Stovner was built between 1968 and 1978, as one of many satellite towns, and remains one of Oslo’s most ambitions city planning projects. Statistically, Stovner can be described as a disadvantaged district characterized by poor living conditions: low income, low educational level, high unemployment rate, and a high proportion of residents receiving social welfare.[1] Thus, Stovner is included in the combined municipal and government grants through Groruddalssatsningen (the Groruddalen initiative) for area-based programs.
Much of the architecture of Stovner was inspired by contemporary international modernist and brutalist architects and similar large-scale housing projects in other parts of Europe. The relatively long construction period of the different sections of Stovner resulted in a varied building mass, with single-family housing, rowhouses, and large housing blocks; to some extent, this also mirrors the different sections of the district population’s socioeconomic standing in Norwegian society (Danielsen and Engebrigtsen, 2014). While the planning of the area and the construction of the first buildings started in the mid-1960s, the subway extension to Vestli was not completed until 1975; the Stovner Shopping Mall was reconstructed and transformed several times between 1975 and 1998; the Stovner police station was completed in 1991; and kindergartens and schools were constructed throughout the 1970s until the 1990s
The Vestli housing complex is one of the many different neighborhoods of Stovner characterized by its architecture, and many people associate Vestli with Stovner because of its image. Vestli was planned from 1960 onwards, designed from 1966 to 1972, and constructed between 1969 and 1978 by the Selvaag Company, a private developer named for and led by engineer Olav Selvaag.