Norway: 80 years of modernism evident in the early post war period. Viksjø Two of the most infl uential post war archi- was faithful towards the teachings of Le tects in Norway have been Kjell Lund (b. 1927) Ulf Grønvold Corbusier, but with the aid of his invention, and Nils Slaatto (1923-2001). They set up their «natural concrete», a construction method in practice together in 1958. They had a huge which façades were livened up with exposed production of high quality. Only Sverre Fehn 1930 is Year Zero in Modern Scandinavian river gravel, the stern concrete of modernism has won more prices than them. Architecture. The famous Stockholm Exhibi- was refi ned into «stone architecture» and In the 1960s, Lund & Slaatto7 designed tion that year, with Gunnar Asplund as its Norwegian nature appeared on walls after they compact buildings that often took on cubic or main architect, introduced a new world to a were sandblasted. pyramidal shape. In the 1970s, they developed broad mass audience. The white buildings This was a golden compromise that many a structuralistic mode of operation that was along shores of Djurgårdsbrunnsviken con- found appealing. Among them were Christian redeveloped in the 1980s to accommodate vinced the general public that this future was Norberg-Schulz and PAGON (Progressive new assignments and urban environments. a very desirable world. After that, Modernism, Architects Group Oslo Norway), which in They have been instrumental in renewing or Functionalism as it was called, was the the 1950s represented a more unadulter- Norwegian wood architecture and their church dominant building style in the Nordic countries. ated form of modernism. At the same time as architecture are highly appreciated, especially 1930 is also the year that Lars Backer died. Erling Viksjø was constructing the Executive St. Hallvard (1966), a Franciscan monastery Like Moses he got a glimpse of the Promised Government Building, Sverre Fehn, the artistic in Oslo. This cubical brick building has a Land. Backer was the pioneer of modern archi- luminary of the group, was designing even cylinder shaped church room in the middle tecture in Norway. His restaurant Skansen in more audacious buildings such as Økern and a hanging dome. It is considered one of 1 Oslo open in 1927 and he managed to erect Nursing Home (1955) and Norway’s Pavilion the masterpieces of 20th Century architecture two more buildings in the new style and write at the Brussels World’s Fair (1958). These in Norway. 2 a manifesto before his untimely death at the were harbingers of things to come. Sverre Fehn age of 38 years. Korsmo and Knutsen When Sverre Fehn8 (1924-2009) received The 1930s was a very good period in Nor- The Norwegian parallel to the 1930 Stock- the Pritzker Price in 1997, the fi rst Scandi- wegian architecture. Ove Bang, Blakstad & holm Exhibition was the “Vi kan” (We can) navian to do so, it was in a way his second Munthe-Kaas, Bjercke & Eliassen in Oslo and exhibition in Oslo in 1938. The two main ar- international breakthrough. At the early ago Leif Grung and Per Grieg in Bergen producing chitects for the exhibition were Arne Korsmo4 of 34 his Norwegian pavilion at the Brussels 102 building of the fi rst order, but none of them (1903-69) and Knut Knutsen5 (1900-68). EXPO in 1958 gave him international respect. became international stars like the Finn Alvar They were both young, promising modernist The square site was walled in on 3 sides with Aalto, the Dane Arne Jacobsen or the Swede architects in the 1930s, but after WWII they hammered concrete elements. On the 4th side Gunnar Asplund. went separate ways. They came to epitomize it opened up with broad stairs towards the The end of the Second World War in 1945 two alternative tendencies: An internationally road. Laminated beams, 37 m long, 1 m high saw the return of pragmatism and common focused architecture and an architecture that and only 15 cm thick, stretched from one party sense. In the patriarchal Social democracy of was locally rooted. Korsmo was well known in wall to the other. It carried a fl at roof covered on the period the emphases was on «building the CIAM and internationally very well connected. both sides with plastic sheets that let sunlight country» after the destruction of the War, and He became the fatherfi gur for the young archi- through during day while electric light made there was little room for youthful utopianism. tects in the PAGON group and design houses it into a shining slab during night. Big sliding 3 According to Christian Norberg-Schulz “the inspired by Charles Eames. doors and straight walls guiding the visitors, war destroyed belief in newness”. After the Knutsen was close to vernacular architecture created a succession of spaces that made the war, many of the interwar period’s eminent and wrote very early pre ecological statements. pavilion a refi ned exhibition space. pioneers were gone. Lars Backer died in 1930, He designed buildings that were anti-monu- His Nordic pavilion at the Biennale Park Ove Bang in 1942, and Frithjof Reppen (1893- mental. His Norwegian Embassy in Stockholm in Venice consists of one big room, 446 m2 1945) was shot in Vienna during a transport (1950) is rhythmic division of volumes, and his without columns. There is a retaining wall on of German-held prisoners. In addition, several own summer cottage at Portør (1949) has a two sides against the raising terrain while the other leading modernists had changed course. topological shape making it nearly invisible. two other sides open towards the park with big For the young architects who graduated just Both Korsmo and Knutsen became professors sliding glass doors. In the middle of the room after WWII, it must have seemed that their and had many followers. The most important are some trees. As the only vertical elements «father generation», those who had been ac- Knutsen-inspired architects may be Wenche they move through the dense web of 3 layers tive before the war, had retired from the front Selmer (1920-1998). Her wooden houses and of concrete beams where sunlight is refl ected lines of the trade. cabins scattered along the picturesque coast of downwards creating a diffuse mystic light. But of course Modernism was not totally Southern Norway blend in with the landscape. Modernism pursues clarity and daring sim- dead. Erling Viksjø (1910-71) designed both Her sensitive architecture escapes fashion. It plicity. Fehn’s Nordic pavilion manages to give for big industry and for the public authorities. is interesting that she lately has received more this minimalistic architecture a special magic He, more than any, would international attention.6 atmosphere. shape the modern Norway that became Lund & Slaatto Fehn’s other major work from the 1960s the Hedmark Museum at Hamar, Norway. In this and originality in their work. Carl-Viggo Hølme- the super group. building he leaves pure modernism and cre- bakk concentrates at great depth on refi ning Public ambitions and new talents ates his own personal architectural universe. his few but very sensitive buildings. In 1992, Åse Kleveland, the minister of Meeting a complex situation and a rich his- The master and the supergroup Culture published a paper called Kultur i tiden torical material, he developed a building that, In 1989 a very small Norwegian practice of (Culture in our time) where there, for the fi rst together with Castelvecchio in Verona by Carlo young architects named Snøhetta (meaning time in Norway, was a separate chapter de- Scarpa, has become a lesson in how new Snow cap, the name of a mountain top in cen- voted to architecture. This can be seen as a architecture converse with the remains of the tral Norway) won the prestigious competition fi rst seed for a Norwegian architectural policy. past. The museum is inside a big, U-shaped (650 entries) for the new library in Alexandria, The Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, two barn. The middle part exposes the remains of Egypt. The importance of the competition had years later, also had an ambitious architectural a bishop-palace from the Middle Ages, another of cause to do with the mythical status of the profi le. Then in 2009 the government issued a wing contains a local historical exhibition. Fehn ancient library in Alexandria that tried to gather proper architectural policy paper. We will have has said that “only by manifesting the present all knowledge in the world and is considered to wait and see what the effect will be. The one can we converse with the past”. This has been the mother of all libraries. The old library thing that the state has done that undoubtedly his main idea when he created the museum at burnt down 1600 years ago, and everyone has bee very positive, is the project for National Hamar. The visitors move on bridges over the understood that the new library had to have a Tourist Routes12. It is a program for upgrad- archaeological excavations as on a Persian design that invoked the greatness of the myth. ing 18 scenic roads with look-out platforms, carpet over the exposed historical layers. Snøhetta11 had won no competition in Nor- benches and toilet facilities. All the jobs have Team 3 way and had built nearly nothing before the been given to promising, young architects In 1975 Arne Henriksen9 (b. 1944) got a Alexandria library, so this was a classical fairy and the results have been spectacular: poetic job at the State Railway Architects Offi ce. tale story. When the building open in 2002, it structures in dramatic landscape situations. At the time he was a left wing Marxist who was recognized as a masterpiece. One of the It is fair to say that at the moment Nor- saw railway buildings as a public architecture partners, Craig Dykers, described it as “grand way has plenty of talented architects that was potential meaningful for the general but not simple”, and that is correct. It is a tilted (Jarmund+Vigsnæs, Lund Hagem, Helen & public. In the 1980s he designed stations and cylinder cut at an angle and facing North. The Hard13, 3RW, Kristin Jarmund14, Knut Hjeltnes, other railway buildings inspired by Aldo Rossi outer skin is a stone wall with letters and signs Haga & Grov, Reiulf Ramstad, 70˚N Arkitektur, and Louis Kahn and received several Brunel from all over the world cut into the granite. The Space Group, Code and a-lab, to mention the Awards. He was recognised as the great semicircular reading room has a diameter of most obvious ones). It is also positive that Ste- 103 renewer of Norwegian railway architecture. 160m and is divided into 7 terraces. ven Holl has just fi nished the Hamsun Centre Two young architects came to work with him, In 2008 the new building for the National in Hamarøy, and that leading international Jan Olav Jensen10 (b. 1959) and Carl-Viggo Opera and Ballet opened in Oslo. It is posi- architects like Renzo Piano, Peter Zumthor Hølmebakk (b. 1958). Because of them, Arne tioned in the harbour and has a sloping marble and Juan Herros are building new museums in Henriksen got fi rst hand knowledge of their plain making it possible to walk on top of the Norway now. This has to do with the fact that master, Sverre Fehn, and he started to explore building. It is a great public space that is in- in this period of international fi nancial crisis, the use of expressive wooden constructions tensively used by the population. the Norwegian economy is good and building in his stations: Sandvika (1994), Slependen The last 20 years that has seen the raise activity high. So after 80 years with Modern (1993), Lillestrøm (1998) and Eidsvoll (1998). of Snøhetta, has also been a golden fi nal architecture in Norway one may say that it Jensen and Hølmebakk, two of the most for Sverre Fehn. In 1997, two year before has been a period of growth and that there talented Norwegian architects of their gen- Snøhetta won in Alexandria, Fehn got the are promising signs on the horizon. eration, have remained close friends with the Pritzker Prize in the Guggenheim Museum in older Henriksen and the three (Team 3) has Bilbao, just before it was fi nished. In the same joined up for several competitions. They won year there was a magnifi cent exhibition of his in Trondheim where half a city block had been work in Basilika Palladiana in Vicenza and destroyed by fi re. Their winning project result- he got the Heinrich Tessenow gold medal in ed in a mixed-use building divided into three Dresden. At the end of his career he designed parts refl ecting the shape of the old buildings, a string of museum, The Glacier Museum but with exposed massive wood structure. (1991) in Fjærland, The Aukrust Centre (1996) Jan Olav Jensen was noticed already as a in Alvdal, The Ivar Aasen Centre (2000) in Ulf Grønvold (b. 1947) is architect, editor student when he a fellow student Per Christian Volda plus Preus Photographical Museum Byggekunst 1983-93, director The Norwegian Brynhildsen designed a leper hospital in Lasur (2001). At the very end two more buildings: Museum of Architecture from 1993 and head in India in 1984. The structure was awarded Gyldendal publishing house (2007) and the of the Architecture Section 2003-2010 at The the Aga Kahn Award for Architecture. Jensen Architectural Museum in March 2008, just two National Museum of Art, Architecture and De- and his partner Børre Skodvin have received months before the Opera open in Oslo. It was sign, now project manager for the new building several prizes for Mortensrud church (2002) as if the torch passed from one generation to for the National Museum. Has written or edited in Oslo. They have shown great inventiveness the other, from the single master architect to 25 books on Norwegian architecture. Notes: Denmark: Tradition and Modernity on signifi cant in formulating the modern project in 1. This was not the fi rst modernist building in the interface between the 19th and 20th a Danish context. This was mainly due to the Scandinavia, as many believe. Edward Hei- century in Danish Architecture infl uence of two great Danish personalities: C. berg completed his own house in Denmark F. Hansen (1756-1845) and M.G. Bindesbøll in 1924. Peter Thule (1800-56). To use a term coined by Danish 2. Lars Backer published the article «Vor architect Kay Fisker (1893-1965) the formal holdningsløse arkitektur» [Our spineless principles of 20th century Danish architecture architecture] The Nordic countries are somewhat of a can be almost entirely described through the in the Norwegian journal Byggekunst in 1925. paradox: On one hand they came quite late to architecture of Bindesbøll and Hansen. In the One of its key points was, «We want to create industrialization; they are sparsely populated following I shall explain how the key principles th an architecture that’s in contact with con- and located on the periphery of Europe. Hence of 20 century Danish architecture may be temporary times, natural for the construction th -historically speaking- the Nordic countries traced back to the 19 century. materials we use.» Lars Backer mentioned can be considered provincial and fairly rural. Bindesbøll’s Legacy: The Crystalline Tessenow, Poelzig, Garnier and Le Corbusier Nor were they -with the possible exception of Cluster and the Danish House as his inspirational sources. th Sweden- part of the industrial avant garde with During the 20 century Danish architecture 3. Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926-2000), nations like Britain and Germany. On the other saw the construction of a range of projects Norwegian architectural historian and theo- hand the Nordic countries are characterized characterized by a combination of pitched retician of international importance. Among by a series of other conditions normally as- roofs and simple architectonic volumes. Fre- his books: Intentions in Architecture (1965), sociated with modernity. According to World quently built from yellow brick, these buildings Meaning in Western Architecture (1974), Value Studies the Nordic countries score have an almost prismatic or crystalline expres- Genus Loci (1960). highly on parameters like secularization and sion where traditional architectural features 4. Norberg-Schulz, Christian, The functionalist self-expression compared with most other like gabled roofs and brick walls suddenly Arne Korsmo, Oslo 1986 countries worldwide.1 appear abstract and unconventional. One of 5. Dahle, Einar, Bengt Espen Knutsen, Oslo the earliest examples of such a formal principle 2009. The book main subject is the son of In architecture ”the Modern Project” appears to have become manifest through the creation dates back to the mid-19th century where Knut Knutsen, but a big part of the book deals Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll, the architect with the father. of the welfare state. In this process political es- tablishments allied themselves with the artistic behind the famous Thorvaldsen Museum in 104 6. Tostrup, Elisabeth, Norwegian Wood. The Copenhagen, designed a mental hospital at Thoughtful Architecture of Wenche Selmer. and architectural elite throughout most of the th Oringe. The hospital buildings are designed New York 2006 20 century. Thus a progressive elite culture was diffused through large segments of the with simple yellow-brick walls and gabled red 7. Grønvold, Ulf, Lund & Slaatto, Oslo 1988 tile roofs. The gabled roofs gradually step 8. Norberg-Schulz, Christian and Postiglione, population through social housing projects and extensive institutional projects designed up towards the main building whose corners Gennaro, Sverre Fehn, New York are anchored by grey buttresses. The entire Fjeld, Per Olaf, Sverre Fehn. The Pattern of by the best architects of the time. During this period the political establishment was open composition is reminiscent of an organic or Thoughts. New York 2009 crystalline form with the same fi gure repeating 9. Grønvold, Ulf, Arne Henriksen. Oslo 2010 to experiments as long as they were at the disposal of the populace. within a given pattern. 10. Jensen & Skodvin Architects. Oslo 2007 Projects like Oringe were instrumental in 11. Snøhetta (ed), Snøhetta. Works, Baden, Another aspect of this history of the perva- siveness of modern architecture in the Nordic making Bindesbøll a signifi cant source of inspi- Switzerland 2009 ration for Danish 20th century architects who 12. A+U 469 countries lies in the fact that it can be consid- were generally critical of historicism. Like Kay 13. A+U 211 ered the natural development of an already Fisker they were preoccupied with Bindesbøll’s 14. Frampton, Kenneth and Sand, Bente, existant building culture rather than a distinct break with the past: The fi rst generation of Nor- use of simple techniques to create a sober yet Kristin Jarmund, Oslo 2008 2 dic functionalists were schooled in the tradition artistically valuable architecture. It was felt by of either Classicism or Arts and Crafts. This many that Bindesbøll’s work foreshadowed meant that many of the properties of these functionalism in Denmark. movements were subtly carried over into their The general formal principles of Oringe formulation of the modern functionalist project. resurfaced in 20th century Danish architec- The works of the Nordic Modern movement ture with P. V. Jensen Klint’s (1853-1930) may have resembled that architecture on which unrealized yet epochal 1907 monument the it was modelled, but it was strongly infl uenced Crystalline Cluster. Like Oringe 50 years by older traditions and hence perhaps less earlier, Klint’s monument features a hierarchic determined to be avantgarde than for instance composition culminating at the centre and the German Neues Bauen movement. dominated by the fi gure of the pitched roof. 19th century architecture was particularly Unlike Oringe however, Klint introduces a dual centre and the gabled roofs are partially