Location: Venice, Italy
Architect: Sverre Fehn
Completed: 1962
7 Photographs
I have only been to Venice once, and we arrived early in the morning. After finding our accommodations, delivering our backpacks, and getting a couple of espressos to recharge, we walked to the Giardini della Biennale. The garden is full of pavilions for all the different countries represented at the annual Biennale, and each is of varying architectural merit, but I had come there to see only one.
I first discovered the work of Sverre Fehn in a lecture given by Glenn Murcutt, who spoke about the quality of light in his buildings with such reverence that I knew I would have to find out more about his work. I had made two separate failed attempts to see his Nasjonalmuseet - Arkitektur in Oslo and had never ventured deep enough on my excursions to Norway to see anything else. While I had not come to Italy, nor Venice, to specifically see the pavilion, it had long been a building which had stuck in my memory as something extremely special.
I was visiting a few days before the Biennale began and work was ongoing to prepare for the event. As I was poking around the building, a workman noticed me and thought I was the artist coming to set up. After making no effort to correct his misconception, he unlocked the pavilion, allowed us in, and left. Nothing was arranged in the space and dust clothes remained over trunks and trolleys, but we got to spend an hour alone in the space, before the actual artist, immaculately dress and looking considerably more Nordic than us arrived and shooed us out of the space.
I remember Glenn talking about the Norwegian light and how masterfully Mr Fehn was able to harness it in his buildings. The Nordic Pavilion is essentially a single space, built from more or less one material, about more or less one thing, light. After thinking about this building for many years and trying to understand it, I think I will need to visit it again to really get it. What I have learnt in the years between though, is that, with effortless simplicity, the building seems to almost remove itself completely and transport you to the middle of a tranquil Nordic forest, in the snow.
Of all the wonders of Venice, elaborate and intricate in their own ways, this is perhaps the least elaborate, but no less remarkable.
HWLK