PRITZKER AWARD 1997

1. Sverre Fehn
August 14, 2019
Nordic Pavilion in Venice. Image © Åke E:son Lindman
1997 Pritzker Prize laureate Sverre Fehn (August 14th 1924 – February 23rd 2009) was a leader
in Post World War II Scandinavian architecture. “His work has an intuitive confidence in how to
use the Nordic landscape and its particular light conditions within the built culture, and yet
throughout his career each period has reflected a refined sensitivity to international changes and
attitudes in architecture,” said his close collaborator Per Olaf Fjeld. “It can be compared to a
poetic work conceived on an isolated mountain by a writer with an uncanny, intuitive sense of
what is going on in the towns below.” [1]

2. The Nordic Pavilion (Giardini, Venice). Image © Åke E:son Lindman
This article was originally published on March 30, 2016. To read the stories behind other
celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.
Three were originally invited to draw up plans for a ‘Nordic’ pavilion: the Finnish partnership
Reima and Raili Pietilä, Sverre Fehn from Norway, and the Swede, Klas Anshelm. Following the
selection of Fehn’s proposal in 1959, Gotthard Johansson wrote in the Svenska Dagbladet of the
project’s “stunning simplicity [...], without too many architectural overtones”[1] – a proposal for
a space able to unite a triumvirate of nations under one (exceptional) roof.

3. Courtesy of Norwegian National
Museum
Though architectural history is replete with bricks, stones, and steel, there is no rule that states
that architecture must be ‘solid’. Sverre Fehn, one of the most prominent architects of
postwar Norway, regularly made use of heavy materials like concrete and stone masonry in his
projects [1]. In this way, his proposal for the Nordic Pavilion at the Osaka World Expo in
1970 could be seen as an atypical exploration of a more delicate structure. Representing a very
different aspect of ‘Modernity’ than his usual work, Fehn’s “breathing balloon” pavilion stands
not only in contradiction to Fehn’s design canon, but to that of traditional architecture as a whole.
+ 10

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'In Therapy' – the Nordic Contribution to the 2016 Venice Biennale
January 20, 2016
The Nordic nations—Finland, Norway and Sweden—have reached a pivotal point in their
collective, and individual, architectural identities. The Grandfathers of the universal Nordic
style—including the likes of Sverre Fehn, Peter Celsing, Gunnar Asplund, Sigurd
Lewerentz, Alvar Aalto, and Eero Saarinen—provided a foundation upon which architects and
designers since have both thrived on and been confined by. The Nordic Pavilion at the 2016
Venice Biennale—directed by Alejandro Aravena—will be the moment to probe: to discuss,
argue, debate and challenge what Nordic architecture really is and, perhaps more importantly,
what it could be in years to come.
We're asking for every practice (and individual) across the world who have built work
in Finland, Norway and Sweden in the past eight years to submit their project(s) and be part of
the largest survey of contemporary Nordic architecture ever compiled.
Update: the Open Call for In Therapy closed on the 24th January 2016.
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Sverre Fehn’s Drawings for Venice's Nordic Pavilion To Be Exhibited
in Oslo
June 16, 2014

5. © Ferruzzi
Norwegian architect and Pritzker Laureate Sverre Fehn’s original drawings for the Nordic
Pavilion in Venice are to be presented alongside Ferruzzi’s monochromatic photographs of the
building in an exhibition at the National Museum of Architecture in Oslo. Venice: Fehn’s Nordic
Pavilion documents the incredible task undertaken by Fehn who, at the age of thirty-four, won the
competition to design the pavilion and subsequently won international acclaim when the building
was completed in 1962.

6. + 8
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Sverre Fehn 1924-2009
February 25, 2009

7. Two days ago, norwegian architect Sverre Fehn died at 84 years old.
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