Mari Lending, Erik Langdalen

Sverre Fehn, Nordic Pavilion, Venice

Voices from the Archives

Sverre Fehn’s Nordic Pavilion in Venice is a masterpiece of postwar architecture. The young Norwegian architect won the competition for its design in 1958 and the building was inaugurated in 1962. Through six decades, the beloved structure has been mired in phenomenology, poetry, and the personal memory of the select. Looking at the archives, a very different story emerges.

In minute detail, this book presents the history of the origins and making of the Nordic Pavilion; spanning from the geopolitical context in an increasingly tense Cold War atmosphere, to the aggregates in the concrete of the audacious roof construction, to the iconic trees, many of which had already died before the second exhibition in 1964.

Sverre Fehn, Nordic Pavilion, Venice. Voices from the Archives documents the extensive cast involved in the making of the Nordic Pavilion, spanning from kings, prime ministers, bureaucrats, ambassadors, museum directors, architects, and a myriad of artists’ associations, to Venetian dignitaries, engineers, gardeners, lawyers, and plumbers. The pavilion was conceived and built 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. Richly illustrated with previously unpublished images, among them many photographs taken by Fehn himself, the archival evidence also sheds new light on one of the great Nordic architects of the recent past.

Sverre Fehn’s Nordic Pavilion in Venice is a masterpiece of postwar architecture. The young Norwegian architect won the competition for its design in 1958 and the building was inaugurated in 1962. Through six decades, the beloved structure has been mired in phenomenology, poetry, and the personal memory of the select. Looking at the archives, a very different story emerges.

In minute detail, this book presents the history of the origins and making of the Nordic Pavilion; spanning from the geopolitical context in an increasingly tense Cold War atmosphere, to the aggregates in the concrete of the audacious roof construction, to the iconic trees, many of which had already died before the second exhibition in 1964.

Sverre Fehn, Nordic Pavilion, Venice. Voices from the Archives documents the extensive cast involved in the making of the Nordic Pavilion, spanning from kings, prime ministers, bureaucrats, ambassadors, museum directors, architects, and a myriad of artists’ associations, to Venetian dignitaries, engineers, gardeners, lawyers, and plumbers. The pavilion was conceived and built 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. Richly illustrated with previously unpublished images, among them many photographs taken by Fehn himself, the archival evidence also sheds new light on one of the great Nordic architects of the recent past.


“Few people want to record the problems that building projects often cause, so it is a pleasure to find one described with such remarkable, beautiful fidelity.”
Charles Saumarez Smith

“The photos, drawings, and meeting transcript are a great start to an impressive book that is packed with an enormous amount of archival information on the building, one that many people consider a modern masterpiece [...]
A Daily Dose of Architecture Books


Author(s): Mari Lending, Erik Langdalen

In collaboration with Pax Forlag

With contributions by Gro Bonesmo, Helen Dorey, João Doria, Adrian Forty, Pedram Ghelichi, Daniela Moderini, Camille Norment, John Ochsendorf, María Dolores Sánchez-Moya

Design: Aslak Gurholt, Martin Asbjørnsen

20 × 26 cm, 7 ½ × 10 ¼ in

296 pages, 367 illustrations

paperback

2021, 978-3-03778-639-0, English
CHF 50.00

Mari Lending

Mari Lending is a professor in architectural theory and history, and a founding member of OCCAS (the Oslo Centre for Critical Architectural Studies). She did her first dissertation (Mag. art) in comparative literature on Marcel Proust at the University of Oslo (1997) and defended her Ph.D. dissertation in architectural historiography at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design in 2005. From 2005 through 2009, she was a postdoctoral fellow on the research project Modernism on Display. Lending has been a visiting scholar at the GSD, Harvard University, Columbia University, NY, and at Yale School of Architecture. Among her most recent books are Plaster Monuments. Architecture and the Power of Reproduction and, with Peter Zumthor, A Feeling of History.

Erik Fenstad Langdalen

Erik Fenstad Langdalen is a practicing architect, a professor of architecture, and the head of the Institute of Form, Theory and History at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). At AHO he teaches experimental preservation master studios with a focus on post-war architecture involving urban transformation, concrete structures, systems, and political spaces. His architectural practice focusses on restauration and transformation of historic wood buildings, and he is the owner of a listed farm managed as a cultural and educational Erik Fenstad Langdalen (*1967) is a practicing architect, a professor of architecture, and the head of the Institute of Form, Theory and History at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). He holds a Diploma from The Oslo School of Architecture and a Master in Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University GSAPP. At AHO, he teaches experimental preservation master studios with a focus on post-war architecture involving urban transformation, concrete structures, systems, and political spaces. His publications include Experimental Preservation (2016) and Sverre Fehn, Nordic Pavilion, Venice (2021).