CLIFFHANGER - landscape architecture - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, March, 2001

Part of a programme to clarify wild landscape, this subtle look-out point is inspired by the geometries of nature.

Norwegians have had a romantic love of their wild landscape since the nineteenth century, and tourists (home grown and foreign) have been encouraged in the mountains since Thomas Cook's days. Quite recently, the government decided to provide, discreetly, facilities for travellers on some of the more remote roads. So a programme was drawn up in collaboration with local communes gently to insert rest areas and look-out points. In the Districts of Oppland and Sogn og Fjordane, a competition was held for four sites, each of which was given to a different firm of architects.

Jensen & Skodvin won the commission for the scenic point at Videseter Foss, one of those sublime roaring falls where a river foams over a cliff to crash into the lower valley far below. The rocky promontory at the top of the waterfall has long been regarded as one of the most romantic viewpoints in the mountains; its most irregular surfaces were blasted off many years ago, and a wooden handrail was provided. By the time Jensen & Skodvin came on the scene, the rail was rotten, and the place was positively dangerous.

Clearly, a safe yet sensitive barrier was needed as first priority, and a general tidying up of the rough surface left by the blasting. Balusters were made of 90mm steel rods cast into holes drilled into the rock and connected by steel plates. Galvanized brackets welded to the rods are bolted to round timber handrails. The whole zigzag side facing the upper falls and the point acts stiffly and stably as a horizontal truss. The surface of the platform was made more uniform with concrete, leaving the most prominent ridges that remained after blasting. Perhaps the most ingenious and elegant elements of the scheme are the steel handrails that define approaches to the platform. Unlike those round the viewpoint itself, which has safety handrails at a constant datum, they follow the terrain and had to be welded and bent on site, because their complex three-dimensional curves were unreproducible on paper.

The whole scheme was required by the clients to clarify the landscape by man-made elements which reveal the geometries of nature. It succeeds admirably. H. M.

Architect

Jensen & Skodvin. Oslo

Project team

Jan Olav Jensen. AnneLise Bjerkan,

Torunn Golberg, Berre Skodvin.

Torstein Koch

Photographs

Jan Olav JenSen

1 Approach from south with all steel balustrades taking form from terrain.

2 Main balustrade with timber handrails on rod balusters drilled into rock which act with steel plates as a stable horizontal truss.

3 Point, with main fall starting left.

4 Looking east to much smaller upper fall. Balustrade will weather like natural materials.

5 The great fall itself, which plunges over 60m downwards from point.