A House for Shadow and Light
Sverre Fehn's Villa Norrköping

Curatorial contribution to the exhibition
House of Norway, Museum Angewandte Kunst,
Frankfurt/Main, Germany

The contribution focuses on Sverre Fehn's Villa Norrköping and encompasses a full-scale model of one of its iconic glass corners complete with a set of Fehn's Norrköping table and stools. It draws on the 2017 exhibition Det norske glasshuset / The Norwegian Glasshouse, at the National Museum - Architecture, Oslo.

Fehn’s Villa Norrköping (1963/64) gives form to the Nordic dualism of light and dark, midnight sun and polar night. Whereas the living and sleeping areas are located in windowless brick cubes, the connecting corners are completely glazed. The design is radical in every respect. The kitchen and bathroom form the core around which all the other rooms are grouped in open plan. The brick walls conceal sliding doors that can be used as desired to open, close or partition off certain areas. The elevated core receives daylight through a circumferential band of windows directly beneath the roof. In the other areas, zones of light and shade alternate. When all of the sliding doors are open, the house is flooded with light; when they are closed, the rooms take on a cave-like character. This is particularly true of the living room with its open fireplace at the centre and the inbuilt settees flanking it. In Fehn’s words, “The house is constantly giving darkness a scale. […] It is the glass corners that direct the light, and from there one can withdraw into a situation that is almost dark if desirable.”


[Museum Angewandte Kunst]