Worker’s housing in Kristiania 1909–1913: garden suburbs by Morgenstierne and Eide versus reformed tenement blocks by Kristen Rivertz

Espen Johnsen

Planning Perspectives, 2025, vol. 40, issue 3, 633-672

Abstract: This article discusses different forms of working-class resident housing. The first part informs, and briefly comments on the historiography and the emergence of the garden city movement, the background to housing shortages, and Norway's breakthrough innovation of municipal housing (1910–1925). The greater part of the article concerns 1909 to 1913 just before the municipal housing construction in Kristiania (Oslo) started. Through lectures, articles, study trips, and some pioneering examples, the architects Christian Morgenstierne and Kristen Rivertz represent the two solutions: the suburban garden city as opposed to reformed city-centre tenement block plans. The well-traveled and internationalist Morgenstierne appears as a networker integrated into public and private initiatives and influential organizations. Morgenstierne & Eide's garden suburbs Egne Hjem Ekeberg (Arctanderbyen) (1909–1911) and Haslebyen (1911–1912) with rows of semi-detached houses, represented their ideal form. The suburbs were picturesque, with site plans adapted to curved street courses, varied housing types, and architectural styles inspired by contemporary German and English models. Rivertz's design of the Sagenekomplekset's (Det Rivertzke kompleks) (1911–1912) with parallel rows of residential buildings laid on a north-south axis, were an innovative alternative. In terms of the international practices, the Sagenekomplekset foreshadowed the later modernist Zeilenbau solution.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2025.2479859

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