Summer house in Portør, Norway, 1949 (architect: Knut Knutsen).
Photograph: Studio Teigen

Gudolf Blakstad and Herman Munthe-Kaas, perspective view of the interior for the cathedral at Bodø, Norway; charcoal on paper, 1947.
Photograph: Nasjonalmuseet

The architect’s own house at Jongskollen in Bærum, Norway, 1961–63 (architect: Geir Grung).
Photograph: Johan Brun

discords: norwegian architecture 1945-65
Curator: bente aass solbakken

The National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design, Oslo
14 November 2010–3 April 2011

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‘Discords: Norwegian Architecture 1945–65’ is the result of a collaboration between The National Museum, The Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo, and part of a national researcher network called Norwegian Architecture and Design 1950–70. It marks a new interest for research-based exhibitions so successfully practiced at institutions like MoMA (New York) and Neue Pinakothek (Munich), and which hopefully will be continued in the program under the museum’s new director.

As its title suggests, ‘Discords’ casts its light on a conflictive and formative, yet sparsely investigated, period in Norwegian architectural history when prewar functionalism dissolved into a number of different movements, categorized in the exhibition as ‘New Empiricism,’ ‘(Abstract) New Traditionalism,’ and ‘(Avant-Garde) Modernism.’ The latter enrolls prominent architects like Arne Korsmo, Sverre Fehn, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Geir Grung, who played a decisive role in forming postwar Norwegian architectural culture, and continues to be a subject for research. The exhibition carries multiple perspectives and proves to be a useful instrument for dissecting the mythologized and often oversimplified Late Modernist period.

The sober selection of works on display is organized in five thematic sections—‘Early discords, 1945–55,’ ‘From sketch to media presentation,’ ‘Landscape and nature,’ ‘Modernism and history,’ and ‘Space and experimentation’—which reappear in the bilingual text folder and the extensive exhibition catalogue, unfortunately so far only in Norwegian. Canonized icons of the era, like Fehn’s Villa Schreiner, Fehn and Grung’s Økern home for the elderly, Grung’s own house at Jongskollen, Knut Knutsen’s summer house in Portør, and the houses in Planetveien by Korsmo and Norberg-Schulz, are accompanied by less acknowledged works such as Are Vesterlid’s dance hall in Elverum, Håkon Mjelva’s temporary duplex house, Anton Paulson’s Villa Bjerke, and Nils Holter’s extension of the house of parliament. Even though the exhibition spans over two decades and includes a great variety of buildings, urban prospects, and pieces of furniture, it allows in-depth examination of selected projects, like Bodø Church by Gudolf Blakstad and Herman Munthe-Kaas, and the Bergen town hall by Erling Viksjø.

Fehn’s celebrated glass pavilion from 2008 houses the greater part of the exhibition. Upon entering, one is immediately confronted with the paradoxes of contemporary exhibition spaces. For this occasion, the ‘wall-less,’ transparent pavilion is, by the help of provisory curtains, turned into a black box to accommodate light-sensitive drawings, and filled up by the architect’s own rather clunky display modules which effectively counteract the generosity of the space. Unfortunately, the exhibition draws attention to the shortcoming of the architectural frame, emphasizing how unsuitable this beautiful space is to host various forms of architectural representations, unfortunately limiting the curators.

The exhibition consists entirely of original material. The lack of reproduced models, computer generated animations, and instructive diagrams is striking—and relieving. Besides documenting architectural modes of representation, it adds a sense of authenticity that gives the works on display a particular degree of presence. This curatorial strategy makes the architecture relevant to us, more so, I would say, than any computer-generated animation would do. The fast-track visitor might find the exhibition old-fashioned and restrained, but after spending some time among the delicate, handmade artifacts, one is easily touched and convinced. The challenge of exhibiting fragile paper on vertical surfaces is overcome by mounting a thin transparent tape frame around each drawing, exposing the paper edges, a method more low-key and respectful than a passe-partout. The method is not optimal, however, as the relationship between frame and paper appears flimsy and accidental. The display cases are more successfully organized and give sketchbooks, photos, and single-sheet drawings a distinct setting. Miniature monitors dispersed throughout the space display (apparently) unedited and soundless film clips, giving them, alas, a rather mystical aura. They would have deserved more thoroughly contextualization. The curator has deliberately withdrawn into the shadows of the show, casting full light at the material on display, but struggles to release the full potential of the research project from which the exhibition is derived.

The absence of explanatory text on the wall is a bit problematic. The exhibition appears first and foremost as an esthetic arrangement, providing the visitor with little information. The slightly idiosyncratic headings and subtitles on the wall appear cryptic without the text folder in hand (easily overlooked when entering the space). The folder is instructive but fails to activate the material on display. This could have been compensated, not necessarily by adding more text to the wall, but possibly by adding a parallel context, a commentary and discursive layer made accessible by graphic means, for example in the adjacent room where a small but interesting film is running.

The sought-after context is retrieved between the covers of the attractive exhibition catalogue, edited by art historian Espen Johnsen, comprising twenty-three essays by eighteen authors that give a multifaceted and in-depth, though not always comprehensive and consistent, trajectory into the subject matter. It is rewarding to read Espen Johnsen’s introductory chapters, claiming straightforwardly how history has been constructed based on misconceptions and simplification, by accident or by intent. In the essay ‘Artefakter fra arkitektkontoret’ (‘Artifacts from the architect’s office’) curator Bente Aass-Solbakken examines the different artifacts (drawings, models, and photos) surfacing from the architectural practices, asserting their international influences and how they altered the production of architecture.

The exhibition is a result of a meticulous excavation of the museum’s archive. Pursuing the artifacts per se is obviously a highly pertinent exercise to track the diversity and ambiguity of an understudied period in Norwegian architectural history. All the same, the show would have benefited from focusing more consistently on how production of architecture was influenced by the shifting modes of representation.

Erik Fenstad Langdalen
Institute of Form, Theory and History
Oslo School of Architecture and Design

Publication related to the exhibition:
Espen Johnsen, ed., Brytninger: norsk arkitektur 1945-65, Oslo: Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design, 2010, 317 pp., colour and b/w ill., NOK 268, ISBN: 978-82-8154-054-5 (only in Norwegian)