National Tourist Routes is a project by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration to use the existing extensive road network as tourist routes to reach some of Norway's most scenic areas. To attract tourists, the roads are supplied with infrastructure designed by leading Norwegian and foreign architects, including Snehetta, Peter Zumthor, Sami Rintaly, Reyulf Ramstad, Todd Saunders.
The speech: norway photo exhibition - "National Tourist Roads of Norway" has opened in the Moscow Central House of Artists as part of the Arch Moscow exposition and the Moscow Biennale of Architecture and will run until June 19, 2016. It was organized by speech: magazine with the support of the Norwegian Embassy in Russia. The curator was Anna Martovitskaya, and the design of the exposition was developed by Sergey Tchoban and Andrey Perlich.
Architectural projects of the Norwegian National Tourist Roads program are well known: they are published a lot, also because of their showiness. But it is this spectacularity that raises my question: usually, when working with unique landscapes, they try to make any man-made objects as invisible as possible so as not to disturb the natural environment, and you went the other way. What was the idea behind this?
“The National Tourist Roads project began 20 years ago when we were looking for beautiful landscapes to connect with these tourist routes. As a result, we found 18 routes that are very different: some go through the fjords, others go through the mountains, others allow you to admire the waterfalls, and so on. Our main task was to preserve the existing roads, not to change them - thus preserving the landscape. The new structures that we have conceived started - due to "security" restrictions - from small viewing platforms and similar things. Several years passed, and we began to build more spectacular buildings.
In a sense, the answer to your question is the desire to create contrast. We wanted to build modern facilities that belonged to our time - this was an important goal. And the resulting contrast between modern buildings and the landscape seems very interesting to me. For thousands of years, farms have been built near the mountains and fjords, on the hillsides, you see them all the time today, and in a sense, the National Tourist Roads of Norway do the same: they put buildings that contrast with it into the landscape. The exhibition presents photos of our structures, but in fact, each of the routes is only mountains and fjords, the architecture there makes up a very small part: this is an observation deck where you can take a photo, or a roadside toilet. Moreover, some sanitary facilities are quite large, as every summer we have up to 700,000 visitors. Therefore, we also need very large parking lots, we need toilets, gift shops, cafes … The largest structures are located on the [very popular] Trollstigen road ("Troll Ladder"). Sometimes we had to demolish old structures that existed on the routes, because they no longer fit into the program, make sure that high-quality souvenirs were sold there, and so on.
“The high-quality architecture commissioned by the Norwegian National Tourist Roads is attracting the attention of architects around the world. Do the thousands of tourists who travel along these routes every year notice or appreciate it? Or do they perceive it as something functional, they are only interested in landscapes?
- It's hard for me to say, since I did not conduct such a survey, but I know that journalists write a lot about us, and when journalists write, tourists also come to us. I think people like this architecture. For example, on the route along the coast of Ersfjordstrand, this is a very beautiful fjord in the north of Norway, we have built a golden toilet, and I think that half of the population of our country knows about this place thanks to this toilet, and most tourists who come there want to see it first of all. on him. Of course, this is not real gold, these are aluminum panels with brass plating, but it is called the "Golden Toilet". To some extent, we emphasize in this way the natural environment, people remember these places, or even want to visit something that seemed rather boring before. Therefore, we monitor the quality of architecture and dismantle those old buildings that do not meet our standards. In addition, it would be difficult to present at the exhibitions that we show around the world, our routes are only one nature, so we advertise both nature and architecture.
Including this is the creation of a new brand for our country, because - what is Norway? These are fjords, mountains, ancient wooden stave churches, this is a violin with eight strings, these are national costumes - all of this is rather "nationalistic", so now we are trying to create a new brand. National Touring Roads is Norway's modern brand.
Of course, the architectural component attracts special attention of specialists. So, we are already implementing the second construction of Peter Zumthor for us - in a very remote place, so whole buses of architecture students came there just to take a look at the construction site! [Zumthor's first work for this customer is a memorial to the burned witches in Vardo, about which Archi.ru wrote].
Since we are talking about nature, about a largely untouched natural environment, the ecological aspect is very important. How do you achieve “sustainability” in your projects?
- Norwegian legislation mandatorily requires new projects to be "sustainable", but this is not so important for us, since we use wood and durable materials, our buildings are not heated in winter, so we do not waste a lot of energy. At the same time, we do not build new roads, we preserve the old ones, so we have little impact on the environment.
For example, one of your buildings in the future will need to be demolished due to dilapidation: will there remain of it a “footprint” harmful to nature?
- Our facilities are small, this will not be a problem. At the same time, we constantly use recycled materials, for example, we make a new one from old asphalt - we grind it into powder, add a binder and reuse it. We try to build a little, preferring wood and concrete. Of course, in 100-150 years the tree will rot, but these are usually very simple structures that can be easily replaced.
