Poster proposed for ASEH 2010.
This poster aims to explore – in a visual way – how architects, commercial builders, and private leisure cabin owners have attempted to create particular relationships to nature through leisure cabin architecture in Norway.
The poster will identify changing attitudes and new ways of using nature through looking at architecture. One example is the cabin window, which has constantly grown larger so that nature (or rather, the view to nature) is invited into the cabin, whereas earlier, windows were small in order to protect inhabitants from a threatening environment. People then had to go outside in order to experience nature. Another example is the placement of the cabin in the landscape and the relationship between cabins in the same area. As popular cabin areas grew crowded throughout the 20th century, people needed to live out the dream of the remote cabin through other means.
The poster is based on a larger project exploring the history of the Norwegian leisure cabin, and will particularly focus on cultural negotiations of ”correct” cabin styles and ways of experiencing nature. As such, the poster will challenge environmental historians to consider the interactions between the built environment and cultural ideas about nature in a non-urban setting.