The book Plaster Monuments. Architecture and the Power of Reproduction, written by Mari Lending and published by Princeton University Press, was launched in the gallery overlooking the Cast Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on January 16. The book was presented by Antonia Boström, Keeper of the Sculpture, Ceramics, Metalwork and Glass […]

The edited collection Debatten om stortingsbygningen 1836-1866, edited by Mari Hvattum, chronicles the heated debate over the Norwegian parliament building around the middle of the nineteenth century. Gathering 65 primary texts written by politicians, intellectuals, artists and architects in newspapers, magazines and proceedings, the collection brings to the fore the close relationship between architecture, publication culture, and public debate […]

“A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of postmodernism”. In 1980, reporting on the First Venice Architecture Biennale, French journalist Gérard-Georges Lemaire adapted Marx and Engels’ famous formula, used as opening passages of The Communist Manifesto, in order to describe the state of affaire in European architectural culture. But what exactly had happen to architecture between […]

Heinrich Ernst Schirmer (1814–1887) was one of the most significant architects of 19th century Norway. He designed churches, prisons, schools, stations, hospitals and houses all over the country, including Norway’s first penitentiary, the first mental hospital, and the first public museum; The National Gallery in Oslo. The poet J.S. Welhaven described Schirmer as “our best […]

At the third international meeting of the European Architectural History Network in Turin, the editors Mari Lending and Mari Hvattum will present the book Modelling Time: The Permanent Collection 1925–2014. Springing from a master studio at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and the exhibition Model as Ruin at the House of Artists in […]

Pax Forlag and OCCAS invite to an open book launch and mini-seminar on the new anthology Vor Tids Fordringer. Norske arkitekturdebatter 1818–1919 [The Demands of our Time. Norwegian debates on architecture 1818–1919], edited by OCCAS-scholars Mari Lending and Mari Hvattum. The launch is held in Old Aker Church, Oslo, February 4 2013 at 1700. Speakers include Rune Slagstad, Håkon Gundersen, Kristin Bliksrud Aavitsland, and Helge Jordheim. Welcome!

OCCAS and Artifice Books celebrate the launch of the Fragile Monument by  Thordis Arrhenius at this year’s Venice Biennale. Duncan Mccorquodale of Artifice books on architecture will be in  conversation with OCCAS scholars Thordis Arrhenius, Mari Lending and Jorge Otero Pailos on the contemporary need  for critical architectural scholarship and publications. Heritage objects today—monuments, city-quarters, regions,  […]

OCCAS scholar Anders V. Munch launches his new book Fra Bayreuth til Bauhus. Gesamtkunstwerk’et og de moderne kunstformer, Aarhus University Press (2012).  Over more than 600 pages, Munch’s study is a veritable tour de force, following the concept of the Geamtkunstwerk from Richard Wagner’s seminal texts and beyond modernism, casting new light on the history and historicity […]