The Time Machine

The town fire of 23 January 1904 turned Ålesund into Norway’s art nouveau town. The town fire, which was the biggest peacetime fire in Norway’s history, destroyed the old town’s wooden buildings, leaving 10,000 of the town’s 12,000 inhabitants homeless. The whole of the new town – over 600 houses, half of which were masonry buildings – was built from 1904 to 1907. The result was that Ålesund became one of Norway’s most characteristic towns.

Ålesund is the only town in Norway where the town centre consists entirely of masonry buildings. Never before or after have so many Norwegian architects worked on the same construction project. Over fifty people, more than thirty of whom were trained architects, designed houses in the new Ålesund.

The reconstruction of Ålesund took place whilst Norway was in the process of breaking free from its union with Sweden. This meant that the architects were keen to include “national” features in their buildings. What should “Norwegian architecture” look like, they wondered? On the other hand, they had trained abroad, and were outward-looking and well-informed about contemporary trends.

All of these factors are reflected in the architecture of Ålesund. With hindsight it is possible to see that many of the characteristics of the international art nouveau movement influenced the designs that can be seen in Ålesund.