6: Loft, Bang, Korsmo and Carl Bødtker's house

Loft

The loft is the storehouse of the farmstead. Besides the stue, the loft is the second most important building on the farmstead. It represents the farmer’s holdings. The loft was a storage house for grains and clothing and other goods as well as sometime summer sleeping quarters. This two-story building held a prominent place among the collection of buildings around the tun. Its stature was further increased when, for practicable reasons, it was lifted off the ground.

Up through the Viking period, storage of excess grains and household goods was maintained in the same dwelling as the people. The Loft arises with the increase of arable land and more efficient farming practices. As production increases the amount of space needed to store grain increases. Eventually, storage demands a separate building that houses the grain. The loft is not unique to Norway. It is very likely that this was one of the major imports of building techniques brought back to the northland by returning Viking.

The lofts of the middle ages were log construction originally resting on the ground. This creates a disastrous problem with vermin getting into the stores and moisture spoiling the winter reserves. To combat this, sometime in the late middle ages, the buildings are set on large stones or stumps to keep the rodents out. This in turn allows air to circulate through the building helping to preserve the grain.

The loft was primarily a place to store goods and the lay out and use is similar from region to region and over the course of the middle ages. In some cases, the two-story log construction core is augmented on the upper story with a gallery. This second story galley used the stave construction techniques and the combination was known as Reisverk. This gallery was used as a way station of sorts, a place to store fish and meats to dry.

Riesverk: The log construction of the two-story core of the loft was similar to the log construction of the stue. The loft, however, also combines construction techniques from the stave churches to complete the cantilevered upper story. As mentioned, this is known as Reisverk. The lighter construction was used to cantilever the gallery off of the main storage rooms. There is the added benefit of the gallery protecting the in log core from weathering. In some cases, the lower porch of the loft was also enclosed in stave construction as well.

The problem of vermin infesting the store lead to the raising of the loft off the ground. These chassis were also constructed of stone and in some case the full stone foundations were used.

Before and After WWII: Ove Bang and Arne Korsmo

The thirties wound itself up into WWII and for a period of time stagnation set in as Norway was occupied. Leading up to the war there were two figures who emerged as central to the development of the architecture into the fifties. The first is Ove Bang. After a brief stint as Poulsson’s assistant, Bang moved to a small town in the mountains and opened his own practice.27 He returns to Oslo in 1930, and by the end of the decade he has done a number of buildings that will lay the foundation for Norwegian architecture after the war. It is in these later works that Bang discovers “the old objective of a Norwegian architecture to suit [his] times.” He displays his understanding in a series of houses in Aker (part of Oslo) in which traditional forms are adopted to functional plans. His understanding of traditional forms leads to his most significant work of domestic architecture. In 1937, he designs the residence at Ullern for Ditlev-Simonsen. This is a simple, geometric box set into the land. The functional idiom is written large on this house, but the livability is what sets it apart. Here, functional architecture begins to be suited for domestic dwelling. In addition, Bang has some significant larger works, notably, the Worker’s Association in Oslo from 1939 and the Court House, also in Oslo. The Court House is particularly successful as it sits between the Courts for Justice built in 1903 and the Aker’s Savings Bank built in 1932. Bang achieves the transition between these with a simple façade that both fits it between the two existing buildings and presents the austere nature of the courts.

Bang dies in 1942. He was only 47. Had he lived he may have proved the brother to Arne Korsmo who is the bridge across the valley of war. Korsmo got his degree from the Institute of Technology in Trondhiem in 1926. He worked with Arenberg and Poulsson as well as others and finally starts his own firm in the early thirties. Like Bang, Korsomo is effective in using the functional idiom in domestic architecture. This is based in Korsmo’s fundamental understanding of architecture as poetry and in his ability to endow function with meaning. “A building is not merely some boards put together, but something which speaks to us and ‘releases a tranquilizing and enticing happiness in the ever-searching human mind.” This sentiment carries into his domestic buildings because he is looking to life, to process, landscape and city to form his buildings. Norberg-Schulz comments on Korsmo’s understanding of “the harmony of everyday utensils, furnishings, interiors and buildings…Dimensions, lighting, colors and details became important problems, and his best creations are thoroughly wrought, integrated wholes.” Korsmo designs a number of houses at the end of the thirties. These include the Benjamin House, the Stenersen House, and the Heyerdahl house all in Oslo. These houses are exemplary of the potential for functional architecture to develop domestic living. That is when the functional is infused with poetry. Korsmo’s true contribution to Norwegian architecture, however, comes after the war.

The occupation of Norway during the war years brought German planning to the doorstep of Norway. The destruction of buildings and the foreign ideas infused into the built environment during these years served as a set back to the search for identity. When the war ended large obstacles loomed before the development of Norway, and how building should continue was a major concern. National sentiments were again picked up as a way to move forward after the occupation. But functionalism, Funkis, had grown irrelevant. A new idea was needed, and with it a new way to pursue national identity.

Housing was a major consideration after the war. Many people needed places to live and the only solutions advanced were “green city” planning left over from the thirties.36 Although these were neither urban nor country dwelling, and although they had little Nordic soul, they were erected. A few bright spots stick out in these years. Arne Korsmo is one of them. He provides one of the major directions that Norwegian architecture would take in the 1950’s. That is the poetic functionalism he had developed before the war. Korsmo and Jorn Upzon produce several forward looking plans for urban development, ones that abandon the strict “garden city’ suburban development. But due to dogmatic bureaucracy and competition guidelines, none were implemented.

C. Bødtker House 1 and 2 Oslo, 1965-1967, 1982-1985

Fehn built two houses for C. Bødtker and his wife. The first, in 1967, was for a young couple with children. The second, 20 years later, was for an older couple whose children had grown and left. The two houses occupy the same slope, only a few meters from one another. The first is characterized by an open stairwell set at a 45-degree angle in the middle of the square main volume of the house. The stairs lead from the entrance and living area up to the bedrooms. The kitchen, bath and dining rooms occupy a separate linear volume along the north face of the main living cube. The second house is built at a forty-five degree angle to the site. This creates the same dynamic experience of the building, but on the exterior instead of the interior. The interior of this second house is much simpler. Fehn moves the kitchen, bathroom and stair functions to the northeast perimeter. This changes the focus of the living area, opening it up and allowing the stairs to quietly move from one floor to the other. Both houses have brick cavity walls offset by pine colums and beams and oak flooring.