A little piece of Norway Living Architecture’s Dune House by JarmundVigsnaes Architects.

review / Oliver Lowenstein /

The November light was fading fast the af- local vernacular and to its architects’ Nordic Oliver Lowenstein runs Fourth ternoon I visited Jarmund/Vigsnaes’ Dune roots. Door Review. House on the East Anglian coast. Arriving in the twilight gloaming I wondered, why A two-part story here? Still, aware that this stretch of Suffolk Dune House’s name is obvious, sitting as it coastline is well known as a genteel holiday- does, somewhat squatly, just over a metre ing region, the logic of Living Architecture into the low lying dunes of the beach; just in siting their first projects along this part of high enough for anyone inside to watch East Anglia looking out onto the North Sea the small waves cresting in from the North made a kind of sense. This coastline, with Sea. Though its Norwegian architects have towns such as Southwold, Walberswick and long been a familiar outfit at home, they Aldeburgh – where the composer Benjamin are rather an unknown quantity in Britain, Britten lived and where Snape Maltings arts an engagingly idiosyncratic choice for and music hub runs a very successful all the international dimension of the Living year round classical music programme – is Architecture project. JVA’s involvement also known as a holiday destination for the well means Dune House joins what must be a to do and professional classes. Thorpeness, very small number of Norwegian architec- the village where Dune House is located, is tural works completed on British soil. also known for a preponderance of shed- The house, which cost around £900 000, like brick houses, each done up with black essentially consists of two discrete parts: a clapboard facades. This village-like vernacu- wraparound, all glass curtain wall ground lar reaches its eccentric culmination in the floor and a dark timber top. Inside the “House in the Clouds” from 1923, a water glazed base is an open plan that includes tower converted into six-storey house with a kitchen area and a central hearth, sitting on two-storey pitched roof cottage sitting aloft the concrete slab; floor, walls and ceiling all like a birdhouse on top. Now Jarmund/ exposed as per the requirements of Nordic Vigsnæs (JVA) have added the Dune House, . Though JVA are fans of sixties upping the ante on this quirky mix. The British architects like James Stirling and the Dune House is a two-floor, two-part piece of Smithsons, I found it impossible to make strangeness, which breathes something of that connection here, even if this curtain the language of the place while, as is today’s wall ground floor could bring on thoughts architectural convention, abstracting it and of early Savoie-era Corbusier. The upper arriving at a building speaking both to this floor is both a second, essentially separate,

arkitektur N . 04/2011 1 Dune House is an extension of an existing row of Thorpeness houses.

“Dune House is a two-floor, two-part piece of it otherwise, through building designs as strangeness.” holiday homes. Most people’s experience of Modernist building, they point out, isn’t domestic, but rather of buildings for civic section, and the borderline where any con- or cultural purposes, so Living Architecture nection to sixties breaks down. (LA) is being promoted as a way to open The upstairs comprises four bedroom bays, up the experience of Modernist living from and the entire upper building is constructed the few to the many. Its moving spirit and from massive wood. The wood, spruce, adds public face is Alain de Botton, well known to the Scandinavian material sensibility. in Britain as a populariser of philosophy. Each room is irregular and attic-like – JVA’s In the architectural world he is known for original idea was for an open attic sleeping his book The Architecture of Happiness. space reached via ladder. Externally, the De Botton’s core architectural message is roofs spike up in confusing though ap- that beauty – a word architects will do much pealing geometries, deformed pyramidical to avoid – including the beauty of built points reaching into the sky, a version of environments, is significant in its influence JVA’s angular signature geometries, feeling on us. One way of understanding LA is as if they fold back on themselves, a bit that of a living architectural experiment; de like origami. The timber facade is painted Botton’s response to his frustration at the black, part Thorpeness, part Nordic, in a philosopher’s impotence to affect the real metallic pigment derived from the domestic world. These holiday homes put his beliefs manufacturing process that many Northern to the test. buildings still come coated in. I went away This mission is the latest round of a asking myself whether the house was a long-chewed over bone of contention within small bit of Norway on the Suffolk Coast. the UK architecture world: the claim that the British, for which read principally the Modernism for the people English, are not much interested in the Why this bit of domestic Norway is there, architectural domain. This apparent indif- relates to Living Architecture’s aims of ference to the built environment – generally providing something of the experience of contrasted to the architectural enthusiasm contemporary Modernist architecture for of mainland Europe – has been the source people – the majority – who would not get of much architectural hand-wringing and

2 arkitektur N . 04/2011 is seen as central to why so many poor and foreign architects who have not built buildings continue to be built, usually in this country, and to find architects very driven by profit return motives rather than suited to particular locations.” any longer term spatial, aesthetic or experiential concerns. Such questions Englishness have been on the political radar since the De Botton says that he and others were beginning of the Blair years, with Richard aware of JVA’s work, and their concern Rogers’ Urban Renaissance and a period of about “whether they would be right for the substantial public-private building linked site” dissolved when the design arrived. to regeneration across the public sectors; “It showed a particular understanding of hospitals, schools, cultural buildings. LA’s current attempt at introducing contem- porary architecture through the side door is “Focus on homes and “living” has led to not completely dissimilar to that of Charles criticisms – that these homes are for the well Jencks’ Maggies cancer health care centres, healed seeking status and style symbol though its focus on homes and “living” has led to criticisms – some quite virulently acid holidays.” – that these homes are for the well healed seeking status and style symbol holidays, rather than engaging in the wider housing the locality, the history of Thorpeness, the issues that Britain continues to face. That “Englishness” they would have to both some of the locations happen to be among challenge and respect.” De Botton acknow- the chosen relaxation spots of this country’s ledges that if there is one connecting thread upper social strata doesn’t do much to between all the LA buildings so far, it is that dispel this. of abstracting the local vernacular. “It is not a conscious intention, you‘re right to point A collection of buildings out the similarities, and this does suggest The first five Living Architecture buildings that there is a shared aesthetic among the are all situated on or near the English coast; group of individuals who make up LA. We three in fact clumped along the East An- all tend to respond well to abstracted verna- glian shoreline, with SuperDutch MVRDV’s cular. Not least, it makes sense to build this cantilevered single floor Balancing Barn way in the English countryside”, he writes. just a few miles south and inland of Dune Adding to this in a subsequent phone House, while further north, the doyen of conversation, Hakon Visgnaes, JVA partner contemporary British Modernism, Michael and the project architect for Dune House, Hopkins, is completing what’s described as underlines how the contextual challenge of a Long House. De Botton & Co have also another culture, landscape and language, managed a significant coup in persuading as well as memories of a childhood holiday Peter Zumthor on board for his first British staying in English bed and breakfasts, building, planned to open in Devon in were all influences on their approach. The 2012. Glasgow’s young NORD practice have attraction of JVA’s approach lies in part in built Shingle House on the South English its origins in the contextual modernism of coast. My initial impression was that the and the closeness of that mo- selection of the five different practices invol- dern tradition to the Norwegian nature. “It’s ved lacked cohesive rhyme or reason. JVA, very difficult to picture the English mind,” from a UK perspective, appeared particular- says Visgnaes, adding that they wouldn’t ly odd, the transfer of a specific Norwegian have built Dune House in their home mountain-inflected regionalist aesthetic, country. Meredith Bowles, director of Mole with its sharp, almost violent angularity mi- Architects, the local Cambridgshire practice xed with Scandinavian timber and concrete who delivered the project on the ground, materiality, was hard to envisage on the flat- recalls accompanying Visgnaes on his early lands of the Suffolk countryside. De Botton visits to both Thorpeness and to the beach notes the point in a brief email correspon- huts at Walberswick, another tourist haunt dence that “it must seem rather random”, a few miles south. Vigsnaes’s particular act before continuing that the five choices of abstraction, he suggests, has resulted in were consistent with LA’s threefold set of both a provocative and “surreal” building. primary goals: “highlighting new architects, Such language – the Financial Times headli-

arkitektur N . 04/2011 3 ned its recent full page Living Architecture sidered that the planet’s landscapes might done in other countries, including Norway, feature Seaside Surrealism – does push at become homogenized at the pace they have, is intriguing and widens horizons, as well the boundaries of current definitions of ab- so that, as Ingrid Rowland recently wrote, as providing interesting cultural signs. stracted vernacular, definitions which seem “… geography is set to disappear from A Norwegian house on the Suffolk coast, to equally accommodate the in-your-face the globe altogether, now that the world’s though, also speaks volumes about the provocations of MVRDV and Zumthor’s countryside threatens to morph into one distance we have traveled in our relation to atmospheric materialities, as well as JVA’s great, undifferentiated mall.”1 For those place, dislocation and displacement. It may possible surrealism. Indeed, if Dune House who feel uneasy about such a future, while well be the future. is to placed under the sign of the surreal, also uncomfortable about the traditional it is a surrealism which is distant in time and conservative dimensions of how place Oliver Lowenstein from that Breton, Dali and the Absolute. It can partially be rooted in national, regional is perhaps most acutely expressed in the and local social identities, there appears the

“Living is still entwined with homes and belonging. Importing examples of how it is done in other countries, including Norway, is intriguing and widens horizons.”

strange vertical juxtaposition of Dune Hou- challenge of uncovering an ecological ar- ses’ lower and upper halves; the horizonta- chitecture which comes from the grounding lity of the lower curtain walls affirming the of our human stories and roots in the biotic flatness of the surrounding landscape, the and geological, rather than the man-made gables seemingly dropping a mountainous and historical. Certainly, one take on Dune sensibility right on top. This said, there is House is the frame of regional/vernacular/ no reason why the vernacular cannot be abstraction which the building is a part of. turned to surrealist ends. Though only a part. That pieces of Norway – and Holland – can be constructed and lay- Global references – the end of regionalism? ered on the Suffolk shoreline suggests that With increased access to cheap travel, abstracting the vernacular and regional has abstracted vernacular has been turning to become so all embracing that this language sourcing the whole planet’s architectural veers on the redundant, and is in need of record, and the general digitalisation of linguistic and theoretical rethinking. design processes has resulted in an ar- Still, such architectural esoterica is pro- chitectural version of the endless hybridities bably irrelevant to those holidaying. Despite that are found across various disciplines, the emphasis on the fully immersive – from world music to international cuisine. rather than just a walk-through – experien- Some may say that architects’ collaging of ce, that part of Living Architecture which is parts and references is out of kilter with about living, and our lives, isn’t reducible to our increasingly globally accessible world, a seaside holiday. De Botton outlines in his and the availability of the entire planetary mail correspondence suggestive plans for architecture sourcebank at the click of a widening the brief, for houses with more button. This is underlined by influential specific functions in mind: for a writer, for arguments and practices (for instance, a divorced couple or for lovers, or a house look no further than HerzogDeMeuron or for calm. I couldn’t help wonder whether ) challenging architectural a break in a Living Architecture holiday languages borne out of even some con- home will really do that much to transform nection with the physicality of place. I can’t the fundamental conservatism the British help feel, however, that when architectural seem to have towards the environment they identities have been caught up – as in choose to live in. “A house is not a home” Norway’s case – with the more extreme sang Bob Dylan years back (reversing, influences of geography and climate, folk incidentally, Reyner Banham’s essay title might stop for a moment’s reflexion before from 1965 “A Home is not a House”), and throwing out the baby with the bathwater. living is still entwined with homes and Who, even a few years ago, would have con- belonging. Importing examples of how it is

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