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C HURCH , K ONGSVINGER , N ORWAY

ARCHITECT
H ILLE S TRANDSKOGEN

Traditionally, there are not many

Roman Catholics in Scandinavia.
The small town of Kongsvinger,
in Norway, east of Oslo and near
the Swedish border, has a
Catholic community of only
some 200 people, made up of
immigrants from Vietnam, the
Philippines and Poland as well as
native Norwegians. To help
bring the disparate group
together, a new church was
necessary.
Because of the size of the
congregation, the building had to
be simple and quite cheap: a
basic framework round the
liturgy was required. The
architects replied with a building

of great simplicity, in an
arrangement that has become
quite common in Scandinavian
churches of all denominations:
the church faces a roughly
similar sized parish hall over an
open court that separates sacred
and profane areas, with
everything being brought
together within an overall
rectangle a compact
arrangement comparable to, for
instance, the church at
Mortensrud built for a much
bigger (and Lutheran)
congregation (AR December
2002, p52).
At Kongsvinger, the parts are
simple and elemental all small

abstractions of ancient types.

The church itself with its wide,
clerestory-lit nave flanked by
narrow aisles is a miniature
basilica, with the altar
emphasized by a skylight, as was
the focus of basilican spaces
since Roman times; the
confessional and the font are in
tiny side niches opening off the
aisles. The open courtyard, with
its surrounding arcades, is
clearly descended from the
cloister, itself another Roman
type that goes back to the atria
of the houses of the rich. The
parish hall is, in a sense, a
negative of the cloister, with
arcades surrounding a roofed

NORDIC FAITH
By reinterpreting traditional types, this little
church achieves an intensity which is enhanced by
great sensitivity in use of materials and light.

60 | 3

1
Approach from south with church,
left, and parish hall, right.
2
Entrance to court: sawn sandstone
ashlar is outer skin of blockwork
walls.
3
Church main door opening off
cloister.

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space instead of one open to the

sky; to me at least, the rather
dark volume recalls tales of the
ancient timber halls of
Scandinavian legend you
almost expect a lantern as a
reminder of the central smokehole.
For Scandinavia, this is a
relatively poor parish, and
construction is economical and
very simple, but there has been
enough money to cover the
outside of the blockwork walls
in a sawn sandstone skin with
flush-pointed joints and solid
stone lintels over the portals to
the cloister. Inside, walls are
finished in tinted plaster, with no
skirtings against the floors,
which themselves are of polished
pale concrete. All columns and
main beams are 200mm square
laminated pine members, while
secondary roof elements, roof
linings and most other
woodwork are made of
untreated pine, the aroma of
which permeates the whole

cross section through hall

cross section through church

C HURCH , K ONGSVINGER , N ORWAY

ARCHITECT
H ILLE S TRANDSKOGEN

long section

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

complex. Special pieces, like the

pews, where you are literally
most in touch with the building,
are in oak.
Everything has been thought
out economically, yet with deep
understanding of the sensuous
properties of light and material.
Sankt Claras church is a small,
yet powerful distillation of
community and the numinous.
HENRY MILES
Architect
Hille Strandskogen, Oslo
Project team
Ervin Strandskogen, Henrik Hille,
Anja Hole Strandskogen
Interior design and landscape
Hille Strandskogen

4
Church is a small abstraction of
traditional basilica.
5
Parish hall.
6
Finishes are extremely simple and
economical.

church
sacristy
cloister court
parish hall
meeting
kitchen
up to flat

4
5

62 | 3

ground floor (scale approx 1:260)

63 | 10