The Oslo-based architecture firm Snøhetta built a hut made of Corten steel walls and glass in the Tverfjell area in the barren Norwegian landscape. The Tverfjell area was used as a test site for bombs and other munitions for 100 years. Now you can watch reindeer there undisturbed.

Anyone who founds their small architecture firm high above the infamous Dovrehallen pub in Oslo, takes Paolo Conte as the inspiration for an important competition design, builds at Ground Zero and, with the Oslo Opera House, makes us forget Utzorn’s Sydney Opera House, can also give this firm the name Snøhetta. This is the name of the highest mountain in the Dovre Mountains, which are almost sacred to Norwegians. It is named in the Norwegian constitution as a guarantor of stability (which is why Norway rejected the euro) and appears in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt.

Norway’s most important cultural prize is named after this shady character, which Snøhetta was the first architecture firm to win in 2008.It is therefore clear that Snøhetta was awarded the contract to build two cabins on Tverfjell. Unprosaically, it is a spacious wooden box with a communication-enhancing two-person outhouse and an observation hut, which is assigned to the Hjerkinn Wild Reindeer Research Center.

It should be noted that the Tverfjell area (fjell means mountain) was used as a test site for bombs and other munitions for around 100 years and was also home to an important ore mine. When the military found a better place than the Dovre National Park, the renaturation began: munitions salvage, replanting with pioneer trees and a research center to look after the Dovre’s wild reindeer population of almost 10,000 animals and the reintroduced musk oxen.

As one half of Norwegians like to run up mountains super fast and full of energy and use the wild nature as a sports ground, and the other half like to drive to beautiful landscapes in comfort, a hut was donated to the battered Tverfjell, for which an attractive name is still being sought. Just half an hour’s walk from the parking lot leads to a classic box made of a concrete platform, Corten steel walls and glass.

The panoramic window offers a view of Snøhetta, which is breathtaking in itself. However, the rear wall of the building offers architectural competition. It is made of pine wood according to all the rules of craftsmanship. A wooden sculpture that is only possible through computer-aided modeling. Seating landscape, wall and eye-catcher inside and out – contrasted by an elegant French fireplace, which can radiate a little warmth, but is also suitable for grilling sausages.Only those who are really lucky will occasionally see reindeer grazing in the distance. Black balls of wool, the musk oxen, are more likely to appear in the field of vision.

The building was inaugurated in June and is now featured in the November issue of Garten + Landschaft , along with other highlights of Norwegian landscape architecture.

The 2019 ASLA conference questioned US identity in troubled times. A Congressional Report The term “elephant in the room” has a nice double meaning. On the one hand, it describes something important that is known to everyone but not explicitly addressed. On the other hand, it also describes a huge, trampled something that can dismantle given structures without much sensitivity. In this […]

The 2019 ASLA conference questioned US identity in troubled times. A conference report

The term “elephant in the room” has a nice double meaning. On the one hand, it describes something important that is known to everyone but not explicitly addressed. On the other hand, however, it also describes a huge hitchhiking something that can dismantle given structures without much sensitivity. In this ambiguity, the current US President Trump was precisely the elephant at this year’s annual conference of the ASLA, the American Society of Landscape Architects, in San Diego. There was little explicit mention of The Donald and his sometimes elephantine policies. But their consequences for the American present played an implicit role again and again.

Of course, this applied most directly to the many panels and presentations dealing with the consequences of climate change. The environmental politician and researcher Gina McCarthy laid the atmospheric foundation for this, so to speak. In her rhetorically brilliant presentation, she made it clear that the Obama administration has launched many concrete legislative initiatives. Not all of these have yet been revised – and it is unlikely that they can all be withdrawn. “The train is running”, was her ultimately optimistic message. The audience acknowledged this with standing ovations, but as a fact-oriented European, it took some getting used to McCarthy’s mass preaching style.

A kind of moderate basic ecological optimism almost inevitably emanates from events such as the ASLA conference, because they deal with concrete steps towards improvement. One field session, for example, presented the regeneration of the San Diego River ecosystem. Other panels presented solutions for areas in the hot and dry southwest of the USA, some of which are becoming uninhabitable due to global warming, or landscape architecture approaches for better air quality. The impression is that landscape architecture is aware of its responsibility and accepts it even in a harsh political climate.

However, this political and social climate also played another role. Many discussions addressed the identity-shaping and negotiating role of spatial planning. The USA (and not only the USA) appears today as a country in search of its “identity”. There is a kind of existential insecurity in society as a whole. The space in which we live can take on an orientation function – for entire societies, for smaller cultural units, but also for individuals and their immediate social environment. In this context, a panel on US post-war squares was very exciting.

The head of the “Parks Conservancy” of the city of Pittsburgh presented the careful redesign of Mellow Square in Pittsburgh. Ken Smith, a well-known landscape architect in the USA, presented three different redesigns from New York and San Francisco, including the outdoor space in front of Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Seagram Building in Manhattan. It was clear from all the plaza projects presented that US-American collective memory is being negotiated here. Post-war modernism was formative for US culture – and must be treated with corresponding care. “It’s about spatial integrity, but also historical integrity,” says Charles Birnbaum, head of the Cultural Landscape Foundation.

The elephant “La Frontera”

The question naturally arises as to who ascribes integrity or to whom it applies. After all, the idea of society as a homogeneous unit is disintegrating, and not just in the USA. Accordingly, it is important to unite different perspectives in landscape planning or at least allow them to have their say. Allowing heterogeneity was the overarching theme of many panels. “Landscapes with an edge” could be created, was the tenor of a discussion on the importance of subculture in planning. “Allow provocation, create spaces for subversion”, was the plea of planner and podcaster Michael Todoran (he runs the podcast “LArchitect”). The question is where subculture, where provocation ends and where mere commercialization begins. Whether, for example, the eScooters that are also filling the streets in the USA can be considered a subculture, as suggested in the panel, is open to debate.

Nevertheless, the cultural sensitivity of this year’s ASLA conference was high. However, one culturally charged topic that would have been obvious given the San Diego venue was unfortunately largely left out: Mexico and the planning challenge of the border. A (quickly booked out) field trip to Tijuana did take place. But the border was hardly mentioned in the content panels. And this despite the fact that the new ASLA President Wendy Miller told Garten + Landschaft in an interview that the planners had the planning dimensions of “La Frontera” in mind (you can read the interview in full at www.topos-magazine.com). But perhaps that border also represents a kind of elephant in the mental room of US culture. It’s there, it’s huge, but it’s being hidden as much as possible.