As a student, Brodtkorb’s teacher for free-hand drawing was Håkon Bleken (1929–2025). Prior to that, she hadn’t done much drawing and she found it daunting, but Bleken helped her to embrace it.

“Håkon Bleken was my most important teacher. He was always close by when we stood there holding the charcoal at the easel. He insisted that we were the ones who had to make decisions for ourselves,” she says.

Since then, Brodtkorb has done a lot of drawing. Always with a soft pencil on rough sketch paper. She never went digital and has drawn all her concepts by hand.

“One of my favourite things is a large drawing of an entire floor of Stranden,” she says.

She drew the entire supporting structure on sketch paper, without a ruler. The fact that the structure was already visualised meant they were able to pour the basement elements before the financial crash of the 1980s put the entire project on hold. Without that drawing, the project might never have come to fruition.

“You should never underestimate the intuition of the hand and its investigative power,” Brodtkorb says, with a knowing smile.

As part of her training, Brodtkorb did an apprenticeship as a bricklayer.

“Back then, we had to do six months of on-site apprenticeship,” she says. “It was compulsory, which, sadly, it isn’t any more.”

She considers it important to gain first-hand experience of a construction site and to know how that environment ticks.

“It’s a real pity that architects are no longer familiar with the construction site.”

She herself did apprenticeships on construction sites in Oslo, Essen in Germany, Salzburg in Austria, and Turin in Italy. While she appreciates the experiences she gained, not all of them where positive.

“In Turin I had my first MeToo experience,” she says. “The Italian workers almost crawled after me on the scaffolding.”

She ended up seeking shelter in the office of the Architect who had designed the building.

But that was by no means the start of her feminist conviction. Brodtkorb says she was born a feminist, but it was that condescending remark by one of her professors that really ignited her commitment to the cause.

“When we started making noise in the 70s, we were very impatient,” she says. “In architecture, women were often assigned the routine tasks and there were few who ran their own offices.”

When she started her own architecture firm, she made a point of hiring women. Back then, provisions for parental leave were not as good as they are today.

“All the girls in my office had children, some of them even had several, yet none of their husbands took leave, not even the ones who were architects in nearby offices!”

While a lot has changed since then, Brodtkorb still feels that society hasn’t progressed as much as it should.

“We’ve taken a few steps in the right direction, but it’s uphill progress.”

In 1991, Kari Nissen Brodtkorb was the first woman ever to receive the European Award for Steel Structures. Her invitation to the awards ceremony in Denmark stated that she would be welcome to attend together with “her wife”. Evidently, they assumed she was a man.

“I went and put on a dress with a low neckline,” Brodtkorb says with a laugh.

She believes that being a woman has made things more difficult for her whenever she has chosen to fight for something.

“People didn’t expect a woman to put up resistance,” she says. “I became known as a person who was a bit difficult to work with.”

She describes an episode during the work on Stranden. There was a disagreement about the balconies, which the developer wanted to put on the outside.

“You can only imagine how clunky it would have looked,” snorts Brodtkorb. “So there I was, thrust out into the corridor while eight or nine men sat around discussing how they could get rid of me.”

But Brodtkorb was not so easy to get rid of. The brick that was ordered for the building was already on the table of the agent handling the pre-sales operations.

“Effectively the project started to sell itself,” she says. “When people saw that lovely stone, they realised this was going to be a fabulous building.”

It has always been important to Kari Nissen Brodtkorb that a building should relate to its surroundings.

“Every building should communicate with the local setting rather than just sit on its backside blocking the view.”

She considers this essential to create a vibrant city. By using openings in and bridges across courtyards, she lets in light, embraces views and invites movement between her buildings and the adjacent neighbourhood.

“The individual building is less interesting than the environment it is meant to become part of,” says Brodtkorb. “That’s why I’ve always been attentive to visual and physical lines of connection.”

To achieve buildings that seem light and open, she uses her favourite material: steel. Here as well, she draws a parallel between steel construction and dance.

“Steel is light and strong and immensely expressive compared to the weight of concrete,” she explains.

In Stranden, the steel elements and the brickwork also reference Akers Mekaniske Verksted, a shipyard that was there until 1982.

“Many of my projects are transformation sites that used to house industrial buildings. I like the connection that the materials can articulate.”

Norways Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre has set a target of 130,000 new homes by 2030.

When asked what she thinks should be important for architects designing all the necessary buildings, Brodtkorb doesn’t hesitate.

“Dense and low is the recipe for a thriving city, but sadly it’s a recipe that tends to be ignored,” she says.

She is no fan of high-rise buildings, or “box buildings”, as she calls them.

“If you do the math, you could get just as many units by building dense and low, which would give you better spaces in between, with more air and sunlight.”

Brodtkorb also stresses the importance of varied materials, a diversity of detail, and the play of light and shadow.

“You have to pay more attention to the surroundings than to your own masterpiece,” she concludes.

Experience the exhibition “Stamina. Kari Nissen Brodtkorb and four predecessors” until 19. October at Nasjonalmuseet.

• Aftenposten. 22 April 1996. “Bryter med Storebrand”.-
• Regjeringen.no. 5 February 2025. “The Prime Minister’s statement to the Storting on changes to the government.” https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/statsministerens-redegjorelse-i-stortinget-om-endringer-i-regjeringen/id3086684/