My partner is a trained musician. He plays the piano and tells jokes. He often jokes that since there are many doctors who play a bit of piano in their spare time, he is a bit of a doctor in their spare time. Then the audience has a good laugh. A scenario where a pianist puts on a doctor’s coat and writes prescriptions, makes diagnoses and operates is so unimaginable that it becomes funny. I myself am a qualified architect and have five years of education. Do you also want to call yourself an architect? Be a bit of an architect in your spare time? It is free to go. You don’t need an education. Architect is not a protected title. You can actually design both nurseries, schools and homes without having a hint of architectural training. This is not bullshit, and I don’t think it’s clever or funny. So why is there so much bad architecture in Norway? The debate reaches new heights, and the Architecture Rebellion receives applause. New apartment blocks are compared to bunkers. CONTROVERSIAL AREA: Løren in Oslo has been used as an example of how similar, boring and massive many of the new residential areas in the capital are. Others think things have turned out really well at Løren. Photo: Aftenposten The police report that the design of new districts promotes crime. Modern architecture is frowned upon, the architects are frowned upon, the builders are frowned upon. Who is to blame and what should we do? Here is a proposal for a package sequence for better architecture in Norway: 1. Raise the ambitions Every new building project helps to create our cities and places – the surroundings we will live and live in, and be proud of in the future. Knowledge of the importance of architecture should give politicians ambition. Set requirements for architectural competence for everything to be built, and requirements for architectural education for those who are to be allowed to call themselves architects. Design good orders for the architects. Emphasize both the appearance and effect of the architecture. 2. Elevate architecture politically Establish a National Architect, a national representative for the totality and quality of the physical surroundings. A national architect can raise the understanding of what good architecture can contribute. Create a housing ministry that can ensure good housing for everyone in Norway, regardless of where in the country we live and how much money we have in the bank. A clear and holistic political responsibility can lead to clearer priorities for what is planned and built. It is not right that this is one of many tasks in the Ministry of Local Government and District Affairs. A Minister for Housing will be able to rebuild a fair Housing Norway by setting demands for housing quality and ordering housing that people can afford to live in. The Minister of State can also ensure clear expectations for the architectural industry. 3. Support ambitious architecture Create a state fund that can grant grants to particularly ambitious architecture projects, designed by Norwegian architects throughout Norway. A LOT OF PRAISE: The Wesselkvartalet in central Asker consists of apartments and business premises, and has garnered many praises for the architecture with organic shapes and good use of materials. Photo: Nils Petter Dale / Wignsæs og Kosberg architects Good, social and green architecture can help solve the climate crisis, the loneliness crisis and the housing crisis. That the title of architect is not protected is a kind of Norwegian oddity. In countries such as Spain, Germany, Iceland, Great Britain, Belgium and Japan, it is not free to call oneself an architect. Good architecture can be preventive social medicine, and bad architecture the opposite. The medicine should be written by competent architects, otherwise we risk architectural quackery. Perhaps we are already there, because many believe that the buildings are getting worse. We allow the construction of similar blocks of flats which neither provide good urban environments nor housing quality. Without good, sustainable and functional solutions. It will not be architectural art, but construction. Build without goals and meaning. Without professional foundation. Without ethics, aesthetics, nature and spirit. Without understanding what you need, what society needs, or what our planet needs. The number of construction defects is increasing. Do you think that is strange? Irresponsible? As inconceivable as my pianist roommate turning up in a doctor’s coat and prescribing heart medication for your old father? In the past, you had to have architectural training to be able to design nurseries, schools, homes and commercial buildings. In 2017, the qualification requirements for architecture were lowered, and the requirement for a 5-year master’s degree was changed to a 2-year vocational school. If medical studies had been reduced to a 2-year vocational school, I’m pretty sure there would have been an uproar. Good architecture is a vaccine that can prevent loneliness, alienation, exclusion and dissatisfaction. “Architects can be a binder or a solvent”, said professor of social medicine Per Fugelli in a speech on Architecture Day in 2016. He followed up with the appeal: “Architects, you are doctors!” Architecture can give us an experience of wholeness, connect us with nature, create space for the human herd and give us a sense of belonging to a place. “Architects can give people natural medicine, happy pills for the spirit, social medicine,” said Fugelli. Good architecture is medicine, and should be prescribed by competent architects. Norwegian architects are world class. Give them good orders for sustainable and health-promoting architecture! I encourage all political parties to take architecture more seriously, and to renew politics with greater ambitions for surroundings and buildings. Designed by architects with formal architectural training. If not, we might as well allow pianists to substitute as doctors. Published 12.09.2024, at 16.07
ttn-69
Are you a bit of an architect in your spare time? – Speech
