{"id":26078,"date":"2014-07-11T21:31:54","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T19:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/sverre-fehn-tra-tipo-uso-e-costruzione-2\/"},"modified":"2016-04-07T18:06:15","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T16:06:15","slug":"sverre-fehn-tra-tipo-uso-e-costruzione","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/sverre-fehn-tra-tipo-uso-e-costruzione\/","title":{"rendered":"Sverre Fehn tra tipo uso e costruzione"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sverre Fehn between type of use and construction<\/p>\n

On 6 March the new National Museum of Architecture opened in Oslo: the work of Norwegian master Sverre Fehn, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1997, the institution is housed by the neoclassical building that once served as headquarters of the Bank of Norway. To provide space for the new activities the eighty-year old, recently deceased architect has not only transformed Heinrich Grosh\u2019s plan from 1830 with taste and measure: to avoid interfering overly with the old structure, he has designed the areas dedicated to temporary exhibitions as an independent pavilion, an addition to the existing premises. An act of submission and respect towards the neoclassical architect and, among other things, author of the historical premises of the University of Oslo (1841-56). But the opening has also been a more personal and private event, as a lifelong dream of Sverre Fehn has here come true: this is the first realization for, and the first direct commission of, the public administration of his own city. With a career that commenced in 1956, and that has seen many and important competitions for museum projects (of which unfortunately only a few have been realized) the Norwegian master has, in actual fact, not had many opportunities to build in Oslo. The new arrangement of the Bank of Norway is, by full rights, part of the long sequence of projects which have made Sverre Fehn so popular among critics. Indeed, it also represents an ideal conclusion, as the master died on 23 February 2009, almost exactly one year after that 6 March. A testament in the form of a built architecture, as those left by other great Nordic architects as for instance Sigurd Lewerentz (1885-1975), the Swedish master of which the Norwegian architect may be considered the only moral disciple.
\nIn fact, the expansion of the museum with its pavilion for temporary exhibitions has given Fehn yet another opportunity to tackle a fundamental theme of architectural design: the relationship between type and use, definitely sanctioning the supremacy of the former on the second factor, and underscoring, for the umpteenth time, the crucial role and value of the construction, which is always rigorous, essential, concrete. The exhibition area consists of a transparent enclosure which is \u201csuspended\u201d from the roof structure: an imperceptible vault resting on four enormous hollow pillars, shifted towards the centre with respect to the perimeter and, like the roof, entirely in untreated reinforced concrete. A glass \u201ctent\u201d encloses the space, isolating it from the exterior.
\nQuite the opposite of the flexible and indistinct space requested and expected by the museum. An essential but extremely formalized structure which makes no concession to spatial \u201cliquidity\u201d, confident that the precision of the construction and the type define a range of meanings and uses that are infinitely superior to those which may be achieved through a \u201cweak\u201d or \u201cfunctionalist\u201d project. A work which underscores the form and the aspiration to eternity of the architectural space, beyond any use, any time, any surface treatment: hence the patient research throughout a lifetime, not just for essentiality but for measure, order, proportion, the exact construction, in a nutshell, of simplicity. A last work which, as such, forms and represents a function, that of Museum of Architecture: sublimation of the programme in built form.
\nIt is not the first time he succeeds in a similar feat: in 1958, at the very onset of this career, he won the competition for the Pavilion of the Nordic Countries at the Venice Biennial, in the Castello Gardens, with a similar project. Also in this case the built form, the space of the architecture, required to perform a specific exhibition function, had been transformed by the master into an essential and precise construction which, instead of directly meeting the requirements of the program, had sublimated it in the very structure of its configuration. Making it eternal and thus consigning it to every generation.<\/p>\n