​ A new exhibition at the National Museum – Architecture asks: What characterizes good housing?

Do Oslo’s first-time homebuyers and other house hunters get the quality they pay for as they try to find a home of their own? Have houses and flats gone from being a home to being an investment? Do current housing policies make good housing affordable for people with normal incomes? These are some of the questions the “House Viewing” exhibition, which opened on 27 April, discusses and tries to answer. 

Oslo has recently been among the fastest growing cities in Europe, and housing has been built ever quicker, higher, and denser. The exhibition takes a look at over twenty housing projects in the Norwegian capital from the past ten to fifteen years. How are factors such as urban living, greenspaces, neighbourhoods, daylighting, and adequate floor plans seen to in new housing projects in Oslo? The exhibition also shows a handful of housing projects from other European metropolises such as Vienna, Berlin, and Copenhagen. Can other ways of developing housing raise the quality of homes and thereby also the residents’ quality of life?

The exhibition is organized around four themesTwo large-scale and relatively typical housing projects in central Oslo – Sørenga and Kværnerbyen – are presented in the middle of the room. Otherwise, the exhibition is organized around four themes that influence the layout of a residence and the residents’ quality of life:

1. Economy, which looks at how two-room flats have developed in pace with economic conditions and building regulations
2. Living Together, which takes a look at communality and a culture of sharing in both older and recent housing projects
3. Architecture, which highlights qualities such as lighting, air, ceiling height, and view
4. Environment, which discusses necessary changes for a sustainable development, re‑use, ecology, and health.

The exhibitions “House Viewing” and the revamped permanent architecture exhibition “Housing Design”, which opened 2 March, complement each other. While “House Viewing” examines the current state of housing development, “Housing Design” provides insight into housing ideals and ideas from the past hundred years. “House Viewing” will run until 30 December 2018.

The exhibition is a co-production between the National Museum and the architects Helen & Hard.

For more information, please contact project manager Nina Frang Høyum at nina.hoyum@nasjonalmuseet.no or +47 48 03 48 52.