In 2023 Statsbygg presented a report for the possible renovation of the Norwegian parliament building. While recommending a comprehensive transformation, the report also admitted that the alterations were likely to cause a conflict between preservation interests and the need for upgrades.

The original parliament building was designed by Emil Langlet and completed in 1866. In 1949, after the institution had struggled with lack of space for decades, an architecture competition was held, looking at the possibility of solving the parliament’s growing spatial requirements within existing property lines. As had happened a century before, the competition also caused intense public debate, with accusations that the wing designed by Nils Holter destroyed a national monument. Both Einar Gerhardsen and a young Kåre Willoch announced that Holter’s proposal would give Norway “the world’s ugliest parliament building” – yet architecture critics and historians have been appreciative, claiming that the project successfully managed to combine old and new.

With Statsbygg’s report and the anticipation of another transformation as a backdrop, the studio investigated the previously unexplored archives of Nils Holter. By staging and investigative exhibition (first in Telegrafen in 2025 and in the parliament building in the fall of 2026), we sought to bring new attention to a little studied masterpiece of transformation.

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