Twentieth-century architecture in Norway is characterized by a search for a cultural, historical, and aesthetic identity, primarily as a result of the country's independence from the Swedish union in 1905. Thus, Norwegian architects at the turn of the 20th century sought more national traditions, as displayed in the other arts.
A Norwegian architect who tried to create a national architectural style at the beginning of the 20th century was Arnstein Arneberg. Arneberg joined forces with the Norwegian architect Magnus Poulsson in building farmers' houses that used gables and turfed roofs. Arneberg's house at Madserud Allé 38 (1924) is an example of this regional style, with its red exterior wood paneling and its half-hipped roof. Arneberg and Poulsson were educated in Sweden, a country also in quest of a national identity that could be represented in national architectural style. Arneberg returned to Norway from Sweden in 1906, with Poulsson arriving four years later. They went on to develop a postwar romantic style in townhouses as well as for large public buildings. Their design for the competition for the City Hall (Radhus) in Christiania (Oslo) in 1915-17 was a culmination of this idea. However, it was not built until 1930, and thus, new ideas were included in the final design.
However, after World War I, the works of Arneberg and Poulsson would be criticized for their "Norwegian-ness" and their superficial ornamentation. A rejection of historical styles and monumentality ensued. Although not created as such, these older styles were thought of as expressions of power and repression. Classicism, with its emphasis on universal architectural forms, came to the forefront at this time. Architects attempted to create an objective architecture that would replace Norwegian architects' preoccupation with national romanticism. Many of these architects had been trained at the new Norwegian Institute of Technology, which had opened in 1910, with its first graduates in 1914.
Gudolf Blakstad and Dunker's winning neoclassical project for the New Theatre in Oslo (1919), which displayed an ordered plan and exterior symmetry, was the first to be shown in the new periodical Beggekunst, which was first published that same year. Following this competition, neoclassicism's major proponent, Herman Munthe-Kaas, would herald this new style in the same journal. A large portion of buildings from 1920 to 1925 appeared in this new, restrained classical style. During this time, Blakstad and Munthe-Kaas won the competition and had built the new city hall in Haugesund (1924-31), also based on neo-classical principles.
Two of Norway's leading exponents of national romanticism, Arneberg, and Poulsson, tried to adapt to Neoclassicism, but without complete success. In 1924 and 1925, the Norwegian painters Henrik Sorensen and Erik Werenskiold began to attack neoclassicism in architecture as being foreign. There was to be no middle ground reached between the two schools of national romanticism and classicism; instead, architects turned toward modern functionalism.
Modern architecture flourished in Norway between the world wars, especially during the 1930s, with some Norwegian architects becoming concerned with creating an international architecture based on global sameness. Such formal expressions as white building volumes, flat roofs, strip windows, free plan, and minimal detailing made their way into the language of Norwegian architecture.
Le Corbusier's Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau was praised in 1925 by Edvard Heiberg as a new form created from a functional aesthetic. Lars Backer adopted the new architecture of functionalism, declaring it to be the new objective architecture in which form follows function. In 1927, Johan Ellefsen, in an article entitled "What is Modern Architecture?" claimed that functionalism creates forms that contain both national and local characteristics. He rejected any use of historical styles and advocated, in the manner of Le Corbusier, the consideration of landscape, climate, materials, and construction.
Backer's first project, the Skansen Restaurant in Oslo (1927), was the first modernist building in Norway. Here he introduced the continuous window band, the flat roof, clear skeleton construction, free plan, and continuous glass sections. An amalgamation of other architectural precedents, such as the work of Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the German expressionist architect Erich Mendelsohn. Backer's restaurant also contains horizontal and vertical elements of De Stijl architecture.
Ideas on modern architecture also entered the Norwegian architectural discipline through a study tour to Holland in 1928 and also through a 1930 manifesto of Nordic functionalism. This manifesto was written in conjunction with the 1930 Stockholm exhibition displaying architecture and utilitarian objects. This exhibition, with Gunnar Asplund as the featured architect, influenced many Norwegian as well as Swedish architects. Munthe-Kaas, the Norwegian architect, became the Norwegian delegate to the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and had direct contact with international ideas on architecture. In 1932, he made a study tour of ten European countries and reported his findings in Byggekwat in the following year.
Ove Bang, who opened his architectural practice in Oslo in 1930, also helped lay the foundation for modern architecture in Norway. His Villa Didev-Simonsen (1937) and the worker's association (Samfunnshuset) in Oslo (1939) combine modernist structure with the traditional material of wood. This Norwegian interpretation of modernism contained architectural elements with a sense for nature and humanism that would be further incorporated in Norwegian architecture during the postwar years.
After World War II, the architectural historian Siegfried Giedion brought to the forefront the need for a modernist architecture that considered the local essence of place, often cited as the new regionalism. According to Giedion, Alvar Aalto's work exemplified such an architectural language. Many Norwegian architects, including Knut Knutsen, responded to Aalto's organic functionalism. Knutsen, like other Norwegian architects after World War II, attacked international modernist architecture, claiming that it threatened Norwegian identity. Knutsen's approach is exemplified in his design of the Porter house (1948), in which he abandons modernist rectilinearity for the organic shape of the landscape that, in turn, influences the house's plan.
In contrast to Knutsen, Are Korsmo, an early proponent of functionalism, emerged as the leading proponent of International Style architecture during this time. In 1949, he traveled to the United States to study the works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and other modernists. Korsmo became fascinated with Gropius's teaching methods, and he introduced these to Norway at the Arts and Crafts school in Oslo. His own house in Oslo (1952-55) with free plan and modernist structure combines the saturated colors of traditional Norwegian farm interiors. Korsmo's architecture did not bring nature into a more regional articulation of elements, as in Knutsen's work, which gained wider acceptance in Norway.
Korsmo became inspired by
Gropius's ideas of solving tasks by collaboration and led to the founding of the Norwegian group within CIAM named PAGON (Progressive Architects' Group Oslo Norway). Members included Korsmo, Sverre Fehn, Geir Grung, Odd Ostbye, P.A.M. Melbye, Hakon Mjelva, Robert Esdaile, and Christian Norberg-Schulz. This group took part in numerous architectural competitions during the 1950s.
The dissolution of CIAM in 1956 triggered the beginning of the crisis in modern architecture. The free plan of modern architecture used in an urban context brought an end to traditional urban spaces such as the street and the square, with the result of a loss of place. This loss of place created by late modernism was also discussed in Kevin Lynch's book, The Image of the City (1960). To counteract this sense of loss, Norwegian architects began to create a strong identity in the building itself through expressionistic experiments. Eero Saarinen's TWA air terminal in New York (1962) and his United States Embassy in Oslo (1955-59) emphasized sculptural quality in architecture. Both buildings reflect the expressionistic tendencies that soon would develop in Norwegian architecture.
Expressionistic experiments in Norwegian architecture continued, but other architects still developed ideas that followed Knutsen's organic functionalism and Korsmo's modern idiom. Eliassen and Lambertz-Nilssen carried Knutsen's ideas further, as seen in their Aust-Agder Central Hospital (Arendal) and Telemark Central Hospital (Skien), and in the 1970s with Sandefjord's Civic Center (1969-75). Korsmo's student Fehn carried his ideas into a regional and individualized architecture, as did Kjell Lund and Nils Slaatto.
One of Fehn's earlier works, the Norwegian Pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958, shows the use of the structural clarity of Mies van der Rohe along with the use of traditional Norwegian materials. In his Archbishopric Museum in Hamar (1979), Fehn inserts modernist form into the ruins of the medieval bishop's quarters. In this project, he combines wood and concrete with an interest in the tectonic. His Glacier Museum in Fierland (1991) also displays the same qualities and translates the local landscape into the architectural design and form. Fehn has become a major influence in Norwegian architecture with his incorporation of the ideas introduced by Korsmo concerning the poetry of architecture and using past architectural forms within a modernist language.
Significant shifts in Postmodernism also appeared in Norwegian architecture, often filtered through the writings of American architect Robert Venturi, who promoted an architecture that reflected the complexity of life by incorporating memories of identity and historic architectural forms in a new context. Architect Jan Digerud, who was educated in the United States, brought Venturi's ideas to Norway in an article in Byggekunst titled "An Inclusive Architecture." Digerud eventually joined with Jon Lundberg to create the firm Jan and Jon; they designed five one-family houses as well as a cottage near Risør, illustrating these Postmodern tendencies.
Venturi's and Louis Kahn's ideas also inspired Are Telje, Fredrik S. Torp, Knut Aasen, Arne Henriksen, Harald Hille, Thomas Thiis-Evensen, and the group 4B. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Postmodernist architecture developed alongside works produced by Korsmo's and Knutsen's followers.
Most recently, during the 1990s, Norwegian architects began to develop a sense of place within building practices by integrating ideas of sustainability and tectonics. One work that is a response to climate is Jarmund's and Vignes's Offices for the Governor of Svalbard (1997-98). Svalbard, located in the Arctic, has severe winters with little light, harsh winds, and large amounts of snowfall. The west face of the building resembles the windbreakers seen across the mountainous roads of Norway, which provide protection from harsh winds, indicative of the winter climate. Jarmund and Vignas apply tectonics in a metaphorical and functional manner, giving a sense of place to the building. Bjerk's and Borge's Samelandssenteret (Sami Center, 1998-2000) in Karasjok, the Norwegian capital of the Sami people, also responds to the harsh environment and cultural identity of northern Norway. The center, used for cultural, commercial, and political activity, combines, to a certain extent, symbols of Sami culture. One of the structures is reminiscent of the traditional dwellings of the Sami and uses exposed timber, and a few window frames use the national colors of red, yellow, and blue.
Sustainable design is beginning to infiltrate the Norwegian landscape. In the Steiner School in Stavanger, designed by Arbeidsgruppen HUS, there is a focus on healthy materials. The architects used low-emission materials. They have also treated the wood with traditional beeswax lacquers. With a predominantly cold and wet climate, this building has walls that breathe to avoid condensation. The wall comprises an outer permeable layer of buckskin, a cavity, cladding of timber or board, then insulation and plasterboard as the inner finish.
REBECCA DALVESCO
Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2 (G-O). Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005. |
