the coming photos are from a trip to sweden and norway back in 2009 when our daughter agnes was about to turn three.
there was a small norwegian house I had wanted to see for years. the architect was forgotten outside his own country and his critical writings were at odds with the experiences and material longings of his oil-rich compatriots of today, but once he had provoked and inspired nordic modernists looking for a more authentic way to build and we were going to see for ourselves how he did that.
I had failed to find the address of the house, the name of the owner, and to contact the son of the long-deceased architect, so we decided to rent a campervan and just go. we knew the name of the peninsula it was on, how hard could it be?
well, after two days of smooth travelling, no accidents, and lots of singing and laughing in the car, we finally completed the four hour drive to gothenburg just north of copenhagen. this was the point when we realised that we weren't going to go very far, and not necessarily reach our destination.
but the trip had by then acquired a theme of its own, which I think we should call the architecture of the left. not all the houses we saw - and that we are going to see here - were by left-wing architects, but they were for the most part related, and together they form a tiny unscientific study into the idea that there is such a thing as an architecture of the left and that it is not identical with the well-established nordic modernism in general, but that it has its own traits and characteristics.
after that, we are going to return to copenhagen to visit the mother ship of left-wing architecture in my home town and look further into its roots. hopefully, some of the previously posted projects here, not least the works of hans christian hansen and the early works of vandkunsten, will fit in and we will be able to see them as part of a greater movement.
I am not sure if there is any left wing architecture being built today. even if the welfare state still lives on in scandinavia, we all refer to the market now and the wonderfully confrontational, polemical spirit of some of the people we will be looking at has been reduced to the stale idea of political correctness.
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