Out of Scandinavia

Sverre Fehn, a Norwegian architect who has long been admired in his native country for his unrepentant modernist sensibility, is the winner of the 1997 Pritzker Architecture Prize.

The Pritzker is the most coveted prize in architecture--both for its status as the profession’s version of the Nobel prize and for the $100,000 award.

Despite a career that spans from the 1950s, Fehn is virtually unknown outside of Norway. Almost all of the architect’s work has been built in Scandinavia--among his most recent works is a commission for an extension of the Royal Theater in Copenhagen, Denmark, which is not yet under construction. Fehn has never built in the United States.

Commenting on the selection, jury member Ada Louise Huxtable called Fehn’s work “the best of 20th century Modernism, but unlike the work of some schooled in the International Style, his never became static; his architecture has continued to develop and change in remarkably subtle and individual ways that reflect both his personal artistic growth and the changing beliefs and concepts of our time.”

Fehn was born in Kongsberg, on the outskirts of Oslo, in 1924. He received his architectural degree from Oslo’s school of architecture in 1949. Soon after, he traveled to Paris to work for the renowned French engineer and designer Jean Prouve. In 1968, a small exhibition of his work was seen at New York’s Museum of Modern Art; another was presented by Minneapolis’s Architectural Assn. in 1983.

Fehn’s work remains deeply rooted in the Modernist tradition. He credits a younger generation of European architects who came to prominence in the ‘50s and ‘60s for influencing his early career rather than great Scandinavian masters like Finland’s Alvar Aalto. Those architects--in particular Alison and Peter Smithson and Aldo van Eyck--tried to adapt the Modernist agenda to the changing landscape of their time. Fehn’s work is remarkable for its determined reworking of that faith.

But Fehn was also deeply influenced by the Norwegian architect Arne Korsmo. Like Korsmo, Fehn developed a style that combined the Modern aesthetic with a deeper understanding of local building traditions and a subtle sensitivity to his native context. He lives in a house designed in 1937 by Korsmo.

In a recent telephone interview from his Oslo office, Fehn stressed the differences in the architectural traditions of Scandinavia. “We still have a humanistic tradition here,” Fehn said. “Our struggle is with nature, with topography, with socialism.”

Two Norwegian projects in particular stand out as powerful examples of his architecture: the Glacier Museum in Fjaerland, completed in 1991, and the Hedmark Cathedral Museum in Hamar, completed in 1979. Both are as remarkable for the way they address their dramatic settings as for their aggressive forms.

Of the two, the Glacier Museum is the more dramatic work. The low, narrow, concrete building is stretched out along a glacier’s edge and the design echoes the slow, heavy power of the landscape around it--the glacier itself is the focus of the museum. At one end, two parallel stairs take visitors up to the roof where they can view the silent glacier, and from there they can descend back into the museum as if descending into the crevice itself. The stairs flank the main entrance, where a wooden roof appears as if pried up by a giant plow. Set in an overwhelming landscape, the structure has a noble power.

The earlier Hedmark Museum is set in a more historical context. Fehn’s “suspended museum” is a trail of rough-concrete ramps and twisting stairs that wind through the ruins of a 12th century bishop’s fortress.

“Hedmark is my meeting with the past. To tell the story you have to manifest the present, so that there can be a dialogue between the two,” Fehn said.

He highlighted that contrast between past and present--between an existing ruin and the architect’s modern insertions--rather than mimic the 12th century style. The new elements are inserted, much like big prosthetic devices. Since the fortress was still being excavated, the paths are suspended above the dig, allowing it to continue under the gaze of visitors. The effect is a raw and powerful primitivism.

What unites these works is the hidden--often poetic--narrative that Fehn uses to shape them. “Architecture has to have a story to tell--about people or architecture or nature,” he said. “If you can establish a poetry about things, then you have a starting point.”

The Pritzker Prize is traditionally presented at a ceremony in a major architectural landmark. This year the event will be held at Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum branch still under construction in Bilbao, Spain. Last year’s ceremony, honoring Jose Rafael Moneo, was held at the Getty Center construction site in Brentwood.