Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen NORWEGIAN AUTUMN

Equality is not a uniquely Norwegian or Scandinavian In the nineteenth century, Hammersborg, the Following Jens Arup Seip’s famous lecture From Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen characteristic. Historically, the di"ferences in income small hill above Oslo, was given the nickname ‘the The Public Servant State to the One-party State, and wealth have been as great in Norway as in Norwegian Acropolis’. The so called Public Servant the history of Norwegian democracy is customarily NORWEGIAN AUTUMN other European countries; this is true whether you state (embetsmannstaten) of that era built a hospital divided into three ‘regimes’: the Public Servant look at the Viking era or the nineteenth century. there and located three churches on the hill: the state from 1814 until 1884; the bourgeois multi- Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen is a Norwegian historian Scandinavian equality emerged from the struggles Trinity Church, Saint Olav’s Cathedral and the party or Liberal state from 1884 until 1935 and and writer, and specialist in recent French, of the labour movement around the middle of the Johannes Church. The style and materials of the the Social Democratic order or Labour Party state German and Norwegian culture and history 20th century. In the 1920s, less than a century churches marked "irm a""iliations with a Lutheran from 1935 or 1945.1 I use the word ‘regime’ here, of ideas. In this essay he situates Erling Viksjø!s buildings in the Government Quarter in a ago, British newspapers warned their readers culture with its centre in northern Germany. The as do biologists, to indicate a relatively stable Norwegian architectural history characterized against what they called the ‘Norwegian condition’, churches – including the Roman Catholic Saint Olav’s dynamic system. The Labour Party assumed power by con"lict. that is social paralysis resulting from bitter class – are in red brick, like those in Lübeck, Hamburg in two stages, in 1935 with Nygaardsvold and struggle and endless strikes and lockouts. But and Danzig. The style is Romantic-historical, following the Liberation in 1945 with Gerhardsen. then Norwegian society changed. Incomes policies in"luence by Gothic. The Public Servant state was The ‘Eagle among political parties’ retained power came into place wherein wage rises and labour governed by a self-assured educational elite with for a generation. With ‘Høyblokka’ or H-block con"licts are regulated through negotiations cultural and often also personal links to Denmark (the Highrise Cabinet Building) and the Y-block, at a national level involving the organizations and Germany. All the churches were designed by an overall plan for the Government Quarter was representing labour, capital and Governmental German-born architects: Alexis de Chateauneuf, conceived in accordance with the architect Erling expertise. This uniquely Scandinavian system of Wilhelm von Hanno and Heinrich Schirmer. Viksjø’s drawings. Here, as in other areas, the governance has led to small di"ferences in income, Social Democrat order demonstrated vigour and consistently low levels of unemployment and high After 1884, a new political system was adopted the ability to govern. rises in productivity. with parliamentary rule and political parties. The ‘Venstre’ (‘left’) movement that dominated the state A generous welfare state was built, with free from 1884 was a national-liberal movement with education, health services and universal bene"its. brave ambitions for public education. The state The housing market was regulated, and ‘Husbanken’ apparatus grew, and important buildings were (The Norwegian State Housing Bank) enabled added to the area by the hill in the middle of the most Norwegians to buy their own homes. The capital. The Supreme Court was "inished in 1903, Golden Age was the Gerhardsen epoch after designed by the Norwegian Hans Jacob Sparre. World War II. Capable social governance and a Three years later came the present-day Ministry of strong collective project de"ied society’s ‘law Finance, designed by Henrik Bull in the Art Nouveau of gravity’ and created an unusually egalitarian style. According to the plan, the building, which was society. But as early as the 1980s, inequalities given a distinctly national look, was only to be the began to increase again. Equality is not a law of "irst wing in a large, H-shaped government building nature in the Nordic countries. at Hammersborg. In 1921 the construction of the Deichman Central Library began as a temple of Hammersborg in Oslo is where you best sense the knowledge on the Norwegian Acropolis. None of way in which modern Norway was forged amidst these projects were completed. In the case of the the struggle of con"licting interests. Take a seat Deichman building, a long row of columns that ends on the stairs in front of the Deichman building and in nothing recalls a construction process that was

let your gaze wander! You are sitting surrounded discontinued in 1933, when the budget had been spent 1 Following 1814 independence, much of the by Trinity Church from 1858, the Deichman Central and Neoclassicism had long gone out of fashion. The personnel of the multinational kingdom of Denmark Library (opened in 1933) and the ‘Y-block’ from national-liberal bourgeois regime functioned badly stayed in place, constituting a social elite among the 1969. The aesthetic contrasts are stark. All three in Norway. Historians have viewed this in the light of “natives” of Norway. The term embetsmann in 19th buildings were built as proud expressions of the the fact that the commerce-based bourgeoisie lacked century Norway denoted an exclusive group of higher civil servants, university professors and judges. These State and the democracy of their time. Nevertheless the capacity for national leadership. The Norwegian top level public servants enjoyed legal privileges ensuring they dislike, indeed even hate, one another. business community was dominated by the shipping their autonomy from politics (they were tenured for industry, and some of the leading political "igures in life and could not be dismissed), and for decades they these years were shipping magnates. This was true dominated both parliamentary debates, the cabinet and of the three prime ministers Christian Michelsen and social life, due to the prestige of university education. It may be instructive to understand the concept of the J.L. Mowinckel from Bergen, and Gunnar Knudsen “embetsmannstat” in light of Max Weber’s and later from Porsgrunn. But the shipowners were weakly Fritz Ringer’s analyses of related social strata in 19th rooted both nationally and in the capital. and 20th century German society as “mandarins”.

Y#BLOKKA 56 57 KATJA HØST Equality is not a uniquely Norwegian or Scandinavian In the nineteenth century, Hammersborg, the Following Jens Arup Seip’s famous lecture From Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen characteristic. Historically, the di"ferences in income small hill above Oslo, was given the nickname ‘the The Public Servant State to the One-party State, and wealth have been as great in Norway as in Norwegian Acropolis’. The so called Public Servant the history of Norwegian democracy is customarily NORWEGIAN AUTUMN other European countries; this is true whether you state (embetsmannstaten) of that era built a hospital divided into three ‘regimes’: the Public Servant look at the Viking era or the nineteenth century. there and located three churches on the hill: the state from 1814 until 1884; the bourgeois multi- Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen is a Norwegian historian Scandinavian equality emerged from the struggles Trinity Church, Saint Olav’s Cathedral and the party or Liberal state from 1884 until 1935 and and writer, and specialist in recent French, of the labour movement around the middle of the Johannes Church. The style and materials of the the Social Democratic order or Labour Party state German and Norwegian culture and history 20th century. In the 1920s, less than a century churches marked "irm a""iliations with a Lutheran from 1935 or 1945.1 I use the word ‘regime’ here, of ideas. In this essay he situates Erling Viksjø!s buildings in the Government Quarter in a ago, British newspapers warned their readers culture with its centre in northern Germany. The as do biologists, to indicate a relatively stable Norwegian architectural history characterized against what they called the ‘Norwegian condition’, churches – including the Roman Catholic Saint Olav’s dynamic system. The Labour Party assumed power by con"lict. that is social paralysis resulting from bitter class – are in red brick, like those in Lübeck, Hamburg in two stages, in 1935 with Nygaardsvold and struggle and endless strikes and lockouts. But and Danzig. The style is Romantic-historical, following the Liberation in 1945 with Gerhardsen. then Norwegian society changed. Incomes policies in"luence by Gothic. The Public Servant state was The ‘Eagle among political parties’ retained power came into place wherein wage rises and labour governed by a self-assured educational elite with for a generation. With ‘Høyblokka’ or H-block con"licts are regulated through negotiations cultural and often also personal links to Denmark (the Highrise Cabinet Building) and the Y-block, at a national level involving the organizations and Germany. All the churches were designed by an overall plan for the Government Quarter was representing labour, capital and Governmental German-born architects: Alexis de Chateauneuf, conceived in accordance with the architect Erling expertise. This uniquely Scandinavian system of Wilhelm von Hanno and Heinrich Schirmer. Viksjø’s drawings. Here, as in other areas, the governance has led to small di"ferences in income, Social Democrat order demonstrated vigour and consistently low levels of unemployment and high After 1884, a new political system was adopted the ability to govern. rises in productivity. with parliamentary rule and political parties. The ‘Venstre’ (‘left’) movement that dominated the state A generous welfare state was built, with free from 1884 was a national-liberal movement with education, health services and universal bene"its. brave ambitions for public education. The state The housing market was regulated, and ‘Husbanken’ apparatus grew, and important buildings were (The Norwegian State Housing Bank) enabled added to the area by the hill in the middle of the most Norwegians to buy their own homes. The capital. The Supreme Court was "inished in 1903, Golden Age was the Gerhardsen epoch after designed by the Norwegian Hans Jacob Sparre. World War II. Capable social governance and a Three years later came the present-day Ministry of strong collective project de"ied society’s ‘law Finance, designed by Henrik Bull in the Art Nouveau of gravity’ and created an unusually egalitarian style. According to the plan, the building, which was society. But as early as the 1980s, inequalities given a distinctly national look, was only to be the began to increase again. Equality is not a law of "irst wing in a large, H-shaped government building nature in the Nordic countries. at Hammersborg. In 1921 the construction of the Deichman Central Library began as a temple of Hammersborg in Oslo is where you best sense the knowledge on the Norwegian Acropolis. None of way in which modern Norway was forged amidst these projects were completed. In the case of the the struggle of con"licting interests. Take a seat Deichman building, a long row of columns that ends on the stairs in front of the Deichman building and in nothing recalls a construction process that was

Y#BLOKKA 56 57 KATJA HØST The will to conserve has been weak at Hammersborg, It is now the autumn of Social Democracy. The by Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. At the same time The post-war era was a heyday for Norwegian and something which is perhaps related to the fact that Government Quarter was built to give material both architect and contractor wished to mark a Scandinavian design, and the radical nature of the this is the locus of power in Norway. As Aristotle form to the most important collective project in distance from the US-style ‘corporate aesthetic’, aesthetic revolution at Hammersborg enchanted pointed out in antiquity, statecraft is a matter of Norwegian history. Soon it is to be demolished as represented by Mies van der Rohe’s o""ice- its contemporaries. Such an organic unity of art, kairos – that is, of observing the times and "inding and replaced by a new government complex that block architecture. Viksjø met these challenges design and architecture had not been seen in the the right moment to act. Each regime has wished will have even larger dimensions and transform by using sober, clean lines, low-key, integrated Western World for centuries. Architectural critics to mark the hill above the capital with its vision the physiognomy of Oslo even more radically decoration and a unique choice of materials. State invoked parallels with the Gothic cathedrals and and its view of what constitutes the good state than Viksjø’s complex did. According to plan, the power was not clad in marble or glass and steel, the temples of antiquity.2 and the good life. Some of the mandarin Public demolition of the solid Y-block, which survived the but in sandblasted ‘natural concrete’, a brand new Servant state’s "inest buildings were demolished 22nd July attack almost unscathed, is to start in building material that Viksjø and the engineer The artists were fully aware that it was o""icial to make room for twentieth-century buildings. October 2019. The H-block is said to have been Sverre Jystad had developed and patented. River buildings they were decorating. The motifs are The Johannes Church disappeared in 1924; the saved, after intense mobilization of resistance. gravel from the Hønefoss region was mixed into the abstract or universally human, the design style ‘Empire (Regency) style District’, designed by But this is a mirage. As a landmark and symbolic cement. The artistic decoration was sandblasted buoyant, light and subtle. Picasso set the tone. Even Christian Grosch early in the 1800s, was torn building it will vanish, surrounded as it will be by into the concrete, thus achieving a distinctive Hannah Ryggen’s tapestries are more dreaming down to make room for the H- and the Y-blocks. massive o""ice buildings of the same height as tactility. The art is not on the surface, it resides and utopian than polemical. The building is the The Trinity Church, which is one of Norway’s most the H-block. So that it will not disappear entirely, in the body of the building and invites you to touch message. monumental, was allowed to stand. But the Deichman additional stories are to be added to the building it. In order to realize this entirely untried type building steals space from the church and pushes that once towered over Oslo. It is not the "irst time of decoration, Viksjø engaged the artists Carl Viksjø’s Gesamtkunstwerk is about democracy it out onto a crossroads while at the same time that Viksjø’s masterpiece has been maltreated. Nesjar, Inger Sitter, Odd Tandberg, Tore Haaland, rooted in hard work and popular involvement, the the re"ined green surfaces of the Neoclassical The "irst storey of the H-block was walled in so Kai Fjell, Hannah Ryggen and Pablo Picasso. national in interaction with the international, and library make the pious red brick of the church that the building no longer hovered in the air. Without remuneration of any kind, the world- about technically sophisticated governance. The seem shoddy. The Y-block takes up all the space In 1990 two "loors were added. This meant the famous Picasso continued his collaboration with H- and Y-blocks do not pay homage to utopia over which the Deichman was meant to hover, disappearance of the organically sculptured top Nesjar and Viksjø until the Y-block was "inished and hardly even to progress; they are rather a and with its modernist forms creates a stark but storey with the famous elevator house and cabinet in 1969, and radically in"luenced the Government homage to the tools of progress – that is, to interesting contrast to the two older buildings. hall. The much-maligned box shape was something Quarter with his art. The veteran avant-gardist intelligent and rational governance. The H-block’s No, Norwegian nation building is not all harmony., the government building only took on as a result of and socialist must have been deeply fascinated screen-like facade is a compliment to the working successive rebuildings. The restoration after the by this vision of art in an indissoluble unity with methods of bureaucracy, to graph paper and "iling The Trinity Church and the Deichman are important terror attack might have provided an opportunity working life and architecture. The construction cabinets. In 1969, the H-block found its match in Oslo buildings. But they are not signi"icant buildings to restore the building to its original beauty and process began in 1956. Labourers and artists the Y-block, this too built in natural concrete and in the international context. There are neo-Gothic originality. Instead it was once again transformed worked side by side, "loor by "loor. Despite, or decorated by Nesjar and Picasso. The H-block’s churches and Neoclassical libraries in most major in a way which deprived it of character, reducing because of, the fact that the budget was modest "irm rectangle resonates with the low-rise o""ice cities. Viksjø’s Government Quarter, on the other the monument to a plain high-rise. and the state thrifty, in 1958 the Norwegian building’s extended and elegant curves, forming hand, is unique. Only Oslo has this architecture Government could already move in. Everything an indissoluble unity. with this type of decoration. The two wounded giants still stand on Norway’s was thoroughly thought out. Government and Acropolis. They are ghost buildings within which state administration did not simply move into forgotten stories and dreams meander. If we are a new building. The whole interior was specially to learn from them, we must open them up by designed in the modern style: o""ice chairs, chairs asking questions. The buildings were functional, for meetings, writing desks, meeting tables, door but they were also representative, created in handles, lamps and light "ittings. response to an apparently insoluble paradox: how does one create an enduring monument to an antimonumental culture? Never was the rhetoric of power so timid as in the Gerhardsen era. This was the generation that built a new society, rebuilding the country after the war. ‘Objectivity’ and ‘precision’ were the watchwords in a textbook for the philosophicum university entrance exam by the philosopher Arne Næss, which appeared in 1947 and which for thirty years marked the

gateway to Norwegian universities. Viksjø and 2 Christian Norberg-Schulz, quoted in Hugo Gerhardsen disliked monumental architecture Lauritz Jenssen's excellent construction history of the as fostered in the totalitarian states of the time H-block (Oslo, Press forlag 2014, p. 102).

Y#BLOKKA 58 59 KATJA HØST The will to conserve has been weak at Hammersborg, It is now the autumn of Social Democracy. The by Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. At the same time The post-war era was a heyday for Norwegian and something which is perhaps related to the fact that Government Quarter was built to give material both architect and contractor wished to mark a Scandinavian design, and the radical nature of the this is the locus of power in Norway. As Aristotle form to the most important collective project in distance from the US-style ‘corporate aesthetic’, aesthetic revolution at Hammersborg enchanted pointed out in antiquity, statecraft is a matter of Norwegian history. Soon it is to be demolished as represented by Mies van der Rohe’s o!!ice- its contemporaries. Such an organic unity of art, kairos – that is, of observing the times and !inding and replaced by a new government complex that block architecture. Viksjø met these challenges design and architecture had not been seen in the the right moment to act. Each regime has wished will have even larger dimensions and transform by using sober, clean lines, low-key, integrated Western World for centuries. Architectural critics to mark the hill above the capital with its vision the physiognomy of Oslo even more radically decoration and a unique choice of materials. State invoked parallels with the Gothic cathedrals and and its view of what constitutes the good state than Viksjø’s complex did. According to plan, the power was not clad in marble or glass and steel, the temples of antiquity.2 and the good life. Some of the mandarin Public demolition of the solid Y-block, which survived the but in sandblasted ‘natural concrete’, a brand new Servant state’s !inest buildings were demolished 22nd July attack almost unscathed, is to start in building material that Viksjø and the engineer The artists were fully aware that it was o!!icial to make room for twentieth-century buildings. October 2019. The H-block is said to have been Sverre Jystad had developed and patented. River buildings they were decorating. The motifs are The Johannes Church disappeared in 1924; the saved, after intense mobilization of resistance. gravel from the Hønefoss region was mixed into the abstract or universally human, the design style ‘Empire (Regency) style District’, designed by But this is a mirage. As a landmark and symbolic cement. The artistic decoration was sandblasted buoyant, light and subtle. Picasso set the tone. Even Christian Grosch early in the 1800s, was torn building it will vanish, surrounded as it will be by into the concrete, thus achieving a distinctive Hannah Ryggen’s tapestries are more dreaming down to make room for the H- and the Y-blocks. massive o!!ice buildings of the same height as tactility. The art is not on the surface, it resides and utopian than polemical. The building is the The Trinity Church, which is one of Norway’s most the H-block. So that it will not disappear entirely, in the body of the building and invites you to touch message. monumental, was allowed to stand. But the Deichman additional stories are to be added to the building it. In order to realize this entirely untried type building steals space from the church and pushes that once towered over Oslo. It is not the !irst time of decoration, Viksjø engaged the artists Carl Viksjø’s Gesamtkunstwerk is about democracy it out onto a crossroads while at the same time that Viksjø’s masterpiece has been maltreated. Nesjar, Inger Sitter, Odd Tandberg, Tore Haaland, rooted in hard work and popular involvement, the the re!ined green surfaces of the Neoclassical The !irst storey of the H-block was walled in so Kai Fjell, Hannah Ryggen and Pablo Picasso. national in interaction with the international, and library make the pious red brick of the church that the building no longer hovered in the air. Without remuneration of any kind, the world- about technically sophisticated governance. The seem shoddy. The Y-block takes up all the space In 1990 two !loors were added. This meant the famous Picasso continued his collaboration with H- and Y-blocks do not pay homage to utopia over which the Deichman was meant to hover, disappearance of the organically sculptured top Nesjar and Viksjø until the Y-block was !inished and hardly even to progress; they are rather a and with its modernist forms creates a stark but storey with the famous elevator house and cabinet in 1969, and radically in!luenced the Government homage to the tools of progress – that is, to interesting contrast to the two older buildings. hall. The much-maligned box shape was something Quarter with his art. The veteran avant-gardist intelligent and rational governance. The H-block’s No, Norwegian nation building is not all harmony., the government building only took on as a result of and socialist must have been deeply fascinated screen-like facade is a compliment to the working successive rebuildings. The restoration after the by this vision of art in an indissoluble unity with methods of bureaucracy, to graph paper and !iling The Trinity Church and the Deichman are important terror attack might have provided an opportunity working life and architecture. The construction cabinets. In 1969, the H-block found its match in Oslo buildings. But they are not signi!icant buildings to restore the building to its original beauty and process began in 1956. Labourers and artists the Y-block, this too built in natural concrete and in the international context. There are neo-Gothic originality. Instead it was once again transformed worked side by side, !loor by !loor. Despite, or decorated by Nesjar and Picasso. The H-block’s churches and Neoclassical libraries in most major in a way which deprived it of character, reducing because of, the fact that the budget was modest !irm rectangle resonates with the low-rise o!!ice cities. Viksjø’s Government Quarter, on the other the monument to a plain high-rise. and the state thrifty, in 1958 the Norwegian building’s extended and elegant curves, forming hand, is unique. Only Oslo has this architecture Government could already move in. Everything an indissoluble unity. with this type of decoration. The two wounded giants still stand on Norway’s was thoroughly thought out. Government and Acropolis. They are ghost buildings within which state administration did not simply move into forgotten stories and dreams meander. If we are a new building. The whole interior was specially to learn from them, we must open them up by designed in the modern style: o!!ice chairs, chairs asking questions. The buildings were functional, for meetings, writing desks, meeting tables, door but they were also representative, created in handles, lamps and light !ittings. response to an apparently insoluble paradox: how does one create an enduring monument to an antimonumental culture? Never was the rhetoric of power so timid as in the Gerhardsen era. This was the generation that built a new society, rebuilding the country after the war. ‘Objectivity’ and ‘precision’ were the watchwords in a textbook for the philosophicum university entrance exam by the philosopher Arne Næss, which appeared in 1947 and which for thirty years marked the

Y"BLOKKA 58 59 KATJA HØST Katja Høst’s postcards with motifs from the In their shy monumentality, the H-and Y-blocks Erling Viksjø’s Government Quarter is a pure winter Does the Solberg state have a soul? Is the new Government Quarter comment on the ahistoricism recall a state that had a soul. The long rows landscape. Viksjø built Norwegian mountainsides, Government Quarter anything more than a of Norwegian cultural administration as manifested of identical o""ices express both equality and buildings made to function, shaped by the climate place where global capitalism can stop over? It in the treatment of Viksjø’s Government Quarter. individuality. In Gerhardsen’s Government Quarter and realities of the Northay. Katja Høst takes is di""icult to detect a clear identity in the project. They point to a lack of historical awareness in each bureaucrat and politician had an o""ice and photographs of buildings that are alive but may soon The highrises could house almost anything and be policies that have allowed the demolition of its size was "ixed almost independently of rank. die. She photographs the monument as process, as from anywhere. No mark of participation in the this major monument to Norwegian modernity, Some lines in Norwegian history and culture, which durée or duration in the sense of the philosopher nation as a democratic project can be detected. ironically ful"illing the terrorist’s intention. How are much older than Social Democracy, culminated Henri Bergson’s. This is architectural photography The green roofs fail to give the intended nod back can one permit the demolition of a unique cultural here: Lutheran modesty, a sense of duty and trust that highlights the irreversible, transformative to the turf roofs of National Romanticism –the monument that exempli"ies the scope of modern in the state as a problem-solver. When you sit force of time. shift in scale from hay barn to Government Quarter Norway’s history and experience so thoroughly? on the stairs, you can imagine that behind each is too absurd. Instead, the project’s disturbing Other countries celebrate their cultural heritage window a bureaucrat is working quietly away. During But with the data manipulations of Statsbygg and dimensions remind us of the source of funding, with postcards and postage stamps. Norway the lunch break, silence is broken by sandwich the competition winner Urbis, we take a "ictional which is the ‘Oil Fund’, and that this is Norway tears down its monumental buildings. Høst has paper rustling and low-voiced conversations about tiger leap out of time into an eternal early summer – nouveau-riche Norway. Membership of the eschewed the usual approaches to architectural speed skating records and long cross country ski in which the sun always shines on the Government Government Pension Fund (Global) is the new photography intended to aestheticize. Here we see hikes, and about weekends in wood cabins, the Quarter, where the lawns are green and the trees collective project. It is where we belong. no wide-angle shots, blue skies or bright colours. kind without electricity and running water, as are always in bloom. Apart from its unusually dense She takes us close to the gravel of the natural far as possible from the crowds. It will not be and massive structure, the project resembles a concrete and displays its tactility. The low-key, like this in the new Government Quarter. Today’s typical international o""ice complex. Five thousand documentary style of the photographs is in keeping bureaucrats have to take their place in open-plan work stations – corresponding to a whole small with the aesthetic that is documented. The same o""ices with cubicles and the odd meeting room, Norwegian town – are crammed into a block set goes for the "iling-cabinet-like presentation in and they will be organized and motivated in line in the tight street grid of central Oslo. Asat the postcard racks. with organizational doctrines imported from the former airport Fornebu, individual buildings have model nations of the market economy . been given unusual, digitally created forms that suggest a connection with a placeless digital culture Since Friedrich Hegel gave his lectures on aesthetics of knowledge. Gerhardsen’s Government Quarter in Berlin in the 1820s, we have known that art has a frank, transparent expression. Solberg’s and architecture express the historical life of Government Quarter, however, adheres to a digital mankind. They give enduring form and expression culture that masks functional ‘hardware’ with to the thinking, sensibility and political projects human-friendly ‘software’. The steely monsters are of the age. In the past year, the Norwegian covered with green turf, and in the photographic construction directorate Statsbygg has "illed simulations the largest o""ice buildings Norway both the mediasphere and the city space in Oslo has ever seen are placed in what appears to be with models and simulations of its planned new an inviting park milieu. But the green patches Government Quarter. How does the Solberg state are to serve as air vents for the thousands of wish to appear? What kind of power is unfolding bureaucrats inside and will be muddy and icy for here? What can we as citizens of the Norwegian much of the year. state learn about the order of which we are a part from studying these prospects?

Y#BLOKKA 60 61 KATJA HØST Katja Høst’s postcards with motifs from the In their shy monumentality, the H-and Y-blocks Erling Viksjø’s Government Quarter is a pure winter Does the Solberg state have a soul? Is the new Government Quarter comment on the ahistoricism recall a state that had a soul. The long rows landscape. Viksjø built Norwegian mountainsides, Government Quarter anything more than a of Norwegian cultural administration as manifested of identical o!!ices express both equality and buildings made to function, shaped by the climate place where global capitalism can stop over? It in the treatment of Viksjø’s Government Quarter. individuality. In Gerhardsen’s Government Quarter and realities of the Northay. Katja Høst takes is di!!icult to detect a clear identity in the project. They point to a lack of historical awareness in each bureaucrat and politician had an o!!ice and photographs of buildings that are alive but may soon The highrises could house almost anything and be policies that have allowed the demolition of its size was !ixed almost independently of rank. die. She photographs the monument as process, as from anywhere. No mark of participation in the this major monument to Norwegian modernity, Some lines in Norwegian history and culture, which durée or duration in the sense of the philosopher nation as a democratic project can be detected. ironically ful!illing the terrorist’s intention. How are much older than Social Democracy, culminated Henri Bergson’s. This is architectural photography The green roofs fail to give the intended nod back can one permit the demolition of a unique cultural here: Lutheran modesty, a sense of duty and trust that highlights the irreversible, transformative to the turf roofs of National Romanticism –the monument that exempli!ies the scope of modern in the state as a problem-solver. When you sit force of time. shift in scale from hay barn to Government Quarter Norway’s history and experience so thoroughly? on the stairs, you can imagine that behind each is too absurd. Instead, the project’s disturbing Other countries celebrate their cultural heritage window a bureaucrat is working quietly away. During But with the data manipulations of Statsbygg and dimensions remind us of the source of funding, with postcards and postage stamps. Norway the lunch break, silence is broken by sandwich the competition winner Urbis, we take a !ictional which is the ‘Oil Fund’, and that this is Norway tears down its monumental buildings. Høst has paper rustling and low-voiced conversations about tiger leap out of time into an eternal early summer – nouveau-riche Norway. Membership of the eschewed the usual approaches to architectural speed skating records and long cross country ski in which the sun always shines on the Government Government Pension Fund (Global) is the new photography intended to aestheticize. Here we see hikes, and about weekends in wood cabins, the Quarter, where the lawns are green and the trees collective project. It is where we belong. no wide-angle shots, blue skies or bright colours. kind without electricity and running water, as are always in bloom. Apart from its unusually dense She takes us close to the gravel of the natural far as possible from the crowds. It will not be and massive structure, the project resembles a concrete and displays its tactility. The low-key, like this in the new Government Quarter. Today’s typical international o!!ice complex. Five thousand documentary style of the photographs is in keeping bureaucrats have to take their place in open-plan work stations – corresponding to a whole small with the aesthetic that is documented. The same o!!ices with cubicles and the odd meeting room, Norwegian town – are crammed into a block set goes for the !iling-cabinet-like presentation in and they will be organized and motivated in line in the tight street grid of central Oslo. Asat the postcard racks. with organizational doctrines imported from the former airport Fornebu, individual buildings have model nations of the market economy . been given unusual, digitally created forms that suggest a connection with a placeless digital culture Since Friedrich Hegel gave his lectures on aesthetics of knowledge. Gerhardsen’s Government Quarter in Berlin in the 1820s, we have known that art has a frank, transparent expression. Solberg’s and architecture express the historical life of Government Quarter, however, adheres to a digital mankind. They give enduring form and expression culture that masks functional ‘hardware’ with to the thinking, sensibility and political projects human-friendly ‘software’. The steely monsters are of the age. In the past year, the Norwegian covered with green turf, and in the photographic construction directorate Statsbygg has !illed simulations the largest o!!ice buildings Norway both the mediasphere and the city space in Oslo has ever seen are placed in what appears to be with models and simulations of its planned new an inviting park milieu. But the green patches Government Quarter. How does the Solberg state are to serve as air vents for the thousands of wish to appear? What kind of power is unfolding bureaucrats inside and will be muddy and icy for here? What can we as citizens of the Norwegian much of the year. state learn about the order of which we are a part from studying these prospects?

Y"BLOKKA 60 61 KATJA HØST Y#BLOKKA 62 63 KATJA HØST Y!BLOKKA 62 63 KATJA HØST