“Architecture involves some detective work. You look at things, you look under and through things because they are a source or knowledge, signs of momentary resourcefulness.”   Irénée Scalbert 

In 1963, the municipality of Asker erected a building of radical international style in a rural field situated twenty-five kilometres to the west of Oslo. Rising above the surrounding agricultural landscape, Asker Town Hall and a string of other modernist town halls constructed across the country, herald a new era of municipal authority. The town halls epitomise a paradigm change in the way Norway is governed through the architecture of its newly built institutions.

This semester the Re Store studio will focus on the preservation and maintenance of regional town halls. Working with Asker town hall as a case study, our initial emphasis will be on the existing – a process of surveying container and contained to appreciate how the building functions both as a symbol of local identity and an instrument calibrating the ebb and flow of everyday life. It will be our brief first to observe, record and evaluate the existing infrastructure, and only then subvert and transform our latently propositional findings into design proposals.  

The studio is concerned with three distinct scales: the territory of the municipality, the town hall as its nucleus, and the citizens and bureaucrats that operate within it.

Municipality

Empowered by the 1965 Building and Planning Act, Norwegian municipalities became key agents of local democracy. As part of the effort to build a social democratic welfare state in Norway after the war, municipalities were given new responsibilities previously handled at a national level, such as education, healthcare and planning.  The municipality assumed the role as conductor of national policy into the provinces with the town hall acting as their monumental manifestation.

Municipal territories originated from the informal boundaries of the church parish. Subsequently modern infrastructure connected areas previously separated by topography, sea and natural barriers. Distances shortened, and municipal mergers took place. Current governmental reforms aim to reduce over four-hundred local municipalities to around one-hundred.  The reformation and consolidation will leave many town halls no longer fit for purpose or obsolete. These monumental pieces of municipal architecture stand in stark contrast with their context as isolated instances of international modernism dotted throughout the Norwegian countryside.

Town Hall

A microcosm of the municipality, the town hall is the civic centre, where processes of governance have a direct casual effect on the territory that surrounds it. Asker will merge with two neighbouring municipalities as a part of the national municipal reform. Whilst the Town Hall continues to represent and serve the local municipality, the impending growth of its administration means it will soon cease to be fully fit for purpose.

Oddly perched on a hill overlooking the town below, the seven-storey tower flanked by two low-rise podium buildings form a classical modernist ensemble. Set against the backdrop of rolling hills and pine forest, the tower marks its importance in the landscape. The low podium grounds the building and welcomes visitors in from below.

An early example of the work of Lund & Slaatto, the building is uncompromising and consistent in its construction. However, like many modernist icons, it has reached the threshold of its material obsolesce and requires costly maintenance and restoration.

The studio will challenge the understanding of the Town Hall as a ‘complete architectural object’ by exploring it as an ensemble of elements embodied with their own meaning. By tracing the patterns of use from the residues of human occupation, students will develop an understanding of what has been used and how.  This work will grow out of the translations between observing, drawing and making - to discover possibilities in what already exists.

Bureaucrat and Citizen

In a political climate that celebrates corporate prowess, the image of the public-sector worker in popular culture is one of dullness and inefficiency. In this narrative, the interaction between local governance and the public plays out in slow motion through the hatch in the wall of a grey room. From their offices bureaucrats write the policies that affect the strategic planning of their local municipality. The choreography of policy-making and its implementation has a distinct spatial dimension.  Following complicated routines full of checks and balances their decisions control many facets of everyday life.

Although Asker town hall is today appreciated and in many ways considered exemplary, the public reception of the building was varied.  Town halls built in the post war era were frequently associated with bureaucratic inadequacy and criticized for being insensitive to their surrounding context. The studio will challenge the stereotypes of the past, to understand how technology and infrastructure can enable new forms of public interface, while centralisation aims to limit bureaucratic inefficiency.

Through a series of workshops, the studio will work closely with actors in the local municipality to develop strategies that address issues such as changing municipal requirements, future governmental consolidations, and the material obsolescence of the building’s aging modernist structure. 

Additional Teacher

Erlend Skjeseth