Events
Read more about The Provenance of an Art CenterThe Provenance of an Art Center
This exhibition explores the full material provenance of the Henie Onstad Art Centre (HOK), including building materials, technical infrastructure, furniture, display systems, lighting fixtures, maintenance systems and more.
By thorough investigation of the archives, and through on-site survey of the building, nine students and two teachers from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) have excavated the ownership history, production history, economy, sourcing, usage and alteration records of its components and materials. By constructing an alternative history of the building, this exhibition challenges the way we understand and assess buildings - and might change the way we transform them for the future.
Henie Onstad Art Centre is designed by the young Norwegian architects Jon Eikvar and Svein-Erik Engebretsen and was inaugurated August 23rd, 1968. It was radical of its time, both in terms of the curatorial ideas and the innovative architecture. Initiated and funded by the figure skater and Hollywood movie star Sonia Henie and her husband, the shipowner Niels Onstad, HOK represented a state-of-the-art cultural institution much inspired by Moderna Museet, Stedelijk Museum and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Based on the personal relationships of HOK’s director Ole Henrik Moe with people like Pontus Hultén, Willem Sandberg and Knut W. Jensen, the new center aimed for a new definition of art, showcasing contemporary music, dance, performance, film and photography alongside paintings, drawings and sculpture - engaging its visitors in new ways.
Eikvar and Engebretsen, recent graduates from Statens Arkitektkurs at Statens Håndverk- og Kunstindustriskole and employees at Nils Holter’s studio, won the competition in 1965 with an innovative scheme influenced by ideas that was circulating at the time. The project development and the building process progressed in line with the radical museum concept, including experimentation with new materials, 1:1 mock-ups, «electronic» site-management and more. Since 1968, the building had been expanded, altered and restored several times, and the art center has gained reputation as one of the leading art institutions in Scandinavia.
ExhibitionNov 8—Dec 15, 2024
Read more about BOMBA, Kunstnernes Hus, OsloBOMBA, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo
In November 2024, Dag Erik Elgin will present an exhibition intervention at Kunstnernes Hus. BOMBA will engage the presence of Pablo Picasso's seminal Guernica at Kunstnernes Hus in 1938, just one year after the painting was completed. At the top center of Picasso's painting depicting the terror of the aerial bombing during the Spanish Civil War, a light bulb surrounded by a lampshade emits sharp, cone-shaped rays of light. In the painting, the lamp is surrounded by twisted bodies, and it ambiguously exists both as an ordinary electric light source and as a bomb at the moment it explodes. The Spanish word BOMBA refers to this ambiguity, referring both to the bomb and to the light bulb (in Spanish, bombilla eléctrica is a diminutive of bomba).
Taking as its point of departure this pivotal moment in the exhibition history of Kunstnernes Hus, Elgin's intervention will reflect on the complex legacy of modernity and modernism, the technological and artistic innovations of these eras, and the continuation of war into the present.
ExhibitionNov 8—Dec 15, 2024
Read more about Former US Embassy wins Oslo City 2024 Architecture AwardFormer US Embassy wins Oslo City 2024 Architecture Award
Former US Embassy transformation project won the 2024 Oslo city Architecture award. The jury states:"The project has been solved with an impressive degree of intelligent, innovative technical solutions that point forward, both when it comes to building new, and when it comes to restoring and rehabilitating listed buildings. The execution and detailing of the interior is incredibly well and beautifully worked out at a level we rarely see, from (...) the overall strategic and technical choices, to the small tactile and seemingly insignificant choices."
Team: Atelier Oslo and Lundhagem (Lead Architects); Erik Langdalen Arkitektkontor and Otero-Pailos Studio (Preservation Architects); LCLA Office and SLA (Landscape Architects); Paulsen & Nilsen (Interior Designers); Bollinger & Grohmann (Engineers)
Photo: Teigen photo, Dextra/Teknisk museum.
AwardOct 10, 2024
Read more about Fehn Among Others. Domkirkeodden, HamarFehn Among Others. Domkirkeodden, Hamar
Sverre Fehn (1924–2009) is often depicted as a solitary figure, an auteur whose musings on architecture in the landscape witness a deep personal connection with the natural world, but often remain silent about the people that populate it. As the first Scandinavian architect to be awarded the Pritzker Prize, he is often portrayed as a quintessentially Norwegian and Nordic architect. But his conceptual world was informed by a perpetual interest in the international discourse. Fehn’s work is intimately connected with the architects he nurtured friendships with, and the foreign locales that fascinated him. When asked in an interview in 1995, in the last year of his 24-year tenure as a professor at AHO, what was most important aspect of the school to maintain, he replied, “International contact.”
Now, at the centennial of his birth, it is time to trace the contexts that informed his work. This year’s Fehn symposium is devoted to a surprisingly overlooked facet of his oeuvre: its collaborative dimension and the international contacts that he nurtured throughout his life. Whether through the close friendship he maintained with Jean Prouvé or his pivotal rapport with John Hejduk in New York after they met in 1977, Fehn’s international orientation was an essential aspect of the evolution of his work. The presentations at the Fehn symposium 2024 are archive-based, presenting new facts and interpretations on Fehn’s work.
SymposiumOct 9, 2024
Read more about Professor Sverre Fehn Exhibition OpeningProfessor Sverre Fehn Exhibition Opening
Sverre Fehn was born in Kongsberg on August 14, 1924. He was, and still is, Norway's most famous architect, nationally and internationally. The Oslo School of Architecture and Design celebrates the Fehn centennial with a series of events in collaboration with the National Museum and the journal Arkitektur.
Tuesday October 1 at 16:00, the centennial exhibition "Professor Sverre Fehn" opens at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). The exhibition sheds light on Fehn's work as rector and teacher at AHO through a wealth of new archival material, curated by assistant professor Nicholas Coates at AHO.
Rector Irene Alma Lønne and University Lecturer Nicholas Coates at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design will give presentations at the opening.
About the exhibition:
Sverre Fehn Fehn was a legendary teacher and lecturer, at home and abroad, and a substantial part of his prolific career took place from the studios, auditorium, board room and corridors of the school, among students and colleagues. When asked in an interview in 1995, in the last year of his 24-year tenure as a professor at AHO, what was most important aspect of the school to maintain, he replied: “International contact”.
The exhibition “Professor Sverre Fehn” brings out key documents, sketches, correspondence, and other artifacts that deepen our understanding of his well-known works and supplement the established narratives that have been documented and disseminated earlier. Professor Sverre Fehnpresents a lesser-known side of Fehn’s work, outlining the national, international and institutional horizon of his production, as a teacher and lecturer.
The exhibition builds upon findings from the spring 2024 seminar Authoring Architecture: Fehn 100 run by Thomas McQuillan, and is curated by Nicholas Coates with the assistance of Charlotte Baumgartner, Eskil Buskov Selmer, Tara Eliassen Kongsvik, and Valieriia Loboda.
AHO thanks the National Museum and NRK for granting access to their archives and providing material for this exhibition.
ExhibitionOct 1—Dec 6, 2024
Read more about The Warburg RenaissanceThe Warburg Renaissance
1 October 2024 sees the reopening of the Warburg Institute in London following its renovation during the Warburg Renaissance Project, 2018–2024. The launch includes the final installation of the Warburg Models exhibition, created by Tim Anstey and Mari Lending and previously shown at the Warburg Haus, Hamburg (2023) and the Architectural Association, London (2024), within the Warburg Institute itself. The opening includes the launch of the book, The Warburg Renaissance: Rebuilding the Institute, edited by Tim Anstey together with Bill Sherman, director of the Warburg Institute and Dan Tassell, Associate Partner of Haworth Tompkins Architects.
Book launchOct 1—1, 2024
Read more about AaltoSiilo, OuluAaltoSiilo, Oulu
Mari Lending and Erik Langdalen are giving the double keynote lecture “Values: Architecture Past and Future in the Era of Circularity” at the three-days European Commission Visit in Oulu, Finland, part of the EU program Living Spaces – Cities and regions shaping the built environment for everyone, followed by the Aaltosiilo Festival 2024: “The Post-Industral Dance”, on Saturday September 15.
Center stage is the silo building designed by Alvar and Aino Aalto, and completed in 1931. In 2020, Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Preservation bought the obsolete, iconic concrete wood chip silo. The AaltoSiilo is presently being restored and reinvented by Skene Catling de la Pena Studio for a post-industrial era, redefining materiality for the 21st century and the role of industrial heritage in memory, shaping place and cultural identity.
ConferenceSep 11—14, 2024
Read more about Former US Embassy wins Docomomo 2024 Modernism in America Award of ExcellenceFormer US Embassy wins Docomomo 2024 Modernism in America Award of Excellence
A Civic/Institutional Design Award of Excellence is given for the restoration and adaptive reuse of the former U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway. This 1959 chancery, designed by Eero Saarinen, is a significant example of postwar Modernist architecture, embodying American values during the Cold War. Saarinen's striking design, particularly the precast concrete facades, was a technological first for Norway. Over decades, the façades had faded and deteriorated. The preservation team treated damaged areas, and the entire surface was buffed by hand, restoring the original sheen. An underground extension and a discreet rooftop addition were added to meet current needs without altering the building’s external appearance. Landmarked interiors, including the atrium and ambassador's office, were restored with sustainable materials while retaining character defining features. The U.S. State Department has been decommissioning and selling off its Modernist embassies, and many are being demolished, gutted or altered beyond recognition. Docomomo US has long advocated for preservation of these buildings, many of which are highly significant. This project is a rare example of an entire embassy building being saved and carefully restored.
Team: Atelier Oslo and Lundhagem (Lead Architects); Erik Langdalen Arkitektkontor and Otero-Pailos Studio (Preservation Architects); LCLA Office and SLA (Landscape Architects); Paulsen & Nilsen (Interior Designers); Bollinger & Grohmann (Engineers)
Photo: Einar Aslaksen
AwardSep 10, 2024
Read more about Microhistories seminar, AHOMicrohistories seminar, AHO
Evidence, clues and trifles: Microhistories seminar
ACT#6: OCCAS/Arch Institute Higher Seminar, AHO fall 2024
Microhistory is key to the Provenance Projected: Architecture Past and Future in the Era of Circularity project. In a series of three reading seminars, we will present and discuss some foundational microhistory contributions, a few more recent texts with microhistorical implications, as well as a 1951 detective novel. The seminar will highlight methodological, theoretical and historiographical aspects of a five-decade academic tradition, and its relevance for the writing of contemporary architectural history.
September 10
Intro: Mari Lending
Tim Anstey: Carlo Ginzburg, “Preface to the Italian Edition”, in The Cheese and the Worms. The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller [1976], trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).
Mari Lending: Carlo Ginzburg, “Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method” [“Crisi della ragione”, 1979], History Workshop Journal, vol. 9, no.1 (spring 1980).
Jørgen Tandberg: Carlo Ginzburg and Carlo Poni, “The Name and the Game: Unequal Exchange and the Historiographical Marketplace”, in Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe,
ed. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, trans. Eren Branch (Johns Hopkins UPress, 1991).
September 24
Ingrid Dobloug Roede: Ben Kafka, «The Disciplined State», chapter 1 in The Demon of Writing. Powers and Failures of Paperwork (New York: Zone Books, 2012).
Thomas McQuillan: Daniel Arasse, “Paint it Black” in Take a Closer Look [On n’y voir rien: Descriptions, 2000], trans. Alyson Waters (Princeton University Press, 2013).
Simon Mitchell: On the concept Oligopticon
Bruno Latour and Emilie Hernant, Paris: Invisible City [1998], trans. Liz Carey-Libbrecht (virtual book online, 2006).
Albena Yaneva, “Invisible Cities”, chapter 7 in Latour for Architects (Routledge, 2022).
October 8
Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time (London: Peter Davies, 1951).
SeminarSep 10—Oct 8, 2024
Read more about Future Anterior, Provenance, CFPFuture Anterior, Provenance, CFP
Buildings are unruly and ever-changing entities. They consist of materials with different life expectancies, their purpose might be outmoded, and they cannot (and should not) be protected to the same extent as artworks or ancient artefacts. This special issue of Future Anterior deals with buildings not as static objects with fixed boundaries, but as flexible, networked, and co-authored entities with rich social biographies and complex afterlives.
While provenance traditionally documents the chronological history of objects in circulation, we propose to transpose the eighteenth-century concept from discourses on art, archaeology, and ethnographica into architecture. Provenance typically implies that the integrity of an artefact relies on endurance, even permanence. But no object lasts forever. Buildings are a nexus of cultural, material, social, technical, geopolitical practices, and varied interests.
Buildings can be referenced, replicated, adapted, moved, destroyed, or fragmented; fragments might take on new lives as collected objects, (down-cycled) material, or (up-cycled) spolia.
This issue will theorize and demonstrate a new operative field that considers how architecture, fragments, and building materials are distributed, appropriated, altered, reinvented and evaluated according to various settings, ideals and ethics. We encourage the reconsideration of core cultural and aesthetic concepts such as: origins, authorship, ownership, legitimacy, copyright, authenticity, authentication, patina, collective memory, crises, uses, and abuses. We also aim to recharge the temporality of the concept: architectural provenance can be a dynamic phenomenon, a forward-bound, creative instrument for change, applicable to understanding lost, present, and future potentials of buildings. We invite contributions that consider architectural provenance within a circular economy and re-examine topics spanning from material procurement and real estate to historical reconceptualization and practical transformation work.
Topics to explore can include, but are not limited to historical or contemporary processes of construction or adaptation; the provenance of an idea or material; reflections on the aesthetic traditions of provenance in regard to architecture; monuments, landscapes, real estate, property; provenance as a tool in the validation of particular objects/histories and the rejection of others.
Guest editors: Alena Rieger, Simon Mitchell, Mari Lending
PublicationAug 1—Dec 31, 2024- Read more about Toolkit for Today, CCA Montreal
Toolkit for Today, CCA Montreal
Alena Beth Rieger was granted a residency at the Canadian Centre for Architecture during the summer of 2024. During the residency, she engaged with the CCA's archival collection and took part in the PhD seminar, “Toolkit for Today.” Her research looked at demolition across the archive, including in photographs, books, drawings, legal documents, correspondence, films, audio recordings, and newspapers. She worked with the unique situation of CCA—a non-national institution with extensive holdings and searchable archival metadata at the object level. Archival structures tend to favour depth over breadth just as they often reinforce the study of individual authors and singular objects. While the well-known fonds of Cedric Price (who often engaged demolition as part of the design process) and Gordon Matta-Clark (who worked with demolition as part of his artistic practice) are central to the CCA collection, Rieger’s research expanded beyond these two canonical authors. The caveat “(now demolished)” completes the titles of at least 151 objects in the collection. This information, likely added in the interest of clarity, now serves to connect dissonant objects through their common trait of disappearance.
SeminarJul 22—Aug 30, 2024 
Read more about Architectural Fragments, Columbia UniversityArchitectural Fragments, Columbia University
On June 27th, a convening of experts on architectural fragments and materials collections was hosted by Jorge Otero-Pailos, Director and Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University. The aim of the event was to exchange knowledge and explore potential future collaborations on the role of architectural materials and fragments collections in the future of preservation pedagogy.
Alena Rieger and Simon Mitchell, PhD student and postdoc fellow in Provenance Projected, were invited to present their research and contribute to discussions aimed at shaping the future direction of Columbia’s preservation program, following the recent renovation of the Preservation Technology Lab and the launch of an open-access online catalogue of the Lab’s teaching collection. This initiative is part of a broader collaboration with Harvard and RISD.
Columbia's Historic Preservation program is in the process of aligning their collecting strategy with the experimental preservation ethos of their pedagogy. In this context, the convening was further held to discuss common goals and aspirations for the role of materials libraries and architectural fragments collections in the future of preservation pedagogy. It was also an opportunity for each speaker to understand their respective roles within the ecosystem of architectural fragment collections as they intersect with preservation education, imagine possible collaborations, and think creatively about the future.
Other invited speakers :
Matthew Webster, Executive Director of Architectural Preservation and Research, Colonial Williamsburg
Stavroula Golfomitsou, Head of Collections, Getty Conservation Institute
Michael Allen, Executive Director, National Building Arts Center
Johanna Kasubowski, Materials and Media Collections Librarian, Material Order, Harvard Graduate School Of Design
Teresa Harris, Director, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University
Abraham Thomas, Daniel Brodsky Curator of Modern Architecture, Design, and Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Kirk A. Cordell, Executive Director, National Center for Preservation Technology & Training, US National Park Service
ConferenceJun 27, 2024- Read more about Things that Move
Things that Move
The book Things That Move. A Hinterland in Architectural History, written by Tim Anstey and published by the MIT Press, will be launched at the Architectural Association in London on June 5 and at the EAHN Biannual conference in Athens on June 22. In London, Professors Barbara Penner and Adrian Forty of the Bartlett School of Architecture, will join the author in a conversation about the broad themes of the book. In Athens, Tim Anstey, Professor Richard Wittman of the University of Santa Barbara and Professor Richard Anderson of the University of Edinburgh will host a double launch of Anstey’s Things That Move and Anderson’s Wolkenbügel: El Lissitzky as Architect.
Book launchJun 5, 2024 - Read more about Parthenon Provenances at Museo del Prado, Madrid
Parthenon Provenances at Museo del Prado, Madrid
Mari Lending presents the keynote lecture “Parthenon Provenances” in the international conference Maquetas y réplicas del patrimonio arquitectónico español, 1752–1929 at Museo del Prado, June 2–4 2024. The conference is organized by Carolina B. García-Estévez, the director of the research project Mapa de las colecciones de maquetas y réplicas del patrimonio arquitectónico español: entre la identidad nacional y la cultura internacional. Primera parte, 1752-1929.
SeminarJun 3—4, 2024 
Read more about Broadcasting NRKBroadcasting NRK
The Norwegian broadcasting building at Marienlyst in Oslo has arguably been an extremely important national monument for the past eight decades, yet most people know the building primarily from the sounds broadcast from within. The exhibition “Broadcasting NRK” aimed to shift focus towards the building itself, its architecture and infrastructure: how it came about, how it was detailed and constructed, and how it managed to fulfill its function succesfully for so many years. In addition to a series of models and historical reconstructions of the architect Nils Holter’s work, the exhibition included a series of original drawings of the broadcasting building by Holter (1899–1995), never before shown to the public. These extraordinary drawings reveal the intricate, technically advanced and often expressive architectural detailing of the broadcasting building, much of which was inspired by the new medium of radio, and by the visual representation of radio waves. The exhibition was designed and mounted by students and the teachers Jørgen Tandberg and Jonas Løland.It was first shown at the Norwegian Telegraph building downtown Oslo, a buildingdesigned by Holter, and then at the main entrance vestibule of the broadcasting building itself.
ExhibitionMay 24—Jun 8, 2024- Read more about Provenance Projected, Santiago de Compostela
Provenance Projected, Santiago de Compostela
From Monday May 13 through Thursday May 16, the entire international Provenance group is meeting at the Casa RIA in Santiago de Compostela for the first symposium in 2024. David Chipperfield, part of the project group, has converted a former sanatorium into the headquarters of Fundación RIA, and we will be the first guests.
SymposiumMay 13—17, 2024 - Read more about Simon Mitchell, Postdoc-fellow
Simon Mitchell, Postdoc-fellow
On May 1st, Simon Mitchell joined the Provenance team as a postdoctoral research fellow on a three-year contract. Simon completed his PhD in Architecture at the University of Manchester in 2024 and holds a special interest in the storage and archival lives of building materials and components. Over summer, he will visit the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York to meet curators, archivists, and storage managers. There he plans to learn about the clear-up operations and the archival processing of a range architectural vestiges related to the World Trade Center in the aftermath of the disaster.
LectureMay 1, 2024 - Read more about Beyond Provenance, Princeton University
Beyond Provenance, Princeton University
Albena Yaneva lectured in Princeton University School of Architectures' lecture series "Beyond Provenance".
https://soa.princeton.edu/content/beyond-provenance
SymposiumApr 19, 2024 - Read more about Saarinen Embassy, Oslo, Columbia University
Saarinen Embassy, Oslo, Columbia University
Svein Lund, Jonas Norsted, Erik Langdalen, and Jorge Otero-Pailos is delivering the Paul S. Byard Memorial Lecture on the restoration of the former US Embassy in Oslo originally designed by Eero Saarinen in 1959, Monday April 15 at 6.30 pm. Response by Professor Laurie Hawkinson.
SeminarApr 15, 2024 - Read more about Fehn, GSD Harvard University
Fehn, GSD Harvard University
Mari Lending and Erik Langdalen present the guest lecture“Geopolitics and Aggregates. The Nordic Pavilion, Venice” at GSD, Harvard University, April 14 2024.
SeminarApr 14, 2024 - Read more about Shapes of Time, Yale University
Shapes of Time, Yale University
Mari Lending presents “Topical Chronotopes: The Parthenon” in the symposium Shapes of Time, organized be Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Yale University, April 11–13 2024.
ConferenceApr 11—13, 2024 - Read more about Warburg, AA, London
Warburg, AA, London
Tim Anstey, Cathrine Sundem, and Max Svendsen give a talk and tour of the London edition of the Warburg exhibition.
Link: http://occas.aho.no/events/itinerant-archives-exhibition-history/
SeminarMar 7, 2024 - Read more about Repairing Architecture Schools, Places
Repairing Architecture Schools, Places
Jorge Otero-Pailos in conversation with Nancy Levinson. This is the fifth article in the series “Repair Manual.”
https://placesjournal.org/article/repairing-architecture-schools/
PublicationMar 1, 2024 - Read more about Rasjonell og romantisk, National Museum Oslo
Rasjonell og romantisk, National Museum Oslo
Jørgen Tandberg and Amandine Kastler lecture in the National Museum’s public program Rasjonell og romantisk: Tendenser i arkitektonisk tegning, February 14 2024.
SeminarFeb 14, 2024 - Read more about Demolition, ETH Zurich
Demolition, ETH Zurich
Alena Rieger presents “An Interlude: Maison du Peuple from 1963–1991” (online) for the ETH diploma students in the chair of Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke, invited by Linda Stagni.
SeminarFeb 13, 2024 - Read more about Usus, Fructus, Abusus
Usus, Fructus, Abusus
Alena Rieger presents “Usus, Fructus, Abusus”, organized by Cigdem Talu (McGill University) and with Adam Przywara (University of Fribourg) as opponent. DocTalks is an inter-institutional platform organized by a team of researchers from ETH Zurich, USI Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, IE University Madrid, UMass Amherst, Hong Kong University, McGill University and MIT.
SeminarFeb 8, 2024 - Read more about When Architecture Disappears
When Architecture Disappears
Alena Rieger presents the paper “Starts and Stops” in the workshop “When Architecture Disappears: Challenges in Methods and Media”, organized by Linda Stagni (ETH Zurich) and Savia Palate (University of Cyprus), in Nicosia (Cyprus) January 19–20 2024.
ConferenceJan 20—21, 2024 - Read more about Warburg Models, AA London
Warburg Models, AA London
Warburg Models: The Architecture of the Itinerant Archive opened at the Architectural Association on 18th January 2024. Here the Warburg models moved from the powerful elliptical space that had characterized the heart of the Warburg Institute’s 1920s home in Hamburg into the linear space of the Architectural Association gallery, a room not dissimilar in its proportions to that of the Institute’s first research space in Thames House in London. Aspects of the Hamburg display moved with the models, and the gallery in London presented hyper-detailed portraits of the display panels used in the elliptical space of the Warburg-Haus presented the archive material and architectural drawings on which the Warburg Models project was based. In London the Warburg Models were set in the context of an equally stunning exhibit on the history of the AA’s own lantern-slide collection, assembled during the 1890s. Bespoke furniture commissioned for the exhibition in London, and inspired by the designs developed for the Warburg Models exhibition at Blaker (2021), presented facsimile material for both exhibitions.
ExhibitionJan 18—Mar 7, 2024 - Read more about Warburg Models, London
Warburg Models, London
Tim Anstey and Mari Lending’s Warburg Models: Buildings as Bilderfahrzeuge (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2023) is launched at Judith Clark Studio, Notting Hill, London, December 15, 2023 at 6pm.
http://occas.aho.no/events/warburg-models-buildings-as-bilderfahrzeuge/
Book launchDec 15, 2023 - Read more about Warburg Models, Warburg-Haus, Hamburg
Warburg Models, Warburg-Haus, Hamburg
Warburg Models: Buildings as Bilderfahrzeuge at the Warburg-Haus, Hamburg is the second exhibition in a sequence of three editions, beginning with Warburg Models at Blaker, Guttormgaards Arkiv, outside Oslo in May 2021 and ending with Warburg Models: Institutes and Archives, at the Architectural Association, London (18 January– 7 March 2024).
Each model in the exhibition presents an architectural project that was seminal for the intellectual development of Aby Warburg himself, for the individuals who curated his legacy (particularly Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Bing), and for the conceptualisation of Warburg’s famous library. The models are constructed at 1:75 scale and perform as monochrome sculptures suggesting the centrality of colour to the systems of orientation and organization that were developed for the library. Fulfilling Warburg’s desire to create a library in which individual books could be relocated into differing constellations depending on changing lines of research interest, Saxl and Bing adopted a system of categories, identified by single letters, matched by fourteen colours spread across the palette from burnt umber to near white and from sangria to aquamarine. In their flexible cataloguing system each volume in the Warburg collection, regardless of provenance, carried colour strips on its spine, allowing its potential allocation to a complex series of thematic constellations. The Warburg Models each take one of these colours as a datum, producing hyper-detailed descriptions, from building structure and architectural detail to chairs and book lamps, in various materials sprayed with a single hue.
Staged in the hallway and in the iconic Lese- und Vortragssaal at the Warburg-Haus, the models are displayed on plinths inspired by Warburg and Saxl’s exhibition designs. Cloth-covered panels hang within the curved wall of bookshelves that surrounds the elliptical reading room, showing archival material pertaining to this Warburgian architecture, a reinscription of the system originally used to display Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne.
Warburg Models: Buildings as Bilderfahrzeuge is the result of an AHO Architectural graduate seminar run during 2020 and 2021, taught by Tim Anstey and Mari Lending.
ExhibitionNov 30, 2023 - Read more about Events! Galleri Storck, Oslo
Events! Galleri Storck, Oslo
The Art of Collecting Architecture: Events! ran as a master’s seminar course in Autumn 2023. Students were asked to work with four historical events—an exhibition, a tour, a demolition, and a protest—to document and unpack ephemeral moments. The student work was exhibited at Gallery Storck. The course was developed and taught by Alena Beth Rieger and Ingrid Dobloug Roede.
ExhibitionNov 23, 2023 - Read more about Fehn og Bronsealderen
Fehn og Bronsealderen
Mari Lending’s «’Boret store hull i uerstattelig oldsak’: Sverre Fehn og bronsealderen» appeared in Tid og historie – et festskrift for Gro Bjørnerud Mo. Ed. Kjerstin Aukrust og Geir Uvsløkk (Oslo: Novus forlag, 2023).
PublicationNov 15, 2023 - Read more about Provenance, EPFL Lausanne
Provenance, EPFL Lausanne
Mari Lending presents the guest lecture “Provenance Projected: Before the fact” at EPFL Lausanne, November 14 2023.
LectureNov 14—11, 2023 - Read more about Authoring Architecture in Time. Fehn Symposium 2023
Authoring Architecture in Time. Fehn Symposium 2023
The Fehn symposium 2023 at Domkirkeodden, Hamar, was organized by Mari Lending and Erik Langdalen.
PROGRAM
ConferenceOct 23, 2023 - Read more about The Third Ecology, Reykjavik
The Third Ecology, Reykjavik
Alena Rieger presents the paper “Extract, Accumulate, Expel (repeat)” at the EAHN thematic conference The Third Ecology, organized and chaired by Iceland University of the Arts and the Ambasz Institute at the Museum of Modern Art, NY,October 11–14 2023.
ConferenceOct 11—14, 2023 - Read more about Performance and Reception, University of Oslo
Performance and Reception, University of Oslo
Nick Walkley presents ‘The Spectrum of Authorship’ in the PhD Seminar ‘Performance and Reception’, organized by ATTR: Authoritative Texts and Their Receptions at the University of Oslo, October 9–12, 2023.
SeminarOct 9—12, 2023 - Read more about Urnes Stave Church
Urnes Stave Church
Nick Walkley reviewed Urnes Stave Church and Its Global Romanesque Connections for the Journal of the British Archaeological Association 176, no. 1 (2023): 321–23, https://doi.org/10.1080/00681288.2023.2234760.
PublicationSep 1, 2023 - Read more about Whose Modernism? Jyväskylä, Finland
Whose Modernism? Jyväskylä, Finland
Jørgen Tandberg presents the paper “Kringkastingshuset, Oslo: An Open Work” in the conference “Whose Modernism?” at the 5th Alvar Aalto Researchers’ Network Seminar in Jyväskylä, Finland, June 15 2023.
ConferenceJun 15, 2023 - Read more about Digital Urnes
Digital Urnes
Nick Walkley presents «Digitalrekonstruksjonen av Urnesstilens kirke» to the work group for Urnes World Heritage Centre, Oslo/online, April 14 2023.
WorkshopApr 14, 2023 - Read more about Digital Humanties, Athens
Digital Humanties, Athens
Nick Walkley presents ‘Knowledge of a Construction or a Construction of Knowledge?’, in the PhD Seminar Digital Humanities 2.0, organized by ATTR: Authoritative Texts and Their Receptions(UiO), at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, March 13–17 2023.
SeminarMar 13—17, 2023 - Read more about Metode, Deep Surface
Metode, Deep Surface
Nick Walkley published the article “The Matter of Illusion: Seeing the Surface of Facsimiles” in Metode, vol.1 Deep Surface (2023): https://metode.r-o-m.no/artikler/essay/the-matter-of-illusion-seeing-the-surface-of-facsimiles.
PublicationJan 15, 2023 - Read more about Interiores Numeriques, Paris
Interiores Numeriques, Paris
Nick Walkley presented the paper “Factum Foundation, Capture and Re-capture at Palazzo Te” at the at Interiores Numeriques conference, German Centre for Art History, Paris, November 16–18, 2022.
ConferenceNov 16—24, 2022 - Read more about Geopolitics in Miniature, Venice
Geopolitics in Miniature, Venice
Mari Lending and Erik Langdalen organized the symposium The Nordic Pavilion: Geopolitics in MiniatureConference, Venice 29–30 September 2022. The conference was sponsored by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and took place at IUAV´s Palazzo Badoer.
The Nordic Pavilion turns 60 this year, and it is 70 years since the establishment of the Nordic Council. Sverre Fehn’s masterpiece in the Venetian Giardini was conceived and built in a cold war climate, against the backdrop of friendships and animosities, power play and diplomacy. The detours and disappointments, the successes and failures of the Venice affair make a prism in miniature to understand the mindset and conflicting ambitions of the Nordic countries in the 1950s and 1960s. Recent geopolitical developments and the Nordic NATO debates bring a renewed topicality to the Nordic postwar cooperation in Venice.
Based on AHO professors Mari Lending and Erik Langdalen’s book Sverre Fehn, Nordic Pavilion, Venice. Voices from the Archives (Pax/Lars Müller, 2021), and generously supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oslo, the symposium The Nordic Pavilion: Geopolitics in Miniature opened with a reception in the pavilion with welcoming words by Martin Andestad from the Norwegian Embassy in Rome, Benno Albrecht, the dean of UIAV, Irene Lønne, the dean of AHO.
To contextualize their micro-historical account on the origins and making of the Nordic Pavilion, and the extensive cast involved in its making, Lending and Langdalen brought together colleagues from across the world to illuminate Nordic, postwar geopolitics with an eye to present political debates. In the wonderful Tafuri room in UIAV’s Palazzo Badoer, Mari Lending and Erik Langdalen (AHO), Iver Neumann (Fridtjof Nansens institutt, Oslo), Léa-Catherine Szacka (University of Manchester), Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen (Yale University), Helena Mattson (KTH, Stockholm), Markus Lähteenmäki (University of Helsinki), Tom Avermaete (ETH Zürich), Antonello Alici (Università Politecnica, Ancona), Adrian Forty (Bartlett, London), and Dag Erik Elgin (artist, Oslo), discussed topics spanning from The Nordic states between the US and the USSR, The Geopolitics of Nature and The Biennale and the Nation, to Soviet in Postwar Venice and Nordic Geopolitics beyond Europe, shedding new light on a familiar period in European architecture.
ConferenceSep 29—30, 2022 - Read more about The Architecture of Copies, Aarhus University
The Architecture of Copies, Aarhus University
Mari Lending gives the keynote lecture "Serialized Originals" and Nick Walkley presents the paper “The Urnes Portal from Icon to Origin through its subjective reproduction” at The Architecture of Copies/Copies of Architecture conference, Aarhus, Denmark, September 22–23 2022.
ConferenceSep 22—23, 2022 - Read more about Factum Arte workshop, Mantua
Factum Arte workshop, Mantua
Nick Walkley presents the paper “Tracing a Trajectory: A case study in the reproduction of art and architectural ornament”at the Factum Foundation workshop in Digital Humanities, conservation, and digital scanning, in collaboration with Scuola di Palazzo Te, Mantua, Italy, September 12–16, 2022.
WorkshopSep 12—16, 2022 - Read more about Fehn, Nordic Pavilion
Fehn, Nordic Pavilion
Mari Lending presents the lecture «The historicity of a concrete object: Sverre Fehn’s Nordic Pavilion in Venice» for the 20th Century Society at AHO, August 25 2022.
LectureAug 22, 2022 - Read more about Fehn and Archives, Deichman Library, Oslo
Fehn and Archives, Deichman Library, Oslo
Mari Lending and Erik Langdalen present the keynote lecture “Voices from the archives. Sverre Fehn’s Nordic Pavilion in Venice” at ATTR: Authoritative Texts and Their Receptions’s international conference Collections, Archives & Libraries, Deichman Library, Oslo June 9 2022.
LectureJun 9, 2022 - Read more about Archiving Architecture: Fehn
Archiving Architecture: Fehn
Mari Lending and Erik Langdalen present the guest lecture “Archiving Architecture” at the University of Manchester, May 26 2022.
LectureMay 22, 2022 - Read more about Fehn, Documenta Kassel
Fehn, Documenta Kassel
Mari Lending presents the guest lecture “The Historicity of a Concrete Object. Sverre Fehn’s Nordic Pavilion in Venice” in the Documenta lecture series, University of Kassel, May 18 2022.
LectureMay 18, 2022 - Read more about Fehn, University of Oslo
Fehn, University of Oslo
Mari Lending and Erik Langdalen present the keynote lecture «The Historicity of a Concrete Object: Sverre Fehn, Nordic Pavilion, Venice» at the annual conference Norsk arkitektur og arkitektonisk kultur 1950–1970, organized by Espen Johnsen, University of Oslo March 10–11 2022.
LectureMar 10—11, 2022 - Read more about Bilderfahrzeuge Warburg-Haus, Hamburg
Bilderfahrzeuge Warburg-Haus, Hamburg
Mari Lending presents “Monuments en route. Shipping plaster architecture in the nineteenth century” in the conference «Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology” at the Warburg-Haus, Hamburg, October 29–30 2021.
ConferenceOct 29—30, 2021 - Read more about Wood carving, Stiklestad
Wood carving, Stiklestad
Nick Walkley participates in the workshop Wood carving in the Urnes Style with Kai Johansen, in association with Fortidsminneforeningen, at StiklestadOctober 15–17 2021.
WorkshopOct 15—17, 2021 - Read more about Warburg Models at Blaker
Warburg Models at Blaker
Architecture, interiors and technological systems were crucial for how Aby Warburg and his followers interrogated culture. In Warburg’s native Hamburg a purpose designed building, the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg, was completed in 1926 to accommodate his remarkable library and to disseminate the ideas it generated. In the same year a transformation was initiated to create a Planetarium for Hamburg in a disused water tower, a project that would demonstrate Warburg’s radical theories about how travelling images carried fragments of antique reality into modernity. When the Warburg Institute transferred to London in 1933, this fascination with architectural organisation continued through projects designed by the avant-garde architectural group Tecton to house the institute and its directors during the 1930s, in the creation of successful exhibitions during the 1940s and in the construction of the library’s present home at Woburn Square, Bloomsbury in the 1950s.
Through six models at 1:75 scale, the exhibition shows how the Warburg scholars projected a tie between their own occupancy of architectural space and their shared ideas about intellectual order and cultural survival. The models are colour coded with the Modernist palette of colours used by the Warburg Institute to organise its collection of books according to “the rule of the good neighbour”. Each model emphasizes a certain architectural aspect of the building portrayed. The Warburg models will be shown in Blaker outside Oslo, Hamburg, London, and New York (2021–24).
The exhibition is part of the research project Re-inscribing the Warburg Institute at OCCAS (the Oslo Centre for Critical Architectural Studies), AHO. The graduate seminar Warburg Models is conducted by professors Tim Anstey and Mari Lending. The models are built by Pernille Ahlgren, Christian Berg, Amalie Elvegård, Nora Kilstad, Anne Lise Ladegård, Pål Sanchez-Paredes, Silje Seim, Cathrine Sundem, Maximilian Svendsen, Karina Tang, and Mara Trübenbach.
ExhibitionMay 1—30, 2021 - Read more about Fehn, Princeton University
Fehn, Princeton University
As the Venice Biennale and the planned book launch was cancelled due to the pandemic, Mari Lending and Erik Langdalen first presented Sverre Fehn, Nordic Pavilion, Venice. Voices from the Archives (Zurich: Lars Müller/Oslo: Pax) in Beatriz Colomina’s Media&Modernity series at Princeton School of Architecture, April 6 2021 with the lecture «The Nordic Pavilion in Venice: An Intra-Canonical Outlook». Commentator: Adrian Forty.
LectureApr 21, 2021