Nordic Pavilion

Forms of Freedom, African independence and Nordic Models

Curator Nina Berre, director of architecture at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, explored the role of émigré architects sent from Scandinavia to modernise independent sub-Saharan Africa in research disseminated for the first time.

The liberation of Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia in the Sixties coincided with the founding of state development aid in the Nordic countries, where there was widespread belief that the social democratic model could be exported, translated and used for nation building, modernisation and welfare in Africa.

The leaders of the new African states established solid bonds with the Nordic countries. During a few intense years in the Sixties and Seventies, Nordic architects contributed to the rapid process of contemporisation in this part of Africa.

Inside the Nordic Pavilion, partitions explore Scandinavian architects' work in Africa. Photo Credit: Andrea Avezzù / La Biennale Di Venezia

These young architects found themselves in the field between building freedom and finding freedom, one a valuable nation-building, through city planning, infrastructure and industry, the other emerged between Nordic aid and African nation building.

Reminiscent of Jonathan Hill's thesis on Sverre Fehn, in which Hill argues, 'Accommodating trees and rain, transforming Venetian light into Nordic light, the Nordic Pavilion expands the dialogue between architecture and nature.'

There is a sense the Modern Scandinavians exported a sense of freedom in exporting Nordic light visible in many projects such as the Kenya Fisheries Department by architect Karl Henrik Nøstvik.