Civilisation in the North.

Norway could scarcely be said to have ever been in the forefront of architectural fashion nor to have generated a school of its own. But there is much to learn about the nature of materials and the relationships of buildings to context and to society by studying the architecture of one of the world's most northerly countries.

This issue paints a false picture of Norwegian architecture, for with the exception of Niels Torp's Christianiaqvartal (p70), there is no urban work. Yet Oslo (and to a lesser extent some of the other Norwegian cities) is a model of what a town should be. Along its main street, Karl Johans gate,(1) all the main institutions of civilised life are laid out, from the Neo-Classical palace in the west to the Rundbogenstil parliament building in the east. Between the two are the National Theatre (ripe Biedermeier Classicism) the University (by Schinkel),(2) the finest nineteenth-century shops and hotel.(3) Down a cross street to the south can be glimpsed the Town Hall, a late and rather stripped example of National Romanticism in brick with granite embellishments;(4) it looks down the harbour at the end of Oslo fjord in celebration of the nation's relationship to the sea. Further to the east along the Karl Johan axis is the market square with the cathedral and great traditional department store; down the hill towards the main railway station is the seventeenth-century gridded part of the city with the business quarter and the national bank.(5)

This humanist and rational model of civilised life is precise and elegant, but perhaps no more so than that of any other early predominantly nineteenth-century capital, Helsinki, say, or Edinburgh. But in complete contrast to the latter city, fine new architecture continues to be built. The city's architects have not been overwhelmed by the past, but on the whole(6) add to it creatively and with sympathy.

Their contributions are wide ranging. At one end of the spectrum is the gentle rigour of Lund & Slaatto's Verdens Gang corner (AR June 1995, p46) which drops into the dense fabric north of Karl Johan with grace but without any sense of having to ape the past (the contrast with Edinburgh is excruciating, see for instance AR July 1996, p23). At the other end of the scale is Aker Brygge (AR August 1990), one of the finest inner-city developments built anywhere in this century. It has been created on the site of an old shipbuilding yard at the head of the fjord, just to the west of the Town Hall opposite the Akershus (the castle round which the city grew up). Masterplanned by Niels Torp, Aker Brygge contains the essential ingredients of proper city life: dwelling, work, leisure, mixed in intimate contact in a structure that evokes all the tropes of traditional urban space ranging from the square to the alley. It can be faulted on stylistic grounds,(7) but it works at every human level and creatively connects with the beautiful armature of the nineteenth-century city.

The precise and humane quality of Oslo has precedent in some of the rural architecture, particularly in the farms of central Norway,(8) which intimately relate to the landscapes in which they are set, while making built paradigms of dignified human life lived in close contact with nature. From such precedents is derived the Norwegian love of the individual building set in more-or-less wild landscape that most of the work shown in this issue exemplifies. These re-analyses of the relationship of humanity to nature are immensely important for the rest of the developed world, and Norway (which has the lowest population density in Europe) is an appropriate test-bed for such experiments.

But the Norwegian affinity for the countryside has a much more unhappy aspect. Judged on a per capita measure, Norway is one of the richest countries in the world because of its oil wealth. And sometimes it looks like it. When you fly into any of the country's airports, the chief impression is of California transported to the north. There is the same prodigality with land: the suburbs explode into the wilderness like super-charged fungi; the forests are tamed; the fells and rivers made into ornamental backdrops to suburban life. This is disgusting, and will reap its own reward as apparently limitless resources are eroded.

In the best Norwegian architecture there is a complete rejection of these values. There is a gritty integrity derived from two millennia living on the edge of a harsh natural world that accepts people only if they know how to cope with extremes and have a very clear understanding of the potential of materials. This understanding of the relationship of humanity to nature covers a spectrum that ranges from the precision of the cities to the clarity of the cottages (p44).

Christian Norberg-Schulz has remarked that 'Norway is the most "difficult" of the Nordic lands with respect to nature'.(9) He argues that Norway's topography is 'the most complex and ... dramatic in the North'. The long mountain mass is deeply penetrated by the fjords of the west coast and shelters the mysterious dark forests and golden valleys of the eastern part of the country. Denmark, Sweden and Finland are mostly flat. Norway has every variation that God and geology can make to the earth's surface. Norberg-Schulz is convinced that 'construction must be emphasised [in Norway] ... precisely because the environment is so indefinite ... Norwegian architecture has ... its origin in the combination of stave and log construction ... in skeletal and massive structures ... Norwegian tradition can be traced from medieval stave churches through folk architecture, National Romanticism's dragon style, Functionalism's concrete skeletons to Fehn's characteristic symbiosis of wood and masonry'(p40).(10)

He is right. There is a solid integrity in all the best Norwegian buildings: thought-throughness at every level, a heaviness and firmness,(11) a feeling for the nature of materials and their sensual relationship to our lives, a poetic, tender and loving understanding of the phenomenal world.

All this is linked to social and economic structures that are just as profound. However much the liquid black gold of the Norwegian Ocean has changed the life of every citizen, there remains a dignified Scandinavian respect for the values of society, balanced with respect for the importance of every individual within it. Recently, this has been reinforced by government decisions to set standards by pursuing good architecture in all public buildings,(12) and to generate an overall policy of restricting land-take of new developments (AR August 1993, p7).

Those of us who love the country were very keen that it should join the European Community a couple of years ago when the proposal was again turned down in a referendum. The Norwegians might have added to a block vote from the civilised northern countries to turn Europe into a decent place to live in. But perhaps they were right to stay out. Their natural resources, and their decent society allow them to do so - and set examples to us all.

1 Planned in 1836 as part of the project of recognising the city as the capital of a country freed from Danish rule ('the four hundred year night') and semi-independent under the Swedish crown. All the notes about the capital are derived from Oslo, en arkitektur guide, by Pal Henry Engh and Arne Gunnarsjaa, Universitesforlaget, Oslo etc, 1984.

2 There is no evidence that the great Prussian architect knew much about the city, but the Norwegian Chr. H. Grosch went to Berlin to work with him and brought back the design, which was built with great panache. The columns of the portico and the great stair are in granite from Nordmarka (one of the first modern uses of Norwegian stone).

3 Rather sadly altered internally now.

4 By Arnstein Arneberg and Magnus Poulsson, finished in 1950, though the architects won first prize in a 1918 competition. The design was much changed over the years but initially was quite clearly in the great tradition of National Romantic Scandinavian town halls which started in Copengen by Nyrop and was marvellously continued in Stockholm by Ostberg.

5 A brilliant insertion into the traditional fabric by Lund & Slaatto.

6 Not always. The railway station at the east end of Oslo's main axis is surrounded by some of the worst planned and second rate urban development in the whole of Scandinavia (p21). It has a nasty skyscraper by Swedish architects, which shows the folly of trying to build tall buildings in such a delicate city.

7 And to some extent social the housing is extremely expensive. Stylistically, influences range a bit obviously from Erskine to Rossi, but there is no stupid attempt to try to perpetuate the Neo-Classical or National Romantic.

8 Traditionally, there are no villages in Norway, nothing between town and farmstead. This is a result of history (a troubled past, with the citizens held down by Danish garrisons and aristocrats) and geography (a huge thinly populated land area in a hard climate).

9 Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Nightlands: Nordic Building, MIT, Cambridge, US, and London, 1996, p 69.

10 Ibid, p195.

11 And in Norberg Schulz's prose.

12 In complete contrast to the disgusting policy of gung-ho collapsing market-led economies like that of Britain, where cheapness is almost the only criterion for judging the value of public works (unless they are funded by betting).