Research

3RW office was established in the fall of 1999 as a young and independent office, strongly rooted in Bergen’s art and cultural scene. The founding partners of 3RW were all educated and later also teaching at the independent Bergen Architecture School, BAS. The school was founded by Svein Hatløy, routed in the philosophy of Open form.

Open form is about creating an inclusive architecture. A democratic expression that allows for transformations and that serves the ever changing social life – based on and in interaction with the landscape and climate.
« Cultural identity is the main concern of architect`s work today. To create cultural identity means to develop continuity of spatial and visual expression, and to give the individual and the group their own role in these expressions » Svein Hatløy

For Svein Hatløy the main focus of basic education should not be about educating the technical professional architect, rather the new architectural education should facilitate the formation of responsible and socially aware individuals. He practiced this with a focus on the West-coast of Norway, with its regional composition of culture and climate. He thought us students to work both scientifically and artistically to understand and read the landscape and the changes it has undergone. That is why he sent us out in the field with concrete tasks in a 1:1 scale, by the coast, in the inland, to “unknown” cultures in order to partake in processes together with the locals. The architect should be visible, active and available in engagement with the society and its surroundings. He thought us about local craft and building techniques from the West-coast to show us the open flexible structures of “grindabygget” and “lemstova”, developed through generations. This is open form in real life, built for a human life in continuous change.

Through an attitude where no interpretation was pre-established, he challenged us to find a form response in relation to the landscape and its terms.

Svein developed a democratic architecture that was truly antiauthoritarian at its core. His oeuvre is an expression of a regional architecture that realizes a rich set of meanings about a living, flexible and dynamic Norwegian West-coast culture.

An architecture which portrays the big landscape, through rain or shine, through what grows there, and what that can be utilized as building material – and an architecture that at the same time provides rom for the shifting social life.
With Svein Hatløy’s critical gaze, untiring effort and remarkable commitment he has thought generations of architects that architecture actually may transform society and be crucial for the freedom and happiness of its inhabitants. If not the society – “the background” in his terminology – was adaptable, one had to add meaning in order for the background to change, and by this in turn open up for others to step forth with their future responses. Through this one displays a personal perspective, an action that slowly but surely will transform the background to a present and to a future. In Svein’s vision, it was only in this way society can change – through personal commitment and clarification.