Beata Labuhn - (Dis)entanglements of Architecture and Environmentalism in Norway (1965-1975)

The thesis traces early entanglements of architecture and environmentalism in Norway in the 1960s and 1970s, at the moment when a new awareness of the global environmental crisis was just surfacing in architecture, city planning and heritage care. Against the backdrop of the Norwegian environmental history, the monograph focuses on historical reconstructions of three architectural events.

The 1965 “High-Density or Sprawl” (“Tett eller spredt”) congress of the Norwegian Architects´ Association marks the moment when the idea of a global environmental crisis appears to the architectural scene when architects are still struggling with their own “environmental crisis” of modernist urban planning. The overlap of these two crises causes rhetoric confusions, but creates also opportunities for architecture and urban planning to launch certain architectural ideas as solutions to the (global) environmental crisis. The congress features also unforeseen oppositions between environmentalists and architects. For example, where the deep ecologist Johan Galtung proposes cybernetic cities ruled by elites, the architects prefer to humanise urban environments, empower users, look for site-specificity and local identity, and return to historical centres and historical ideas for inspiration.

In the 1969-environmental crisis exhibition “And After Us…” (“og etter oss…”) students of The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) feature as environmental activists who take it upon themselves to warn the entire country of the looming environmental crisis. Their travelling audio-visual exhibition entangles with the countercultural demonstrations against hydro power development at the Mardøla waterfall in the summer of 1970 and with the architectural and educational ideas of the deep ecologist Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng. The architectural attitudes of the students involved with the exhibition display a rather “postmodern” (dis)entanglement of environmentalism and architecture in favour of more ethically grounded allegiances of environmentalism with city planning and heritage care.

The Norwegian contribution to the “European Architectural Year 1975” features Gro Harlem Brundtland as the godmother of heritage. Brundtland’s presence as Minister of Environment and her speeches at various events headlining mottos such as “combine protection with development” and “protection of architecture is protection of environment” preluded fundamental transformations in both environmentalism and heritage care. Since then, nature-oriented environmentalism has embraced human-made environments, while urban rehabilitaton has acquired an aura of sustainability. Discussion of the event explores architectural preservation as a contested point of consensus for environmentalists, save-the-city movements, heritage care and architects.

ILLUSTRATIONS:

1. The grazing-sheep-cover of Byggekunst´s special issue on "Tett eller spredt" congress from November 1965 © Photograph by Ulf H. Holmstedt. From: Byggekunst 2/1966.

2. Kristen Grieg Bjerke, Snorre Skaugen, Dag Norling, Gábor Szilvay and others while de-anchoring the exhibition pavilion “og etter oss”, Oslo 1969 © oeo group. From: Byggekunst 3/1969, p. 85.

3. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Per Strickert and Stephan Tschudi Madsen assisting with the restorations in Røros, 1975 © Archives of Røros municipality. From: Lothar Diem, "Heritage Performance in Røros", in: Arrhenius et al, Exhibiting Architecture, 2014, p. 139.

The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) - Institute of Architecture / Prof. Thomas McQuillan (Supervisor)

University of Oslo (UiO) - Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas / Prof. Kjetil Fallan (Supervisor)

PhD started in 2016