A Nordic Revolt Against ‘Ugly’ Modern Architecture

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/3caf945c-db22-4452-999b-9b554c77a5c3.webp

Examples of modernist architecture — as in these apartment buildings in the Masthugget district in Gothenburg, Sweden — are a fixture of Nordic cities. Not everyone is a fan. Photo by Karol Serewis/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

A Nordic Revolt Against ‘Ugly’ Modern Architecture

A movement known as Architectural Uprising is pushing back against Scandinavian design trends — and sometimes forcing architects back to the drawing board.

By Jennifer Gersten

In 2014, the Norwegian architecture firm MAD Arkitektur hit a wall. The architects’ edgy, glassy proposal for a renovation of Sandakerveien 58 B/C, a mixed-use space in the Oslo neighborhood of Torshov, had been rejected by both the city’s Cultural Heritage Management Office and Planning and Building Services Commission. It was too tall, the commissioners ruled, and discordant in a neighborhood whose buildings were otherwise in traditional Scandinavian styles.

Nine years later, as the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reported in January, MAD returned with an aesthetic about-face, unusual within the field: a truncated design, sans the drama of the original, that mirrored the styles around it.

For the Norwegian branch of the social media movement Architectural Uprising, this revision was another feather in its cap. Founded in Sweden in 2014 as a public Facebook group, the Uprising is a collective of citizen design critics who object to what organizers call the “continued uglification” of developments in Nordic cities, and push for a return to classically informed design. With more than 100,000 social media followers across some 40 different branches, the group now serves as a significant platform for those who assert that the public, not just bureaucrats, architects, developers and property owners, ought to have a voice in the design of their built environments.

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/6dc2cfc9-2527-41f5-941a-e01fdf2b23df.webp

This early proposal for Sandakerveien 58 B/C in Oslo was rejected by local authorities in 2014. Courtesy of MAD Arkitektur

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/3dab962d-d33a-41d2-ad2f-e9dd4855e695.webp

The revised building boasts a far more traditional look. Courtesy of MAD Arkitektur

Amid the Uprising’s social media agitation, recent years have seen proposals to remake contemporary designs as classical Scandinavian styles spreading across the region. Among these developments are Ekmansgatan 5, the Upplands-Väsby neighborhood and a revitalization for the Skeppsbron riverside, all Swedish projects whose original modern designs were later reimagined as traditional. In Norway, whose Uprising branch began in 2016 and is now the region’s largest, a series of angular high-rises called Risørholmen was revised as a plot of traditional-inspired white houses with red roofs.

The design of Sandakerveien 58 B/C was not reconceived as a way to satisfy the Uprising, according to Kurt Singstad, a MAD architect and partner who worked on the building, but rather about “finding a solution that, finally, after so many years, could make this project happen.”

Yet the Uprising’s support should be taken seriously in a design era that has tended to weigh high contrast over timelessness, he says.

“What we build today should be standing as long as possible, and, to make that happen, we have to build in a way that makes the building loved by the public, by its users,” Singstad says. “I think it’s more important than ever that buildings are considered beautiful by those who are not architects or experts on aesthetics. Those behind the Uprising should be listened to, because they as much as everyone else are entitled to have feelings or reactions about architecture.”

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/b4c39879-624b-4db0-a6f7-a7a37d4179c7.webp

Oslo’s Munch Museum, designed by Estudio Herreros, won the tile of Norway’s ugliest building by popular vote upon its completion in 2021.​ Photo by Sebastian Kahnert/picture alliance via Getty Images

Most of the Uprising’s messaging occurs through its signature social media posts, which often take the form of “before and after” memes: pairing historical images of locations in Scandinavia with images of those same locations after demolition or reconstruction. Another common type juxtaposes images of newly built traditional-looking developments in other countries with less appealing variations in Scandinavia — proof, members said, that eyesores aren’t the default everywhere.

Uprising branches in Norway, Sweden and Finland hold annual public polls to select their respective country’s “ugliest” buildings, Nordic architecture’s equivalent of Hollywood’s Golden Raspberries. Oslo’s new Munch Museum and National Museum have each taken home the Norwegian Uprising’s “Grøss Medal” in polls involving over 10,000 voters — a referendum of sorts on the city’s recent efforts to reenvision itself as a cultural capital.

“A big part of the Architectural Uprising movement is making architecture available to people,” said Peter Olsson, a volunteer social media moderator and blogger. “You can say that a building is beautiful or ugly without needing to be an architect. It’s everybody’s living environment, and everyone should be able to have an opinion about it without being mocked.”

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/aa640ab4-d14c-43da-b748-823acec87d1f.webp

​An early rendering for Risørholmen, a residential development on a tiny island near the town of Risør in southern Norway. Courtesy of Kritt Arkitekter

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/0928cc41-0768-4f2b-a834-493d2ded9bbb.webp

The developers changed architects and chose a more traditional coastal design for Risørholmen. Courtesy of Backe Prosjekt AS

Nordic nations have built a reputation for bold modernist design; Denmark’s Bjarke Ingels Group and Norway’s Snøhetta are but two of the names synonymous with today’s architectural fore. That the region is also home to a movement clamoring for heritage-informed structures is not ironic, members argue, but based on a misconception that the movement is opposed to progress. The Uprising can be read in part as a response to a period of rapid urban development throughout Scandinavia’s largest cities. The movement argues that buildings amounting to “gigantic shoe boxes, toys, or accidents” have been wrongly positioned as the most sustainable, economical solution to urgent housing needs.

Members of the Uprising say their preference for traditional architecture has been unfairly characterized as reactionary and politically conservative — that “if you like classical architecture, then it means you also like to wear crinoline,” as Finnish branch founder Marjo Uotila puts it. Rather, they say, the aesthetic and technical principles of traditional design would not just be in line with what most people statistically prefer, as some polls suggest, but would also be more in tune with the environment and residents’ wellbeing.

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/6aea0771-c833-41f4-b871-3aa1770086c4.webp

Traditional architecture dominates the skyline of Stockholm’s old town.Photographer: Education Images/Universal Images Group Editorial

As the Uprising has spread, critics have remarked on what they perceive as the movement’s superficial rhetorics — particularly regarding the use of terms like “modernism” as a blanket condemnation of contemporary styles — as well as a fixation on façades that dominates over deeper issues. “I do think aesthetics are crucial as a motivator for change, but the kind of surface aesthetics promoted by AU isn’t debate we need to have. We need to address bigger questions,” particularly around class and climate, says Ingrid Halland, an architectural historian, art critic and associate professor at the University of Bergen and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

The movement’s size and persistence, however, has earned it a seat in the discourse. “When [historians] talk about architecture during these years, [the Architectural Uprising] will be part of that history,” Halland says.

“People have the right to be angry, because all the ugliness they see is on purpose.”

Members of the group, which has operated as a nonprofit since 2016, say they are most proud of creating a place where members themselves can drive the conversation, aided by a group of volunteers that moderates submissions, articles and discussion topics. The Norwegian branch is led by psychologist Saher Sourori and marketing professional Erik Holm; among its moderators is the Norwegian technologist Håkon Wium Lie, known as the inventor of CSS. He makes time for his Uprising duties amidst a range of other pursuits, including apple farming and pipe-organ building. Part of his work entails sifting through the Facebook group’s backlog, which, he said, is overwhelmed with photos by frustrated members looking to vent about buildings in their neighborhoods.

“It would be very depressing if we just put up all those pictures of ugly buildings, so we also show beautiful new buildings that respectfully integrate with their surroundings,” Lie says.

Passion, however, is the point. “There needs to be anger,” says Michael Diamant, a co-founder of the Swedish branch who works by day as a hospital personnel manager. “People have the right to be angry, because all the ugliness they see is on purpose, and if we speak out we’re called conservative. But yes, we can build beautiful and new. We have to create a lot of noise, otherwise nothing will change.

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/9981b2f9-fb33-4693-aa46-cc43f635a315.webp

While architects Kleihues + Schuwerk sought a timeless design for Norway’s National Museum of Art in Oslo, the Architectural Uprising named it the ugliest building of the year in 2022. Photographer: Per Ole Hagen/Getty Images Europe

For some, the movement has provided opportunities to develop community and solidarity in their appreciation of traditional architecture. Members have been inspired to contribute opinion pieces to local papers and share the movement with their friends; two traditional-oriented architects who met through Diamant’s activism are now married. Uotila, a strategist by day who was inspired to found the Finnish Uprising branch in 2015 after reading an article about the Swedish branch in her local paper, said her work with the movement has “snowballed” in directions she could never have anticipated. She now leads a Facebook group that counts over 10,000 members — a sizable number for country of less than 6 million — that has established her as a writer and commentator on Finnish architectural issues.

Group leaders have also achieved a certain prominence, and have been recognized, for better or worse, in public. “I meet architects in clubs and restaurants who kind of give me the cold shoulder,” says Norwegian branch co-founder Holm.

Uprisings have since caught on in Germany, Estonia, Poland, the Netherlands and even the US. In Norway, with local parliamentary elections around the corner, Lie says, the group is realizing that there is indeed power in numbers. “We are being contacted by politicians who want to meet with us, have us on their podcasts, ask our opinions,” Lie says. “The fact that they are now coming to us, rather than us hammering on their doors, is significant.”

Olsson, the Swedish Uprising moderator, easily recalls his favorite accomplishment as a member of the movement: the Gothenburg building Ekmansgatan 5, originally proposed as a modernist structure, that was re-envisioned in a classical style in the years after Olsson wrote up his objection to the design on the Swedish Uprising’s blog in 2018. “At first I was like, was this because of what I wrote, or was it a coincidence?” Olsson recalled. “But I’ve heard from people that it was probably my text that changed it.”

The first time Olsson visited the building, when it was nearly finished, a stranger stopped beside him to admire the construction. “He said to me, ‘You know, this building is so beautiful. I don’t get why they don’t build like this all the time.’”