An active year for Per Olaf Fjeld
11. November, 2021
Per Olaf Fjeld has been active over the past year with a number of international lectures, jury work and writing.
Despite the pandemic, Per Olaf Fjeld has been very active and has received several inquiries from Southeast University in Nanjing, China. His collaboration with them included attending a conference that discussed what an architectural school should be in the future, and his presentation culminated in an article "In search of a new creator approach caught between changing architecture content and context". He was also invited to sit on several juries, including for a major international competition called "Stream Garden - Micro Building", which will now be followed by the "Viewing Pavilion - Micro Building".
"They wanted to take care of small natural sites that had remained in the city or at the city's perimeter, and to understand them better through an architecture that can support these small places. There were over a thousand participants, and it was very exciting," says Per Olaf.
He has also been invited to write an article, where the central theme was the relationship between technology and architecture. Per Olaf's article is entitled "Architecture inside a Technological Treadwheel" and will be published in China in December
Another Chinese school with which Per Olaf has had a long association is the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. In 2019, he was part of a programme to build a pavilion in Dongyang, which was also displayed in an exhibition at the AHO Gallery and at Beijing Design Week.
"That programme is based on a deeper understanding and use of traditional wooden structures and now CAFA is applying for a continuation of the programme and I have been invited to participate in one way or another," he says.
Louis I. Kahn The Nordic Latitudes was published in 2019 and was written by Per Olaf together with his wife Emily Randall Fjeld. This year was the 120th anniversary of Louis Kahn’s birth and on this occasion Per Olaf was asked to give a lecture at the London Architecture and Design Festival. He was also interviewed on that occasion by the Norwegian Embassy in London. The interview was published in Nordic Art.
Later, he and Emily Fjeld were invited to Kahn's birthplace, the island of Saaremaa in Estonia, to give the keynote lecture to the Louis Kahn Estonia Foundation's celebration of the anniversary.
"It was great to have the opportunity to return to the place where Kahn was born and give a lecture there about his Nordic roots," says Per Olaf.
In addition to the book about Louis Kahn, he has also previously published two books about Sverre Fehn that have led to several lecture invitations, both locally and internationally. In 2020, the book The Power of Circumstance – Architecture and Creative Independence, Six lectures by Per Olaf Fjeld was also published.
"It is based on my attitude towards different creative processes. It is my understanding of my own process, and how an idea is characterised by what I wanted to elaborate on through the six lectures," he says.
He is also a contributor to an upcoming book about another well-known architect, Fay Jones, for which he has written a chapter (University of Arkansas Press). He was also invited to assess the architectural school's curriculum at the same university. In the midst of all his jury work, writing, board positions and lectures, including at AHO, Per Olaf is also working on completing a lamp series.
"I've been working with 12 lamps for many years, and now I'm doing the 11th. When it's ready, I want to have an exhibition, and I'm really looking forward to that," he says.