Provocative, yet humble. Surprising, yet logical. Loud, yet quiet. Brendeland & Kristoffersen’s distinctive architecture could be read as a synthesis of contradictory qualities. And yet with an unmistakable respect for the place in which they are building, their approach often displays a daring and uncompromising attitude.
Their work has to a great extent been rooted in a method of conversation. As the two have backgrounds in several different discourses, their conversations are often influenced by perspectives other than architecture. The conditions in which their architecture has come to be and the working methods of the office have until now existed only between the two. As Brendeland & Kristoffersen leaves their buildings and let the inhabitants have their say on how it is lived in and interpreted, the duo also leaves an echo of their one-night show in the gallery. The remains of the talk show create an exhibition exploring the processes, built (and unrealized) projects and the scene that unfolds when Geir and Olav have left the building.
Ten years have passed since Geir Brendeland and Olav Kristoffersen became Brendeland & Kristoffersen when they won the open competition for sustainable social housing at Svartlamoen in Trondheim in 2002. Since then the office has received both national and international recognition, including shortlisting for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2007 and the AR Awards 2005 and 2008. In 2005 they received The Foundation for Design and Architecture in Norway’s prize for young designers.
Among their projects are Villa Borgen, a small villa for a family in the outskirts of Trondheim, Svalbard housing project and Active House in Stjørdal. However, the area of Svartlamoen in Trondheim has come to be somewhat defining for the office. After the realization of their first project, Svartlamoen housing (2005), Brendeland & Kristoffersen have built two other buildings in the area; Svartlamoen nursery and Svartlamoen cultural centre (2007).
Recently the office won a competition on the new plans for the city of Jessheim with their proposal ‘Green Grid’.
“By their uncompromising polemical practice, by rejecting standard procedures, developing new technical solutions and not least by an obvious concern for real, social challenges, BKA manage to go beyond a self-referential and autonomous architecture. Where the punk movement in the end turned out to be mere representations of opposition – to visually look more oppositional than actually opposing, and to shout louder than they acted – the exhibition on show demonstrates clearly how BKA by showing, instead of telling both have gone beyond their musical predecessors and the majority of their Norwegian contemporaries.”
(Martin Braathen, architect and critic, on Brendeland & Kristoffersen’s exhibition Punk. Architecture. Technology.” at 0047 in Berlin, 2005)
