norge, Bergen 2008.