 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | As recipient of the 1997 Pritzker Architecture Prize—the profession’s highest honor—Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn has had an impact not only in his home country but around the globe. His projects, often described as being instilled with a human quality, include the Norwegian Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Exhibition and the Nordic Pavilion at the 1962 Venice Biennale, the Hamar Bispegaard Museum in Hamar, the Glacier Museum in Fjaerland Fjord, and the Aukrust Museum in Alvdal.
Fehn has been strongly influenced by Scandinavia’s breathtaking landscape and light conditions. His design sensibility is characterized by a great respect for material and construction. As a professor of long standing at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, he has distilled his complex creative process, passing his thoughts and philosophies to new generations of architects.
This study of Fehn’s work provides an intimate glimpse into the world of this great postwar modernist. Author Per Olaf Fjeld presents both biography and perceptive critique as he covers all of Fehn’s major projects, built and unbuilt, from world-renowned museums to lesser-known houses. Never-before-published comments by Fehn from lectures, interviews, and conversations with students as well as dynamic sketches are featured, opening a window into the mind of this poetic and personal architect. |
Average Customer Rating:  Thoughts of a poetic architect If you are Severre Fehn's fan, this book will be an extremely rewarding read.
Author of the book worked with Fehn, wrote a book with Fehn, and taught with Fehn.
The book is an insider's story. It covers many anecdotes and casual conversations
about Fehn.
The book is divided into chapters, more or less chronologically, covering similar
themes and issues that occupied Fehn. In between author's extremely well crafted
paragraphs, Fehn's own words and speakings are inserted (bold text) with his sketches.
Pritzker Receipient, fans of Fehn remember his famous chalkboard talkings.
He tells a story about his thoughts and buildings in Norwegian sense of place and poetry.
Succint and terse, yet, deep and mythical.
His storytelling of the site and his architectural response to it are charged with
almost primitive metaphors. Norwegian Pavilion in Venice and Glacier Museum in Fjaerland are best
examples that shows Fehn's oratory structure manifested in material structure.
Semantics of Fehn is like that of a blade of sword, constantly cutting and reflecting.
It cuts earth and reflects light. Readers of the book will be chilled by the sound of
his words and thrilled by the essence of his contents.
The book is tantalizing in other matters as well. Fehn's relationship and friendship with other
famous architects in Scandinavia, Italy, and the US is well documented. His stay
and influence in Venice (Scarpa), Paris (Prouve), and New York (Hejduk) is also well told.
His international networking with Team X and his personal retreating with School of Oslo
also bi-polarizes Fehn's communal relationship and artistic solitude.
If a prospect reader likes Kahn, Lewerentz, and Zumthor. Here is another great book
with many poetic surprises.
|  |
Select button not working? 
