Lectures

Architect and founder of Vardehaugen, Håkon Matre Aasarød, structured his presentation around two opposing perspectives: why you shouldn't run a studio, and why you should. His openness about the difficult relationship architects seem to have with money is something that stayed with me. While there is no lack of ambition or effort, it is not necessarily translated into value. A good idea might take twenty minutes, while a bad idea could take twenty hours, yet an hourly fee rewards the latter.

I was also interested in his take on communication, where he states that architects often communicate with other architects. There is an incentive to impress peers, rather than the people paying for the project, who may struggle to understand its value. One of his final pieces of advice, “Don't do it for your colleagues”, therefore felt particularly significant.

The story of Fantastic Norway offered an alternative, where Håkon and Erlend identified overlooked places and opportunities rather than waiting for commissions. They drove around rural Norway in a red caravan, creating new relationships and identifying problems themselves in a super-local setting. The analogy of the architect as either a “fetching dog” or a “hunting dog” created an interesting image of his attitude and motivation to start his own practice. Instead of simply answering a given brief, hunt down the actual problem and potentially create the commission in the process.

Perhaps “starting a practice” is less about establishing an office and competing for existing work, and more about developing a working method that creates its own opportunities. In the end, Håkon comments that “Ignorance is bliss”, which also resonated with me. Sometimes, knowing too much about the limits and difficulties of starting and running a practice can prevent the experimentation that potentially makes a new practice distinctive in the first place.

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