Knut  Knutsen, Casa Estiva Portor, Portor, Norway, 1946 (view in google maps)

Knut Knutsen was a norwegian architect. He born in Oslo, Norway in 1903. He graduated the State School of Arts and Crafts in Oslo in 1925. Knutsen 1933 he established a private practice.

For this small summer house in Portor the architect Knut Knutsen had particular intentions, which were due to the rationing still in force after the war. He was forced to use waste materials that gives the house its informal, even ‘casual’ character. It twists among the hillocks ans the pines, devoid of right angles and regular forms so that it seems to be part of nature.

This house is is obviously an environnemental creation rich in changes and adaptations. Tautological adaptations to the light of the sun and to the panorama and to nature around in general. The spatial, enveloping embrace of Portor constructs the ‘humanity’, the immediate adaptation of the house, but it stems from an original response, sensitive ti the site through numerous functions. The formative rules are not superficial, trivial, fashionable, or even purely ‘cultural’. This house establishes a very particular category of models or prototypes of human ecosystemic habitats.

bibliographical references :

Arne Korsmo – Knut Knutsen: due maestri del Nord, by Nicola Floran Paolo Giardiello, Gennaro Postiglione

http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Knut_Knutsen_Knut_Knutsen.html

http://samling.nasjonalmuseet.no/no/object/NAMT.kkn618.001

Reviewed by:

Anna Bęza and Dominika Puchalska November 2016