Norway: National Tourist Routes

(Read at the magazine N by Norwegian issued in July 2017)

Twenty [five] years ago this summer, Norway began a groundbreaking project to bring together the country's dramatic scenery with landmarks from ifs best architects. But treading the fine line between creativity and bureaucracy hasn't always been easy. Design writer Anna Winston evaluates the legacy of the National Tourist Routes.

It’s no big secret that natural beauty is one of Norway's greatest assets. Norwegians are fiercely proud of their spectacular landscapes, which have become a powerful draw for visitors. The country is also home to something even more unusual: an internationally acclaimed, contemporary architectural movement that champions buildings that are embedded sensitively into nature. Yet, while Norway has always been beautiful and its architects have always been talented, in the 1980s and '90s the country was struggling to attract much international attention for either. That is, until the arrival of the National Tourist Routes.

[2017 marked] the 20th anniversary of this ambitious public programme, which has put Norway at the forefront of nature tourism and given it an enviable architectural reputation to boot. Together making up more than 1,850km of roads, each of the 18 scenic routes now has its own collection of lookout points, visitor centres, bridges, public toilets, sculptures and installations - all designed to enhance their setting and guide visitors to the best experiences without imposing too heavily on the landscape.

"The idea and the projects have grown into a worldwide event," says Kjetil Traedal Thorsen, a Norwegian architect and co-founder of leading architecture firm Snohetta. "Contemporary architectural interpretations have become icons of sensitive creation."

Snohetta is among the more than 50 architecture firms, landscape architects and artists that have been involved in the 114 projects completed so far. The firm's tourist stop outside the town of Eggum is a perfect example of the way these projects respond to their setting. An amphitheatre embedded into the ground, it acts as a kind of theatre for watching the midnight sun as well a traffic-easing solution for high-tourism season.

"We tried to locate a meeting place that would feel as if it had always been there, almost naturally grown into the magnificent surroundings and indeterminable in age and time of creation," says Traedal Thorsen. "The wood-collecting along the coast for the cladding of the building became an act of historic preservation. Similarly, the collection of stones became a way of reorganising existing conditions into a built environment."

Of the design firms that have taken part, the only non-Norwegian is Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, who is something of a cultish figure. Younger Norwegian firms have been heavily favoured, and their projects have often acted as a launch pad for their careers. Many, like Jensen & Skodvin, and Manthey Kula, are run by architects who studied at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) during the tenure of a specific set of tutors - including Christian Norberg-Schulz and the legendary Sverre Fehn.

These architects were part of a movement that championed an idealistic form of Modernism, which responded directly to the landscape and treated light almost as a building material. Fehn was reported as saying that "the very act of building begins the process of destruction; that every intervention, no matter how careful, contributes to the landscape's loss". It's not difficult to connect this mentality to the softly-softly approach that has been applied along the tourist routes.

"The [projects] that are most well-known are in some way a kind of manifestation of what we like to call 'the Oslo school' in architecture: the teaching that developed in the '60s, '70s and '80s through people like Fehn," says Thomas McQuillan, current head of architecture at AHO. "There's a Norwegian word underskog, which means all of the growth that happens on the forest floor - the small plants, the moss, the seedlings - and it's an expression that means the potential that is to come. I think the project fulfils that role quite well. It's given so many architects a way of pursuing their craft."

The development of the routes began with a pilot called the Tourism and Travel Project, which ran from 1994 to 1997, and resulted in interventions along the Sognefjellet and Gamle Strynefiellsvegen routes by Jensen & Skodvin. The government then green-lighted further development of the programme, and the routes were selected by 2004. In 2007, the first batch of 15 pre-approved architects, artists and landscape architects was selected.

Jensen & Skodvin set the tone with structures like the viewing platform at the Videfossen waterfalls, where pools of new concrete were poured into the rock to create a safer surface for visitors, guarded by rusted steel railings. Their structures trace the topography of the sites, while adding industrial materials like pre-weathered steel.

"There was a sense in the work that some of the architecture was being produced by the landscape rather than being inserted in it," says McQuillan. "The topography has been here for hundreds of thousands of years, and there's something very important as an architect to go into that situation with an understanding that the intervention you make is not necessarily sensitive to the site but is subsumed in the site."

The spectacular zigzagging pathways and cantilevered viewing platforms of the Trollstigen visitor centre by Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter, completed in 2012 and now one of the routes' most iconic projects, embodies this attitude to the landscape - both framing and adding to it.

In 2014, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, which manages the funding, commissioning and maintenance of the routes and the structures, invited applications for the next round of projects. It aims to have completed 192 by 2023 and has chosen eight teams that will be eligible for the remainder of the work.

By the time it's finished, more than NOK 3.4 billion in public funding will have been spent, with a wider knock-on effect on the investment in local tourism. But the future success of the project will rely on its proper maintenance, requiring continual investment from the local authorities in each region.

"The faith in the tourist routes has encouraged other service providers to increase their efforts to provide tourists with an improved package of services," says National Tourist Routes spokesman Per Ritzier. "At the same time, there will always be some individuals who do not appreciate that an initiative is subject to such a degree of central government control for the purpose of ensuring a consistent, quality product."

Realising a project on this scale - with a 30-year development horizon and with public money -would be an ambitious undertaking for any country. But it is particularly so for Norway, which has not had the greatest reputation for public investment in culture and the arts (lagging behind neighbours like Sweden and Denmark). The routes have played a significant role in changing that.

A number of the projects have won international architecture prizes: Reiulf Ramstad received the publication ArchDaily's building of the year 2009 title, and has twice been shortlisted for the EU Mies Award, Europe's most important architecture prize, for its work on the Trollstigen route.

The increase in international attention has coincided with a rise in tourism. In 2015, the number of hotel nights booked in the country went up, despite a drop in business visits related to the oil industry. What's more, the photogenic landmarks have had aesthetic life far beyond visitor experience. More than 9,700 articles have been published about the routes in the last three years alone. Nevertheless, there's a sense that the unusual nature of the tourist routes is still a little bit lost on some Norwegians, who are - like all Scandinavians - not generally very good at celebrating their own successes.

“Sometimes it feels as if the projects are more known outside of Norway," says Traedal Thorsen. “Only when being shown the beauty by outsiders, we start reflecting about it. We call it 'home blindness'." He believes that the country needs outsiders to hold up a mirror to its success. "Norwegians learn through the eyes of others," he says.

One can't help but think that if these routes had been planned elsewhere, then perhaps they wouldn't have been as successful as they have been in balancing the human and natural aesthetic. The trademark Nordic modesty is undeniably part of their charm. That being the case, I'm sure their many fans will have no problem holding up that mirror, for another 20 years at least.

innovasjonnorge.no

nasjonaleturistveger.no

Routes:

1. Jaeren

2. Ryfylke

3. Hardangervidda

4. Hardanger

5. Aurlandsfjellet

6. Valdresflye

7. Gaularfjellet

8. Sognefjellet

9. Gamle Strynefjellsvegen

10 Rondane

11. Geiranger-Trollstigen

12. Atlanterhavsvegen

13. Helgelandskysten

14. Lofoten

15. Andoya

16. Senja

17. Havoysund

18. Varanger