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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 whichever of the house's two south-west walls gets the most sun: 2,731 hours of direct sun a year, and 194–242 minutes on 21 December. Openness 8.1 out of 10, sun index 7.9 out of 10 — both well above the building's median, which sits at 1,838 hours.

Tuengen allé 10C, Oslo municipality · House · ground plan: on facade SW (203°) · 8 m, the house's ground plan gets roughly 2,731 hours of direct sun a year — above the building median.

Evaluated 1 m above ground, on the wall you chose. The address says neither which storey nor which side the terrace is on, so both are your choice. The storey count is an estimate — derived from the roof height in the laser scan. The height above ground is an estimate: 2.7 m per storey, the default we use when the building gives us nothing better.

Direct sun per year2,731 h
21 December194–242 min
Openness 8.1 / 10

How much of the sun that could have reached this wall actually gets through. 10 means almost nothing is in the way — neither neighbours nor trees.

Sun index 7.9 / 10

The sun here, measured against a south-facing wall with nothing in the way at the same latitude. 10 is what such a wall would get; both the direction the wall faces and the surroundings pull it down.

Spread across the year

Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
sun1. building and trees2. building and trees3. building and treesother obstructions
What does the height of the bars show?

The height is the hours the sun is up and in front of this wall, not the whole day length. A wall sees about half the sky, so the summer sun is up for hours behind the wall without counting here. That is also why the steps between months are uneven: a roofline is a threshold, not a gradual change. The month the sun clears it, a whole slice of the day goes from shade to sun at once.

behind the wallbehind the wall04:0022:4212:0010:0619:42
↑ 04:00 · ☀ 13:18 · ↓ 22:42
18h 42m above the horizon
9h 00m of direct sun on this facade

21 June, 12:00

The sun is on the window, 51° above the horizon.

Worked out from the stored horizon for this wall and floor, without clouds. In practice the changeover between sun and shade is soft by a couple of minutes either way. The time is Norwegian local time.

Compared with the building

The building median is 1,836 hours. The middle half falls between 445 and 3,136 hours.

What takes the sun?

The obstructions are measured in the laser scan: we see that something is in the way, how high it is and which direction it lies in. When we name a building, it is the nearest mapped one in the same direction — that says where the obstruction is, not that this particular building casts the shadow. “Building” and “trees” say what kind of obstruction it is, not which one.

Tuengen allé 10C · SW (203°) · 8 m

123NSEW25 m

The orange ring is the facade you chose. Grey shapes are buildings. The numbered wedges point at the obstructions in the list below. See the area in satellite imagery →

  1. 1. building and treesblocks 70.9 hours a year · direction 214.3–231.3° · 10.9 m high · the nearest mapped building in the same direction stands 32.2 m away · the laser scan sees the obstruction as trees 28 m awaySee this obstruction in satellite imagery →
  2. 2. building and treesblocks 64.9 hours a year · direction 126.3–136.3° · 6.5 m high · the nearest mapped building in the same direction stands 47.3 m away · the laser scan sees the obstruction as trees 6 m awaySee this obstruction in satellite imagery →
  3. 3. building and treesblocks 44 hours a year · direction 204.3–208.3° · 14.5 m high · the nearest mapped building in the same direction stands 32.2 m away · the laser scan sees the obstruction as trees 28 m awaySee this obstruction in satellite imagery →

How to use these numbers →

Calculated from Kartverket's laser scan, flown 18 May 2024, with leaves on the trees. The sun is worked out geometrically for the sun's own centre, without clouds. December counts the leaves as dense, so the figure is a minimum. How?

Elevation and building data: © Kartverket (CC BY 4.0 / NLOD) · Building outlines: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

Calculation version v2 · source data 01/01/2007, 04/07/2010, 30/04/2012, 11/06/2013, 08/12/2014, 09/05/2015, 20/06/2015, 07/07/2015, 26/09/2015, 22/11/2015, 01/12/2015, 03/12/2015, 01/06/2016, 05/06/2016, 13/06/2016, 31/07/2016, 30/10/2016, 02/05/2017, 25/05/2017, 01/06/2017, 06/10/2017, 12/10/2017, 29/05/2019, 31/05/2019, 06/04/2020, 19/04/2020, 30/05/2021, 30/08/2021, 18/04/2022, 03/05/2022, 06/05/2022, 07/05/2022, 28/05/2022, 30/07/2022, 18/05/2024, 04/06/2024, 21/06/2024, 24/06/2024, 07/04/2025, 22/06/2025, 08/10/2025 · report retrieved 02/09/2026

Open this report in Soltreff →

The link re-runs the lookup in the service; it does not show a stored answer. If we recalculate, the link moves with us — and the figures on this page can then sit a step behind until we update them.

The figure that matters

Over three hours of direct sun on 21 December — between 194 and 242 minutes. 194 is the minimum figure, where all foliage is counted as dense; 242 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, and together they take 657 hours a year — the largest single obstruction only 71. 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 facing the same way, a different answer

The house has two wall surfaces that both face south-west, and by the compass both are called “SW (203°)” — but they are not the same wall. So the tool writes the length after the name wherever two walls would otherwise read alike, and here they stand as “SW (203°) · 8 m” and “SW (203°) · 10 m”. Tap the first and you get the report above. Tap the second and you get 2,110 hours a year and a sun index of 6.1 instead of 7.9. The one shown here is not the broader of the two, it is the one that gets more sun.

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).

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