Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel

Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel, commonly known as Oslo Plaza, is a high-rise hotel at Sonja Henies plass beside Oslo Central Station and Oslo Spektrum in central Oslo, Norway. The building was designed by Swedish architecture firm White Arkitekter, constructed between 1987 and 1989 and officially opened by King Olav V on 14 March 1990. Its 117-metre glass tower rises 37 storeys and is distinguished by reflective façades, a sharply sloping roofline and an external glass lift running up the side of the building. A lower three-storey section contains the entrance, lobby and conference facilities, while a pedestrian bridge connecting the hotel directly with Oslo Spektrum was added in 1992. Originally operated as the SAS Plaza Hotel and later the Radisson SAS Plaza Hotel, it adopted the Radisson Blu name in 2009 but remains widely known simply as Oslo Plaza.

Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel has appeared in Skam (2015–2017), Stories from Norway (2018) and The Quake (2018). The productions use the hotel in very different ways: as the setting for one of the central sequences in the third season of Skam, as a police-conference location in Stories from Norway, and as both a workplace and the principal disaster location in The Quake. In the latter, the real building is combined with studio sets and extensive visual effects as the tower is severely damaged by an earthquake.

In Skam (2015–2017), Oslo Plaza appears in the third-season episode “Mannen i mitt liv”, first broadcast on 2 December 2016. Even Bech Næsheim surprises Isak Valtersen by taking him to the hotel, where the two check into a suite together. Scenes were filmed in the reception area, lift and hotel room as Even openly introduces Isak as his boyfriend, the couple ride up through the tower and spend the day together in their suite. They order burgers from room service and talk about their future together, including Even’s increasingly extravagant plans for their wedding. The sequence develops into one of the season’s major turning points when Even, experiencing a manic episode, leaves the hotel naked during the night. Isak follows him outside and searches for him around nearby Grønland, where he later learns from Sonja that Even has bipolar disorder. The Oslo Plaza scenes are among the best-known real locations associated with the series, and Visit Oslo subsequently included the hotel in its official guide to Skam filming locations.

In Stories from Norway (2018), Oslo Plaza appears in the sixth episode, “Skrik-tyveriet”, which reconstructs and satirises the investigation into the 1994 theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream from the National Gallery in Oslo. While Norway’s attention is focused on the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, the painting is stolen and the subsequent investigation eventually involves an undercover operation with assistance from Scotland Yard. Scenes filmed at Oslo Plaza represent a police conference following the theft, with Ylvis and other performers appearing alongside actors and extras portraying police personnel. Production at the hotel took place in November 2017, several months before the episode was broadcast on 2 April 2018.

In The Quake (2018), originally released in Norway as Skjelvet, Oslo Plaza is one of the film’s principal locations and remains recognisably itself. Three years after the tsunami depicted in The Wave, geologist Kristian Eikjord travels to Oslo after discovering evidence that a major earthquake may be imminent. His estranged wife Idun works at the Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel, placing the building directly at the centre of the disaster when the earthquake strikes. Early warning signs include water leaking outside the hotel, where Idun notices a spreading puddle shortly before the catastrophe. During the main earthquake sequence, the neighbouring Posthuset tower collapses towards Oslo Plaza and crashes into it, leaving sections of the hotel tilted and partially destroyed while Kristian attempts to reach Idun, their daughter Julia and Marit, the daughter of another geologist. Real exterior material filmed in Oslo was combined with digital effects, while the most extreme scenes inside the damaged upper floors were created on large tilting sets at a studio in Prague. The production therefore uses the real Oslo Plaza as the geographical and architectural basis of the sequence while recreating its collapsing interiors under controlled studio conditions.

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