When Flexibility Became Mainstream: Norwegian Housing in the Age of Change
Paper for the special issue of The Journal of Architecture,
“Infinite Flex.”
April 2023 [forthcoming 2024].
“Infinite Flex.”
April 2023 [forthcoming 2024].
By the end of the 1960s, a decades-long Norwegian tradition of paternalistic planning reliant on statistical data and standardisation was superseded by a wave of user-centred designs. Timber construction fitted particularly well to the demands of mass-produced flexibility: large prefabricated timber elements constituted a “grammar” of a new building system. Guided by step-by-step instructions, dwellers could now design their homes as they saw fit—everyone could be an architect! And while similar developments happened elsewhere, flexible Norwegian mass-housing projects could be traced to the long-standing architectural emphasis on individual choice. Accompanied by building “manuals” reminiscent of the Whole Earth catalogue, these flexible projects find their roots in the anti-establishment movements of the late 1960s. However, these experiments also paved the way for construction companies instrumentalising the idea of flexibility, resulting in commercial housing projects far from the radical non-figurative experiments of the 1960s. Architectural flexibility proved to be a practical political tool that served different business and construction interests.
This essay investigates the rise and fall of flexibility in Norwegian mass-housing projects that first emerged as an emancipatory tool with roots in counter-culture but, with time, was incorporated not only by the mainstream political actors but by the very structures it was trying to reject.