Sverre Fehn
Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate
1997
...about Sverre Fehn
Note to editors: Detailed lists of awards and a chronological list of selected
projects are available in the Fact Sheet section of this media
kit.
Sverre Fehn has long been recognized in Europe as Norway's most gifted architect. Now, as
the recipient of the 1997 Pritzker Architecture Prize, his profession's highest honor, the
rest of the world will be exposed to his talents.
Categorized as a modernist by most architectural writers, Fehn himself says, I have
never thought of myself as modern, but I did absorb the anti-monumental and the pictorial
world of LeCorbusier, as well as the functionalism of the small villages of North Africa.
You might say I came of age in the shadow of modernism.
I always thought I was running away from traditional Norwegian architecture, says
Fehn, but I soon realized that I was operating within its context. How I interpret the
site of a project, the light, and the building materials have a strong relationship to my
origins.
He has no built works in the United States, but is not a total stranger since he has
been a guest lecturer at The Cooper Union in New York City; Cranbrook Academy of Arts in
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge,
Massachusetts all in 1980. He has also lectured at Harvard, Cornell, and Yale. His work
was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1968, and at the Architecture Association of
Minneapolis in 1983.
He received international attention for his Norwegian Pavilion at the World Exhibition
in Brussels, Belgium in 1958, and again in 1962 for his Nordic Pavilion at the Venice
Biennale. Otherwise, most of his works are in Norway, with some in Sweden and Denmark as
well. He has won commissions for other structures in Italy, France and Saudi Arabia, but
none of the latter have yet been built.
When asked what is the most important part of his architecture, Fehn has replied that
it is above all, the construction, be it wood or concrete, and harmony, rhythm, and
honesty in the use of those materials. He calls the act of building brutal, and
elaborates, when I build on a site in nature that is totally unspoiled, it is a fight, an
attack by our culture on nature. In this confrontation, I strive to make a building that
will make people more aware of the beauty of the setting, and when looking at the building
in the setting, a hope for a new consciousness to see the beauty there as well.
Fehn considers light another material of construction. And nowhere is this more
evident that in the Venice Biennale Nordic Pavilion. The building consists of concrete
bearing walls, with a two-way concrete clear-span roof with openings for tree trunks where
necessary. The building is literally built around growing trees. The leafy branches of the
trees, and the design of the roof beams to diffuse the light from the sun, provides the
interior exhibition space with a soft light that has been characterized as Nordic.
Fehn, at 72, was one of the post World War II generation of architects who emerged
from the Architectural School of Oslo, receiving his diploma in 1949.
At that time, Finnish architect Alvar Aalto was a strong influence on European
architecture, and in particular, Arne Korsmo, one of Norway's leading architects who
became a great friend and mentor to Sverre Fehn. Fehn now lives in a house designed by
Korsmo.
Korsmo, who built Norway's pavilion at the 1937 exposition in Paris, traveled
extensively and knew most of the worlds leading architects of the time. He introduced Fehn
to many of them, including Jean Prouvé. Fehn worked for Prouvé part of the time, and it
was through Prouvé that he met Le Corbusier. It was while working for Prouvé, that Fehn
discovered the artistic use of materials and construction so characteristic of the French
tradition from the Eiffel Tower to Gothic cathedrals.
Fehn, along with Norberg-Schulz, Grung, Mjelva and Vesterlid, all other Norwegian
architects of the same generation, and Jorn Utzon (the Danish architect who later gained
fame for the Sydney Opera House, Australia) formed an organization which was the Norwegian
branch of CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture), called PAGON (Progressive
Architects Group Oslo Norway) that had a profound influence, creating architecture which
had a firm foundation in the Modern Movement, but was expressed in terms of the materials
and language of their own region and time.
It was fortuitous that Fehn received the French State Scholarship which allowed him to
live in Paris in 1953 and 1954. In reminiscing about that period, Fehn recalls that it was
his generation that distanced itself from Le Corbusier and his urbanistic world.
Mies van der Rohe was a strong influence on Fehn. My Okern Home for the Elderly was
inspired by him, says Fehn. As a teacher, Fehn tells his students they should be more
relaxed about copying the things they like in design. He elaborates, I haven't actually
seen many of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings, but on a trip to California, I saw several of
his smaller houses that I was familiar with from books. It was like wandering from poem to
poem. And so his influence on me is acknowledged along with those that influenced him,
including the Japanese.
When he returned to Norway after his two years in France, Fehn established his own
architectural practice which he has maintained ever since. The following architects assist
Fehn: Knut Aasen, Eilef Bjorge, Per Olaf Fjeld, Tore Kleven, Bjorn Larsen, Truls Ovrum,
Jon-Kare Schultz, Tom Wike, Thomas Willoch, Bruce Bergendorf, Henrik Hille, and
Ervin Strandskogen.
Fehn's work has always been described as having a poetic quality. In fact, an
interview in the German magazine, Der Architekt (5/94), is headlined Sverre Fehn: A
Poet of the straight line.
In that interview, Fehn said, Anytime you write a poem, you need to find the balance
between your thoughts and your language. Nothing should disturb the essence of the idea.
It is the same with architecture. Whoever cannot put his poetic ideas into a built
structure has no architecture basics. Structure is the core of architecture, and it cannot
be expressed in numbers. It is the original part of the story an architect can tell about
life and people.
One of Fehn's first buildings, the Handicraft Museum at Lillehammer in 1953, truly
expressed this new direction in the country's architecture. According to Fehn, however,
vandalism and carelessness have taken their toll on this project.
The year before, in 1952, Fehn married Ingrid Loberg Pettersen. In 1960, they
celebrated the birth of a son, Guy, who has studied architecture, but is concentrating on
video productions about his fathers works at the present time.
1952 was the same year that Fehn went to Morocco to study North Aftrican primitive
architecture. Fehn reported at the time, I discover, and I am what I discover. Today, when
one visits French Morocco to study primitive architecture, it is not a voyage to discover
new things. One recognizes. He went on to describe the recognition of elements of Frank
Lloyd Wright's house in Taliesin; Mies van der Rohe's walls; Le Corbusier's terraces and
roof. Fehn explains that he discovered built realities in Morocco, not abstract forms, and
it was this realization that led to his conclusion that architecture is essentially the art
of building, i.e. construction, which in turn led to his monograph with Per Olaf Fjeld,
The Thought of Construction. In that book, Fehn is quoted as saying, The use of a
given material should never happen by choice or calculation, but only through intuition
and desire.
Fehn has said in numerous interviews, For me, there is no architecture without
construction. We work with our alphabet materials such as wood, concrete, bricks with
them, we write a story which is inseparable from the structure. And the structure is
supported by the poetic idea.
Perhaps the most poetic, according to Fehn, is the idea that man has a possible life
after death. This idea seems to have driven some of the greatest architectural
achievements, from the pyramids to Gothic cathedrals. Fehn has been carrying on this
poetic idea with his own designs for churches and museums.
Most recently, his Glacier Museum, the Aukrust Museum, and the archaelogical museum at
Hamar exhibit his total commitment to form and materials, but at the same time, allow his
free exploration of new horizons in design.
His Glacier Museum has been hailed as a major landmark in contemporary architecture.
The building stands on the plain carved out by the Josstedal Glacier at the mouth of the
Fjaerland Fjord. The museum is the center of a panorama formed by the steep mountainsides
and the fjord with the glacier on top. As you approach the site by boat, the white
concrete of the museum seems to lie as a rock on the mountain-side, says Fehn. The rocks
that lie on the hills of the Scandinavian landscape have always had an attraction for me.
These rocks were the inspiration for building in concrete.
In LArchitecture dAujourdhui (6/93), the Glacier Museum is described as
follows: two monumental stairways express the upward movement towards the plateau, the
entrance like a fissure between them; the interior lit by an opening in the roof; the
light fading and diminishing as we penetrate further into the interior; the slope of the
roof, creating a false perspective. The concrete slabs of the exterior walls create a
dialogue with the steep cliffs, and the green translucency of glass, contrasting with the
heavy concrete, echoes the ice-green remnants left by the calving of the glacier.
The same publication described his Hamar museum (also known as the Cathedral Museum):
a suspended itinerary, made up of ramps or wider galleries, overhanging the ruins and
excavation. It never interferes with the ancient and is always offset or at a tangent to
it. This confrontation reveals the story of passing time, the unchanging pursuit of its
course, the confrontation between new and old is even more poetic in the sheets of glass
that cover the irregular openings. Strictly speaking, they have no function as thermic
proofing, since the museum is open mainly in the summer. They are veneers, overlapping the
openings like frames, a delicate underscoring simply by setting glass and stone together
in masterful fashion, Sverre Fehn reveals the gap that the years have scored into the
medieval wall.
Fehn's own notes recall, Only by reincarnating the moment can we begin a dialogue with
the past. This thought gave him the courage to confront the medieval walls with slim
concrete pillars, and to protect the irregular openings in the ruins by sheets of
reinforced glass, to conceal in the laminated wooden constructions of the roof the fruits
of contemporary technology. This he recorded in a magazine article in Byggekunst,
(2/92).
In the Museum of Aukrust in Alvdal, a long horizontal concrete wall acts as a
borderline. It was created to house the works of the painter, Kjell Aukrust, a native of
the region. Because the area is subject to periodic floods of the Glomma River, Fehn has
placed the museum on an embankment that becomes an island during flood stages. The layout
of the building is based on a wall spine. On one side of the wall is a service section, on
the other side, the exhibitions. The service side is covered with a skin of traditional
roofing that slopes down to ground level. The exhibition side is penetrated by many
windows. The spine is contrasted with wooden columns, which Fehn likens to the Norwegian
forests, and relates to Louis Kahn's idea that a structure has a spatial function.
Fehn says, In this era, objects seem to have more importance than people. The material
world keeps increasing in value, while we no longer count on ideals or religion. We are in
some ways, denying death by making museums for our possessions, those from our past as
well as the present.
In 1971, he became a professor of architecture at his alma mater in Oslo, where he
taught until 1993. In addition to the lectures in the United States, Fehn has spoken at
the Architectural Congress Imrata in Finland in 1954; Vasa University, Finland, 1964;
Denmark's Architectural School of Aarhus in 1967 and 1970; the Stockholm Architectural
Association in 1967; the University of Trondheim in 1970 and 1979; the International
Laboratory of Architecture & Design in Urbino, Italy in 1979; at the Geoarchitectural
Institute, Brest, France in 1979; and at the Architectural Association in London in 1981
and 1982. He has also lectured in Paris, Stuttgardt, Germany; Barcelona, Spain; and Rome.
As this announcement of Fehn being awarded the 1997 Pritzker Architecture Prize is
being made, a retrospective exhibition of Fehn's work is being readied to open at the
Basilica by Palladio in Vicenza, Italy on April 18. A new book on his architecture,
published by Electa of Milan, Italy, is scheduled to be released simultaneously.
His international outreach includes exhibitions in France at the Galerie des
Beaux-Arts in 1965 and the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) in 1952;
in Brazil at the Sao Paulo Biennale of Architecture in 1957; Vasa University in Finland in
1964; and in Norway at the Munch Museum, Oslo in 1973; Gallery Palladio, Oslo in 1981 and
at the Bergen Festival in 1982. In 1992, he was included in an exhibition titled Five
Masters of the North, which toured Helsinki, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Reykavik, Madrid
and Barcelona. Projects by Sverre Fehn were exhibited in 1995 in Rome, Naples, Milan and
Goteborg, Sweden. He also exhibited at the Bienalles of Venice in 1992 and 1996.
In June of 1993, the distinguished French publication, LArchitecture dAujourdhui, praised
several of Fehn's projects, adding that with his works, modern Norwegian architecture has
gained true artistic status.
Besides his many museum projects, Fehn has built a number of private residences. He
does not believe that his rooms should dictate how people will live there. He explains
that at the beginning of any project, he has a discussion with the client about what they
want, how they see the site. Then I study maps, photographs and the topography of the
site, he says, and I might make a model. Only after my dream of the building has had a
chance to grow in my own mind, do I visit the site.
In 1991, Fehn was the winner of a competition to build 250 holiday houses of various
sizes and two golf courses in the area of Norrkoping, Sweden, an area where at one time
there was a small castle with beautiful surroundings called Mauritzberg. A further
technical requirement was, says Fehn, that we use non-traditional materials. In this case,
that meant the walls would be made of 10% clay and 90% straw, a composition similar to the
mud houses of Morocco, but in different proportions. The roof is built as a vault with
finely cut plates which are notched and screwed together. Large glass walls at the rear of
the house, the atrium and even in parts of the interior make the house seem quite
transparent. As a result of this unique building material, the house was dubbed Eco house.
Fehn has completed numerous other residential projects, including a house at Ski, the
Villa Kiso, the Brick House, the C. Bodker house, the A. Bodker house, the Sparre house,
the Underland house, Villa Busk and the Schreiner house. Of the latter, the distinguished
writer and teacher Kenneth Frampton called it, Fehn's homage to Japan...an L-shaped court
formation, yet the bulk of the internal volume falls within a rectangle. An open timber
framework surrounds the basic prism on three sides while no Japanese features are
literally replicated save for the unhewn rock pedestals on which the perimeter columns
take their bearing the exuberant display of exposed timber joints could hardly be closer
to the architectonic spirit of the shoin.
One of Fehn's latest projects is the enlargement of the National Theatre of Copehagen
in Denmark which has been described as having the magnificent spaciousness of
cathedral-like character.
It is interesting to note that like many other architects, including previous Pritzker
Laureate Frank Gehry, Fehn involves himself in the design of arts exhibitions. For an
exhibition at Hovikodden of five life-sized clay soldiers, two horses and archers, from
the burial grounds of the first emperor of China, Quin Shihuang, Fehn devised a unique
display that gave the feeling of the clay figures as they were found with thousands of
others.
Fehn's plan conceived a high mirror tower in the center of the exhibit with its sides
parallel to the walls of the museum. The walls too were mirrored, so that the reflections
of the few figures were endlessly echoed back and forth, creating the army of which they
were once a part.
As Fehn's work progressed over the years, he became more sensitive to the quality of
the Nordic light, as well as the relationship of building to the site. More recently, he
has varied his approach to different projects, with added emphasis on the choice of
materials for construction, adding concrete and steel to his palette of wood timbers. In
his most recent designs, it seems he has unified all that has gone before achieving works
that become a source of inspiration for everyone.
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