The architect’s vision does not always agree with…
Appears in Arkitektnytt 9/22 Ulf Grønvold as a mind reader of mine tanker. He is on the inside of my brain in what I want people to think about the architects Lund and Slaatto when they designed Chateau Neuf. I want people to believe that Lund and Slaatto considered students trash, according to Grønvold.
Rough, and unimaginable. Lund and Slaatto were star architects and men of honor, admired by friends. They were also a child of their time, and developed their own distinctive version of modernism. In the case of Chateau Neuf, it was perceived by us who belonged to the target group at the time, as if they wanted to build a student house as a kind of factory, with the technical facilities and pipes as visible as possible, apparently under the motto that here technical functions and processes should be undisguised for the day.
Some of us who were unhappy with the building, went along with it because we discovered that it looked similar to the waste incineration plant in Ballerup outside Copenhagen, which had been completed a short time before. As an architect, Grønvold objects that there were differences between the two buildings. In my eyes and anyone else’s, the similarities were astounding. It depends on the eyes that see. The architect’s perspective does not always coincide with the layman’s perspective.
Lund and Slaatto obviously wanted it the best for the students who had to use the house. They didn’t think that students were rubbish, but through their design of the house they made an imagined factory process a model for most, including student life. One result was alienation for any of us who needed it at the time.
Alienation became the gnome on the load in many places for quite a few users of the brutal architecture. Architects of earlier times had sometimes designed factories that looked like castles. For Lund and Slaatto, the pendulum had swung in exactly the opposite direction. The factory, in the sense of the process plant, was to form the model also for buildings with general and cultural purposes.
And the new National Museum? I also allowed a lot to be done with that. Fleip should be able to tolerate when those who decide in this country allow themselves to discard existing cultural buildings and instead build a new box for six billion. It will be a memorial to the times when newly rich Norway could wallow in oil money. We brag about how nice the inside of the box has become, and that should be missing when we have spent so many billions.
Grønvold can almost be heard a bit out of place when he writes that we “cannot put parents around modernism, it is part of our history”. He almost makes it sound like modernism is a closed chapter?
Grønvold stunned when I wrote that the Opera House was the first modernist building in Oslo that was loved by people, and mention that Oslo citizens long before were enthusiastic about restaurant Skansen at Akershus, referred to as Oslo’s first funkis building.
In this I could be more precise, and wrote that the Opera House was the first modernist building from our days which was loved by people. Because I think that the early elegant funkis with buildings from almost a century back in time, like Ekebergrestauranten and Hvalstrand bath, was popular from the start. It started so beautifully.
Pioneer built Skansen suffered a peculiar fate. We know that it was demolished in 1970, not least with the national antiquities as the driving force, on the grounds that it disturbed the foreland to Akershus fortress. I don’t remember that the demolition caused particularly loud objections when it took place, while the matter was subsequently referred to in architectural circles as a scandal.
In the years when Skansen stood there, it appeared that the building was both liked and disliked. At the time of the demolition, Aftenposten wrote: “Some will think this is sad, while others are happy that this monstrosity of a building close to the ramparts at Akershus fortress has finally been removed.”. (16.10.1970).
Henrik Groth wrote in his essay “Deal with beauty’s traitors” about his first visit in 1927: «Restaurant Skansen in Oslo opened, with beer and offers of blankets in the cool spring air. Only then did I shudderingly notice the hideous, yellow box with square shop windows, and rounded to the west, designed by architect Lars Backer, our foremost functionalist. Architectural history (the domestic one) still highlights this scale-setting structure, which, in addition to its inherent his ability, is also to destroy our cladium, Akershus fortress. Today – 50 years later – public opinion has denied the history of architecture. The box has been leveled to the ground without us having heard a sigh of loss, not even an obituary from the pundits who raised the box to the clouds». (Farmand’s Christmas issue, December 1975). Groth adds, “in the name of justice” that Lars Backer “also built a nice house”, and mentions the Ekeberg restaurant as an example.
These words from Henrik Groth, one of the significant opinion makers of his time, may indicate that national antiquarian Roar Hauglid did not meet the broad opposition when he was the instigator of demolishing Skansen. The scandalous stamp seems to have mostly come a few years later. I shall not say much about this, but content myself with stating.
Ulf Andenæs