Building an oil fairy-tale investigates oil’s potency as a socio-cultural force and its role in shaping civic spaces in Stavanger, Norway. It posits that the Nordic city represents an exemplary case study on the complex and co-dependent interaction between petroleum and architecture. Since the discovery of oil in Norway in the late 1960s, the historically peripheral Nordic nation has experienced a remarkable economic, social, cultural, and architectural transformation. The rapid and comprehensive transition towards a petroleumscape has given rise to the term ‘oljeevntyret’ or the oil fairy-tale in the Norwegian lexicon. The oil fairy-tale has functioned as a reflection of changing socio-cultural conditions and a potent device to perpetuate an energy culture reflected in Stavanger’s architecture, cultural practices, economic developments, governmental policies, and visual expressions over the past decades. Following a general analysis of the national and local historical context, the thesis uses four architectural case studies in Stavanger, supported by archival and contemporary writings and media, to demonstrate how the city’s oil fairy-tale and civic spaces have developed in a feedback loop. Oil actors’ political and economic sway has created a new class of oil-civic spaces in Stavanger. In turn, these oil spaces’ narrative potentials contribute to an ever-expanding petroleumscape and celebration of oil as a heroic and Norwegian product. As the end of the oil age looms closer and cities around the world, including Stavanger, strive to imagine a post-oil future, we must appreciate the power and extent of oil in shaping our everyday spaces. Only then may we engage meaningfully in imagining a post-oil city future for cities that have become deeply drenched in oil.

This thesis explores the use of the palimpsest as a theoretical framework for adapting a heritage building. The research studies the former Maranatherkerk in Castricum, Noord-Holland. Set against a backdrop of ever-increasing secularisation in the Netherlands, the former Maranathakerk characterises the struggle faced by many decommissioned churches today - that of a tendency for stakeholders to choose demolition over adaptation. Despite the successful establishment of an upstart school community within the former church in recent years, the site nonetheless faces imminent demolition and redevelopment by the municipality. The focus of the thesis is thus twofold: to propose an extension to the former church and champion it as a permanent home for the school community; and to position the palimpsest as a theoretical framework in guiding the architectural design. The latter builds upon previous discourse on the palimpsest in linguistics, postcolonial theory, archaeology, and drawing theory, and applies this to architectural design in a novel manner. In a palimpsest, the interplay of successive layers transforms the collective into a new whole. The retention of imperfect erasures of past layers forms a crucial part of this transformation. The thesis posits that the valuation of heritage is a subjective process. Rather than attempting to establish 'limits of change' or merely preserving past traces, the existing is taken as is and as a whole and used to study ways in which past layers of the building have influenced the present usage of the site. By investigating and cataloguing the ways the different time layers interact with the life within the building: its phenomenological meanings, characteristics, usage, and everyday rituals, a toolbox for palimpsestuous adaption is formulated. In the final extension proposal, these palimpsestuous fragments are developed and architecturally highlighted in both spatial layout and material detail, encouraging future users and visitors to experience the many past lives of the site and add their own traces onto the tapestry.