Welcome to the launch of Following Norberg-Schulz: An Architectural History through the Essay Film by Anna Ulrikke Andersen!

Presentation by Anna Ulrikke Andersen, followed by a conversation between Andersen and Art Historian Ingrid Halland

About the book

Following Norberg-Schulz: An Architectural History through the Essay Film (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022) examines the 'window' in the life and work of the seminal architectural thinker Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926 – 2000). It draws new attention to his architectural designs and re-examines his acclaimed theoretical work on the phenomenology of architecture and place within the context of a biography of his life, linking him with other historical figures such as Helen Keller and Rainer Maria Rilke, and framing him within the modernist tradition of the latter.

Taking a novel, experimental approach, the book also explores the potential of the essay-film as an innovative new approach to producing architectural history. Bridging archival research and artistic exploration, its ten chapters, written by an architectural historian who is also a film-maker, are each accompanied by a short documentary film, hosted online and linked from within the chapter, which use the medium of film to creatively explore and delve deeper into little-known aspects of Norberg-Schulz's theory of genius loci and the phenomenology of architecture. The book questions what it means to 'follow' those who came before, exploring the positionality of the architectural historian/filmmaker.

Offering an insightful account of the life, work, and theory of a key thinker, Following Norberg-Schulz is also essential reading for those interested in practice-led research methodologies, particularly in the practice of film-making and the essay film, providing a highly innovative example of scholarly research which bridges the text-film gap.

Anna Ulrikke Andersen is a filmmaker and architectural historian, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. She holds a PhD in architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, where her practice led thesis explored the window in the life and work of Christian Norberg-Schulz. Her more recent work looks at chronic illness and architecture, first as a 2018-19 Fellow at the Harvard Film Study Center, and later as a scholar in residence at ROM studio in 2021. As a Fellow of the Future Architecture Platform 2021, she was commissioned to curate the exhibition Chronic Conditions: Body and Building at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

Ingrid Halland is associate professor at the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen, where she teaches 20th century architecture history and theory, as well as contemporary art theory, politics of aesthetics, and art historiography. She also holds the position as associate professor II at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design where she teaches at the PhD programme. Her research interests include material histories, cybernetics, theories of environment, continental philosophy, as well as ethics of globalization, systems biology, and critiques of the Anthropocene. Her academic work is published in journals such as Log, Journal of Design History, Arkitektur N and Kunst og kultur, and her work as an art critic is published in art magazines, museum catalogues, and artist books. She is editor-in-chief of ROM forlag, a publishing plattform by ROM for Art and Architecture.