Revisit: Hedmark Museum in Hamar, Norway by Sverre Fehn

Located on the outskirts of Hamar, a small town an hour and a half north of Oslo by train, what is commonly known as the Hedmark Museum is part of Domkirkeodden, named after an old cathedral from the 1200s. It is a popular recreational area next to Mjøsa, Norway’s largest lake. The entire area serves as an open-air folk museum, with buildings from different time periods re-erected on the site. The building that Fehn was asked to transform, Storhamarlåven (which remains the name generally used by locals), had been a functional barn (låve being the Norwegian word for barn). It was originally built in the early 1700s on the ruins of an old bishop’s manor that had been destroyed by Swedish soldiers in 1567; excavations in 1947 started to reveal the ruins underneath.

On the basis of his increasing national renown, Fehn was commissioned in 1967 and asked to propose a concept for the transformation of the dilapidated building into a historical museum, which was to open to the public six years later. Fehn’s small office, at this point consisting only of him and one, sometimes two, employees, worked on the project for several years and produced a work of rare significance. Along with the Nordic Pavilion in Venice, the Hedmark Museum is Fehn’s most universally celebrated project, contributing to a body of work that would ultimately gain him the 1997 Pritzker Prize. It is still considered one of the most important works of Norwegian post-war architecture. He mostly concentrated on just one or two building projects at a time, otherwise spending his days on competitions or teaching at the Oslo School of Architecture.

Fehn’s radical approach to restoration is best exemplified in his statement, ‘only by manifesting the present, can you make the past speak’. In creating a dialogue with the existing building, he placed old and new on equal footings. The old barn, itself an important historical landmark, was restored while the ground beneath was opened up for further excavations. Maintaining the low stone walls of the original barn, he extended the walls upwards and added a roof, all built in timber to reconstruct the external appearance of the original barn. 

He allowed himself to focus on curating the movement and experience of the visitors, and the atmospheric qualities produced by light entering through stone walls and skylights, as well as the theatrical display of old artefacts along the visitors’ paths. With its stone walls accumulated and pieced together over the course of centuries, the ancient ruins and the new elements introduced by Fehn, the site is more akin to a bricolage of elements where layers of time and materials bring each other to life. Fehn said of himself that he ‘came of age in the shadow of Modernism’; but having to work primarily with an interior, and being able to consider the work a restoration project rather than as a definitive building seemingly freed him from the formal constraints and Modernist orthodoxies visible in his earlier work.

‘Each material establishes a separate formal and constructive language with as much presence as that of the old barn’ 

In total, four new materials were added to the composition by Fehn in his 1970s’ museum project: concrete, timber, glass and iron. Each material communicates a separate formal and constructive language, establishing as strong a presence to the visitor as that of the old barn walls and the ancient ruins of the manor; there is no visible hierarchy of importance. Fehn’s use of concrete is limited to creating the new system of ramps and levels, making possible the excavations below the barn by raising the visitors, and touching the ground lightly in as few places as possible. Its execution is sculptural, yet raw and unrefined, marked by its timber formwork. In places within the interior, you are encapsulated by concrete ramps and supports, the interventions almost completely hiding the original building. Timber construction, mainly glulam, is used to recreate the roof of the barn, taking inspiration from the timber construction of old farm buildings in the area. In the words of architect Christian Norberg-Schulz, it aims to ‘reinvent, without becoming pastiche’. Today, this distinction seems of less concern than it was at the time. 

When published in a mid-1970s issue of the Norwegian journal Byggekunst, the presentation of the museum was followed by pages devoted to the work of young Postmodern duo Jan & Jon. Fehn himself is said to have disliked Postmodernism for its lack of sincerity, and his project is clearly an attempt to grapple with history in a way that he himself could support, given his Modernist education and former prominent membership in the by-then discontinued Norwegian branch of CIAM, PAGON (Progressive Architects Group Oslo Norway). Reconstructing the barn using contemporary techniques was a way of doing this: glue-laminated timber was a relatively new material in Norway at the time.

Iron is used in the project to create unique fixing devices for all the artefacts on display; every one different, every one a sculptural meditation on the act of display. During the design period, Fehn and his companions studied and discussed the construction details of Carlo Scarpa, an influence most evident in the cutting and folding of metal sheets to produce display cases and stands. In the museum, every material system has its own logic and ‘truth’, not to be compromised. There is no abstraction, only literal material systems, each performing a different function. The meeting point between systems was the most important place in which to provide a ‘revelation’ about this to a receptive audience. One example is the way the roof timber structure is supported by columns of different lengths, to meet the varying heights of the old stone walls. As a construction detail, this meeting point does not attempt to hide or fade into the background – it stands out and holds your attention. A similar approach is visible in the way glass is fixed to the outside of the old stone walls, rather than within the openings, separated from the walls with bolts and spacers, and without a frame. 

The old barn consisted of elements from the 13th to the 20th centuries; as Fehn himself would describe it: ‘When the past works in tandem with the past, it can be difficult to spot.’ Half a century later, this is partly true for Fehn’s own interventions. We read them as objects from the past, in the same way that we read the old barn walls and the ruins as objects from the past – they share a category. Rather than an old bulding with a series of new components, they appear as a series of human interventions accumulated over a millennium.

Rereading texts written by Fehn himself, I am struck by the number of times he conveys a sense of loss: the loss of the horizon in the realisation that the Earth is a globe, the loss of myth caused by Western science and technology. Similar to many northern Modernists, Fehn travelled south to search for more authentic forms of civilisation. In encountering unplanned, local mural architecture in Morocco in 1951, he describes a feeling, not of discovery, but of recognition. Quoting Picasso, he writes: ‘I find, and I am in what I find.’ His texts from this period express a longing for something eternal that can only be found in the most archaic, and this is also clearly expressed in the material choices and detailing of Storhamarlåven, where each material is shown only in its purest version. The ‘sharp edges’ between its pieces are what makes the building able to function as a collage. 

This perhaps also explains the approach Fehn took in his design of the two pavilions completed in 2005 on the site. They appear as separate architectural experiments in the act of sheltering ruins, without really engaging with the existing museum formally. Located completely outside the old barn, they had no way of approaching the original architecture without it turning into the pastiche Fehn found disingenuous. They are therefore very much ‘themselves’, and not as appreciated as the architect’s first series of interventions. It should be noted that the ruins of the nearby cathedral had in 1985 been enclosed in a large pavilion, as a protection from moisture. This design, by Norwegian firm Lund+Slaatto Arkitekter, is the polar opposite of Fehn’s approach: a large tent-structure in glass and steel, completely transparent and keeping a clear distance from the cathedral ruins themselves.

‘Rather than an old building with a series of new components, they appear as a series of human interventions accumulated over a millennium’

Fehn refers to the museum building typology as ‘the dance of dead objects’, and makes it clear that he considers a museum vastly different from other building programmes. Yet, the expressive qualities of Storhamarlåven – its use of exposed concrete, single-layer glass and wafer-thin roof structure – were largely made possible because the project has little insulation and few vapour barriers. Fehn’s later museum projects therefore appeared very different from the Hedmark Museum, having to adhere to technical requirements, resulting in more traditional buildings. Tellingly, a new building is planned on site, which will accommodate functions that the existing museum lacks, such as heated exhibition spaces, storage, a restaurant and staff offices. Discarding these concerns, Fehn’s general approach to restoration, creatively collaging old and new, was radical at the time but appears today to be very contemporary.