area 116 | Norway

Cultivation of the road system Norway is to say the least a challenging country in terms of terrain, and the road system was built up as a very fine-grained infrastructure to reach all settlements. The unique character of the norwegian landscape is the combination of nature and settlements, the history of cultivation that is still readable in the dramatic landscape. Most forests, mountain areas and fjords are still populated and, in tune with the argument of welfare and public rights, served by public infrastructure. This is to some extent the resource that National Tourist Routes tries to refine.
The practical needs that have to be met are as a rule simple. The small projects deal with the installation of car parks that can handle extra summer traffic, pull-off points that allow the highlights of trips to be photographed, information points, overnight parking for recreational vehicles, sites for eating a meal and lighting a campfire, rubbish bins and dumpsites and public toilets. An initiative may involve a few simple benches or a roadside rest area that provides access to  a unique location, ensures that people who are less mobile can participate in experiencing the countryside, or that everyone is able to reach the sea across a landscape of slippery rocks. Railings are intended to prevent people from falling into crevices. Vegetation is protected against foot traffic through the construction of simple and beautiful paths through the grass. The National Tourist Routes, however, implies a process of cultivation. Challenges and needs which at the outset were purely looked upon as pragmatic and subject to technical engineering are addressed in an architectural and creative manner in relation to function, form, construction, choice of materials, and technical solutions. This approach leads to particularly interesting interpretations of projects regarded as having a purely technical function, like tunnels, tunnel openings, turnarounds, road exits and safety measures against landslides. What was initially purely pragmatic has been cultivated into works of architecture that supply their own narrative, like the wall against falling rocks, snow and ice, being made into land art along the road through Lofoten near Ramberg.
In many situations this cultivation is guided by ambitions to create locations along the route. By this I mean that the project is intended to realise a potential that has always existed, but one that few have seen and few have utilised. The amenities give the location a name and a character. A telling example is a yellow railing made of scaffolding that guides the tourist to a secret look-out point along a path in Nappskaret in Lofoten with a view to the west facing the direction in which one is travelling, and to the east from which one had come. The corroded iron stairs leading to an in-glazed granite platform at the tip of an ordinary breakwater mole along the Atlantic road gives another illustrative example.
Sometimes the challenge is to interpret established locations each of which carries its own more or less well-known history. All along its route, the general national infrastructure encounters the local and unique, and a project must acquire a narrative function and interpret local context. One example of this is the project concerning the Allmannajuvet gorge where  the first mining ventures commenced that later developed into the industrial town of Sauda. The ambition here was not only to make it possible to experience the countryside, but to tell a meaningful story about the town’s history and use of natural resources. At Eggum, german installations from World War II are rebuilt and transformed into a theatre. Far North at Vardo, Louise Bourgeois and Peter Zumthor create a memororial to the victims of the witch trials at the site of the burning. In other localities the task deals with tidying up, re-establishing sites and experiences, and rehabilitating situations such as poor roads and thoughtlessly built amenities along the route that over time have fallen into disrepair. The whole issue of ‘tidying up and re-establishing’ is particularly difficult and extensive at locations hosting major natural icons where the flow of tourists is massive, encroachments on the countryside and wear and tear extensive, and tourism as a business is based on an infrastructure of a dubious nature. These attractive locations – such as the Vringsfossen waterfall, Trollstigen and Gjende – were not previously a national responsibility. Initiating projects in these types of areas requires financing from multiple sources, a willingness and ability to take part in difficult processes that simultaneously raise complex architectural problems, both with respect to the degree of intervention and the choice of its form. The project should not assume control. The architect plays at best a strong supporting role.
It is a matter of strengthening the location’s existing signature statement, and developing the narrative. The Tourist Routes, moreover, is the first norwegian structure of projects that very intentionally exhibits both infrastructure and landscape. In this system, each installation is intentionally developed as a specific piece of architecture, as an integral part of the road as a system for movement, as part of a landscape and as a site offering views and vistas of landscapes. Speaking generally, I would say that landscape in the project is conceptualised firstly as movement through a landscape that is never by the observer comprehended as a whole, but as a set of experiences that are being offered along the komundulating routes. Driving the full 226 kilometres of National Tourist Routes along the coast of Helgeland, one moves at times near the ocean with an archipelago of islands passing by, while at other times one is enclosed by a barren and rocky landscape that sometimes opens up to views of huge glaciers. The projects are nearly not made notable; the landscape architecture is simple and functional as at the rest area at Hellåga or the ferry landing at Ågskaret. These are both very practical and down-to-earth amenities, but localised very deliberately and offering sensuous experiences of local landscape.
Secondly, landscape in the National Tourist Routes is defined as ‘out there‘, and the view is more ritually exhibited in chosen and defined places. Stegastein stands out as a very expressive platform, the bent wooden construction stretching out 30 metres, hundreds of metres above the fjord of Aurland, controlling and setting the scene for the tourist’s gaze. At Vargbakkane on the Valdres plateau the view is controlled by a circular parking lot defining different landscape sectors for all the cars. At Sohlbergplassen, a project along Rondanevegen, the only eastern and inland road of the routes selected, the viewing platform is hidden in the pine forest and embraces the visitor and viewer with its soft forms, referring narratively to the painter Harald Sohlberg who on this very spot painted his national romantic image of the massive and curved Rondane mountains. Thirdly, the landscape is interpreted as a bodily experience of a very specific situation and an intellectual comprehension of tangible ecologies on site. At Videsæter an area is set off at the beginning of the waterfall, subject to spray and damp from the cascades of water, and bordered by a railing with a geometry reflecting the structure of the rock base. At Liasanden cars, motorbikes and bicycles are led into the forest on a gravelled road that follows the geometry of the rope-plastered trees. In order to handle the amount of tourist traffic at Gudbrandsjuvet, the platforms encircle the gorge and establish sites for individual sensuous experiences.
Architectural quality
An author I once read said: “If a place is truly beautiful, you cannot afford to be there“ and an interesting part of the story of these routes is of course their non-commercial character and their funding by public budgets. As a norm the project also tries to be a breeding ground for norwegian architecture by recruiting the young and talented. The idea is that the projects are based on absolute, professional quality requirements, requirements that are unavoidable, but which at the same time are intended to pave the way for a diversity of expression and for discussion of the tourist routes as a cultural manifestation. The National Tourist Routes is reliant upon a concept of quality that is based on subjective evaluation, but which can also be made operational. We must be able to explain how we discuss quality. Some elements in the discussion of quality are more measurable than others: the quality of an initiative can be discussed in relation to use. Architecture can in other words be quantitatively and quite easily evaluated as a tool – is it suitable? Architecture can also be evaluated in relation to the quality of craftsmanship and the technical quality. Are we achieving the first-class level that the National Tourist Routes is striving for? And, not least, quality can be measured against the guidelines to which the project adheres: the desire for minimal encroachment on the countryside, the use of natural materials, sustainable and robust solutions, and above all a modest use of effects, unless there are very good reasons to highlight, enhance and make clearly visible. However, the evaluations become subsequently less unambiguous. In the same way as art, architecture can be evaluated in terms of its own traditions. Making architecture that is a culturally active product involves developing and reinterpreting tradition. In addition to this there is the quality discussion that can be referred to as ‘to each his own’; in other words, the aesthetic perception of the project, the immediate ‘taste’ of the project as it is experienced – often before there has been any attempt on the part of the ‘taster’ to understand the project. In this discussion all opinions are equally valid.
The meaning of a project is fluid because it changes over time. Nor does the architect control the content. Different people interpret things in different ways, and once the work is completed it lives its own life independent of its originator. In the best-case scenario the architecture is loved, people immediately accept it and make it their own because it reflects a shared reference point that transcends by far the internal traditions in architecture. We find projects along National Tourist Routes in Norway that, even though they are simple installations and small in scale, manage to invoke a common cultural point of reference and become an attraction in their own right.

Karl Otto Ellefsen. Professor of architecture and urbanism Head of the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. The National Tourist Routes is the first Norwegian structure of projects that very intentionally exhibits both infrastructure and landscape. In this system, each installation is intentionally developed as a specific piece of architecture, as an integral part of the road as a system for movement, as part of a landscape and as a site offering views and vistas of landscapes.