Example
Functionalism promised light. Does Villa Stenersen keep the promise?
Arne Korsmo designed Villa Stenersen for Rolf Stenersen between 1937 and 1939. Functionalism made light and air a stated programme — large glazed surfaces, open facades, homes oriented towards the sun. That is a claim you can test. We ran the address through Soltreff, exactly as we would with any home for sale.
The report
Villa Stenersen has no registered dwelling numbers, so Soltreff cannot offer a floor picker here — it calculates on the house's ground plan, not on a particular floor. The figures below are for the broad south-west wall, which gets the most sun of the house's four facades: 2,600.4 hours of direct sun a year, and 182–236 minutes on 21 December. Openness 7.7 out of 10, sun index 7.5 out of 10 — both well above the building's median.
The figure that matters
Over three hours of direct sun on 21 December — between 182 and 236 minutes. 182 is the minimum figure, where all foliage is counted as dense; 236 is what the trees let through once the leaves are gone. That is the shortest day of the year, in a city where the sun then stands under seven degrees above the horizon, and most of the homes we have worked out get minutes — not hours.
The house sits high, in a garden with no neighbours close by. What takes sun here is a mix of nearby buildings and trees. The mapped buildings are used only to say which direction the obstruction lies in, not as evidence that this particular building casts the shade. No single neighbouring building dominates the way one does in Sagveien. So yes — on this point functionalism keeps what it promised, and the promise was met with the choice of site and the orientation, not with glass alone.
Two walls, the same name, a different answer
The house has two wall surfaces that both face south-west and are both called “SW” in the tool — but they are not the same wall. Tap one and you get the report above. Tap the other and you get 1,628.4 hours a year and a sun index of 4.7 instead of 7.5. The tool does not yet tell them apart by name, only by the figure — something we are recording as a weakness in the display, not in the calculation.
What you should know about this figure
Because the house has no registered dwellings, Soltreff answers here for the ground plan — not for “the second floor” or any other particular height. That is a weaker claim than a figure for a named flat, and we say so plainly rather than pretending to know more than we do.
The screenshot above is the same report any visitor gets for this address, taken straight from the service — not an illustration.
Elevation data: © Kartverket's laser scan, flown 18 May 2024 (CC BY 4.0 / NLOD). Building data: © Matrikkelen, the public register of buildings and addresses (NLOD). Building outlines: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).