In 2020, the Norwegian public broadcaster, NRK, sold its properties at Marienlyst to developer Ferd for 3.8 bill NOK. This will transform one of Norway’s most important nation-building institutions into a private development project.

The original broadcasting building, Kringkastingshuset, was designed by Nils Holter (1899–1995), after a 1935 competition. At the time a completely new and radical building typology in Europe and given the novelty of broadcasting technology, Holter’s task was to plan for the unforeseen demands of the new media and its spatial requirements. Broadcasting buildings were machines whose exact purpose was yet to be fully understood, and Kringkastingshuset’s longevity can be attributed to the fact that Holter and his client had the foresight to plan the NRK site to give a flexible framework for a public institution in growth. It is a piece of modernist architecture built with an eye for constant expansion and re-organization, to meet unforeseen technical demands posed by the new medium of radio.

Over the past eighty years, the Marienlyst site has been transformed from a greenfield on the city border, and into a sprawling media facility within what soon became one of Oslo’s densest residential areas. Nils Holter’s office would continue working with NRK for nearly half a century, extending and reorganizing the original building as well as adding additional buildings; all according to the rapidly changing technology for broadcasting. Marienlyst is both a master planning project, an important work of monumental public architecture and a highly complex piece of technical infrastructure. This course is about one of the most radical building typologies of the 20^th century, at the moment when it has been declared obsolete.

The semester concluded with an exhibition, Architecture and the Archives: Nils Holters Stortingsbygning, where the studio curated the history of the building with an eye to the future. It was mounted in Telegrafen in Oslo, and then in the broadcasting building itself.

The studio is part of the international research project Provenance Projected. Architecture Past and Future in the Era of Circularity led by Professor Mari Lending.