Project: Ungen, architect Gartnerfuglen arkitekter

In 2020, the young architectural office Gartnerfuglen received the prestigious Oslo Architecture Association’s architecture Prize for Ungen/The Kid, one of their very first commissions. The jury highlighted the project as an inspiration for interventions in the historical areas of Oslo, demonstrating the value of quality and craft: «The project has been carried out with obvious care for all of its phases, from its conceptual presence in the urban context to the articulation of the individual rooms’ construction, light, materials and details.»

This small extension to a small house is a infill project in the former working-class areas along Akerselva, the river that hydro-powered the city’s first industrialization. Its name is taken from the play Ungen (1911) by Oskar Braaten, a chronicler of the first factories and the lives of the factory workers. Today both the industrial power and misery of these areas are substituted by the characteristics of gentrification. In the continuous discussions between the need for transformation and the wish for preservation, Gartnerfuglen’s work is worth noticing. In his essay, Erling Dokk Holm ponders that the addition .does not only reflect the character of its immediate surroundings, but also the deeper structural changes that Oslo has undergone,» and that also the architectural project .is something of an illegitimate child of the powers at play within cultural preservation.»

This volume presents the full set of drawings for the Gartnerfuglen project. Historical photographs show the context of the building. The architects have documented the building process, and the photographer Ivar Kvaal gives his interpretation of the architecture.

Essay by Erling Dokk Holm
Edited by Karl Otto Ellefsen and Dagfinn Sagen