Sverre Fehn began his career after graduating from the Oslo School of Architecture in 1949. He is one of a number of post-World War II Norwegian architects who believed in bestowing universal modernism with both regional and site-specific values, espousing an architecture that, while always rational, recognized local crafts and culture, mythology, and folklore. His concerns with the topography of the site, climate, local identity, and tectonics are central to issues of both regionalism and phenomenology in architecture.
In 1950, Fehn joined the Progressive Architect’s Group of Oslo, Norway (PAGON), a division of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), along with his former teacher Arne Korsmo, architectural theorist Christian NorbergSchulz, and design collaborators Grung and Ostbye, among others. CIAM was a network concerned with how ideas of modern architecture and town planning were communicated internationally. Although CIAM had no direct influence on his own work, he would have been acquainted with many leading contemporary architects and artists through his association with the Congress.
Between 1952 and 1953, on the advice of Jørn Utzon, Fehn made a journey to study the so-called primitive architecture of Morocco. This journey was seminal to his recognition of eternal themes in architecture, values that existed long before being embraced by the functionalist doctrine of modernist theory. Fehn remarked on the mutual harmony between the structure of natural and man-made place and the relationship between the ground and constructed form, as well as the clarity, simplicity, and common sense of regional architecture regarding systems of environmental control, planning, and construction and how these systems characterized rituals of habitation. It was a journey of recognition rather than discovery that helped Fehn see clearly the character of his native Norway as well as the qualities in the works of earlier modernist masters, such as Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
The poetic modernism of Fehn’s architecture derives from a unified and formal relationship between the site and the physical and psychological dimensions of the program and of the people who inhabit his buildings—reduced to a conceptual clarity and expressed through material construction. He describes architecture as a necessary interference with nature, in opposition to it yet also revealing the character of the landscape. His buildings articulate a relationship between earth, sky, and horizon, a recurring theme that is developed through his writings and drawings.
Fehn’s buildings are generally constructed of concrete or brick and wood used in a modern rather than traditional way: mass construction to anchor the building to the ground and timber construction to articulate openings in walls or the connection between roof and wall. His timber detailing is reminiscent of the traditions of Nordic boat building and of Japanese architecture. Modular repetition and geometric configuration of structure give spatial definition to both interior volume and exterior surface. The ground plane of his interiors often relates to the natural topography of the site and to external views.
The works of Fehn date back to 1949, when he, with G. Grung, won an international competition for the design of the Craft Museum at Lillehammer. The winning project was never built. Subsequent works and projects typically have been for houses and museums but also include designs for religious, community, education, and recreational buildings.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s Fehn’s designs for the Norwegian Pavilion at the Universal Exposition in Brussels (1958), now demolished, and his Pavilion of the Nordic Nations in the Gardens of the Biennale (1962) in Venice, Italy, garnered recognition. Both buildings employed Miesian qualities of a regular grid with a free plan and featured roofs that masterfully controlled the natural light within the exhibition spaces. The Schreiner House (1963) in Oslo, named “Hommage au Japon” by Fehn for its references to spatial relationships and construction in Japanese architecture, consisted of a structural timber fame around a brick central service core—a device developed from his time in the 1950s with Jean Prouvé, an architect noted for his industrialized fabrication and servicing systems. Planning and volumetric geometry developed with the designs of the houses for Arne Bodtker (1965) and his brother Carl (1967, extension 1985).
The masterpiece of his work in the late 1960s and 1970s, however, is the Archbishopric Museum (1979) in Hamar. The site is a ruined medieval fort over which a 19th-century U-shaped barn was built. Space, light, time, and the programmatic requirements of the museum are brought together by a series of concrete ramps and walkways that pass through the barn structure, hover over the medieval excavations, and lead into the courtyard. Parallels with this project can be made to the Castelvecchio Museum by Carlo Scarpa, whom Fehn met while working on the Pavilion of the Nordic Nations in Venice. Fehn’s ability to develop a clear dialogue among client, site, structure, and form is further exemplified by the Villa Busk (1990) in Bamble. A rocky outcrop chosen by Fehn dictates the physical dimensions and orientation of the house, the linear form of which is broken by a cross axis from the entrance of the main house to a timber tower that in turn provides visual and physical links to the fjord. As with the Hamar museum, a modulated timber structure distinguishes between roof and wall and allows for views out and light in. Fehn’s approach set out in Villa Busk is continued in different contexts with the Glacier Museum (1991) in Fjærland and the Aukrust Museum (1996) in Alvdal.
Much of Fehn’s work has been in suburban or rural locations, some inaccessible for long periods because of the harsh winter climate. Certain competition projects, notably his design for the Royal Theatre of Copenhagen in Denmark, confirm his capability for both large and urban projects.
RICHARD G.DARGAVEL |
