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An Architecture of Chronic Illness: A Critical Exploration of Norwegian Buildings and Bodies from Post-war to Post-pandemic.

How do Norwegian people who live with chronic illness experience spaces where treatment takes place? In what ways has this architecture been shaped, maintained, used and experienced over time? How can patients’ own experience of these conditions tell us something about the way our attitudes to welfare and wellbeing have changed post-WWII until today? Using the individual’s experience of chronic illness as a point of departure, this project offers a critical approach to a complex relationship between politics, architecture and healthcare. This project looks closely at a set of buildings at an institute for rehabilitation in Igalo, Montenegro, where Norwegian patients have received treatment since 1976, as well as select therapy pools in Trøndelag.

The project builds upon methods from several disciplines: architectural history, anthropology film studies, and artistic research in the form of sound art and filmmaking. Archival material and site-visits will offer insights into how the buildings in question were built, maintained, and demolished. Interviews with patients and a set of creative tasks that patients complete in their homes or when being in treatment, pinpoint what matters the most to them. The artistic methods pick up on certain elements from this research and explore specific aspects and ideas that cannot easily be explored through more traditional academic formats of text, such as that which is emotional, sensuous, and ambiguous. The unique combination of these methods will bring forth a series of stories about buildings and places, told from the chronically ill body, which often is forgotten in traditional architectural history.

The project will be developed through three international symposia, resulting in an exhibition. A series of artworks, texts, articles, and materials will be presented as an exposé at the Research Catalogue platform, open and available for the public. We will also make a toolkit consisting of a series of critical questions that can be used by NGOs and patients to talk about space, architecture and place, health, wellbeing, welfare and subjective experiences of chronic illness.

This project is funded by the Norwegian Research Council.