Text by Ådne Dyrnesli, editorial team
Kari Nissen Brodtkorb (b. 1942) was not put off when, in the 1960s, her architecture professor declared that architecture was so demanding that “all the young ladies in this room should take the first train home.” Instead, the comment triggered her feminist resolve.
Brodtkorb can look back on a long career, including thirty years of running her own architectural office, from 1985 to 2018. She has built many large and impressive buildings and won awards for both her architecture and her ethical standards.
“Brodtkorb dares to say no and does not give up without a fight,” says Inger Stray Lien, head of the National Association of Norwegian Architects’ “senior” programme. “And she usually wins.”
Brodtkorb recently turned 83, and she celebrated the day in the dance studio. Dance has helped her not only to stand firm in difficult situations, but also to refine the sense of space needed to design spaces that are good to inhabit.
Bodily movement
We meet Kari Nissen Brodtkorb in the spring sunshine at Stranden, at the outer end of Aker Brygge, which received the Houens Foundation award in 1994.
“The inspiration was not a boat, as many people think,” says the architect, pointing up at the sharp corner that juts out towards the fjord and curves up towards the blue sky.
Built of brick and steel, Stranden contains some 25,000 square metres of cafes, restaurants, offices and apartments. At the top of the building is an edge of curved timber.
“The shape is inspired by an arabesque, a position in ballet,” says Brodtkorb, sweeping one arm behind her and the other forwards and upwards with fluid movements.
As a professor at the Oslo School of Architecture, Brodtkorb taught dance to her students. Not everyone saw the point in it, especially not the boys, she says.
“But several came to me later, after they’d started practicing as architects, and thanked me for it.”
She herself still dances seven hours a week and has no intention of stopping.
“If you don’t have a relationship to physical movement, you can’t create good spaces.”
The intuition of the hand
Apprenticeship in Italy
Feminist commitment
Invited with her wife
Light and strong
The house she didn’t design
Brodtkorb is not the kind of person to throw in the towel, but on one occasion she did walk away from a project.
On 22 April 1996, Aftenposten carried a report saying that Kari Nissen Brodtkorb Architects “Breaks with Storebrand”.
Her office was responsible for the residential part of the insurance company’s construction project at Filipstad in Oslo, but Brodtkorb felt the contractor was preventing her from doing a high-quality job.
“If you can’t control what you’re doing, you might as well not do it,” she says today.
She told the newspaper that “designing a building of high architectural quality is a complex undertaking. In practice, it has not been possible to reach an understanding about the situation.”
“They wanted things to happen quickly,” she continues. “They didn’t care about detailed drawings, because they just wanted something to be slapped in place.”
In recognition of her opposition, Brodtkorb was awarded the Ondurdis Prize for the building she didn’t design. In the jury’s opinion she was exemplary in showing “that it is possible to say no to projects that go against the life of the city.”
In hindsight, Kari Nissen Brodtkorb says that what pleased her most about the episode was the solidarity shown by other Norwegian architects.
“The contractor was Swedish,” she says. “After I pulled out, other Norwegian architects refused to touch the project. Ultimately, it was a Swedish architect who stepped in and designed something similar.”