Metropolis + Norway | Policy Matters

Paul Makovsky Countries like Korea and Japan have
had a national design policy in place since the 1950s. Can you explain the genesis of Norway’s policy?
Trond Giske Norway was a bit late coming to the area of design. The Danes have had a design policy for 30 years, and have been quite a leading force in furniture and jewelry. Sweden has had a strong industrial-based economy, with furniture manufacturers as well as companies like Volvo, Saab, Ericsson, and Nokia. Our economy was less design-focused and more based on natural resources like crude oil.

Design has been strong on our agenda for the past decade though, and we’ve launched many programs dealing with design innovation, inclusive design, and architecture. Education is the basis of our design policy, and design is taught from the primary-school level up through higher education, where there are design programs and possibilities for taking courses in design at business schools.

Legislation is also part of the picture. Inclusive design has been on the political agenda in Norway, and from now on all new public buildings, environments, and services will have to fulfill the requirements of inclusive design. Public transportation and public electronic-communications services will have to be accessible to people with different needs and abilities, too.

We’ve also established business-oriented institutions,
such as Innovation Norway (www.innovationnorway.com) and the Norwegian Design Council (www.norskdesign.no).

PM Is Innovation Norway connected to the government in some way?
TG Yes, it’s a state-owned company with the goals of pro-moting business and supporting entrepreneurs and newly started businesses in the forms of small capital investments, offices, and advice. It also supports research-innovation programs and export businesses, and has offices throughout the world to facilitate this. It’s a one-stop shop that actively supports emerging businesses, including those dedicated
to design.

PM One aspect of your policy turned neglected tourist lookout points along Norway’s main highways into amazing examples of design-driven architecture. Why was there a focus on architecture as opposed to some other design disciplines?
TG If you want to have a big push in design and architecture, you have to go where the big money is. So instead of making design this category with marginal public support, we tried to see if the big spenders, both in the public and private sectors, could include design in their policies. And of course one of the biggest money-spending sectors is infrastructure—a bridge or a lookout point is an oppor-tunity to incorporate design. You have to include design in ordinary business to succeed. If you try to do it just on the side, it will be too costly and it won’t be implemented.

PM When developing your design policies, do you
look at what other countries are doing, like Japan,
for example?
TG Absolutely, especially the Nordic countries, with which we have very close relationships. Our architectural policy from 2009 was very much inspired by the Danish policy that had come out three or four years before. Since our countries are so alike, we could look to their plan and then make a better one based on it. The next time they revise their plan, they will look at ours. It’s really a dynamic process. Our plan has a stronger emphasis on green building and sustain-ability than theirs does, maybe because it was formed later and there was more emphasis on these issues by then.

PM The United States doesn’t have a national design policy. Innovative thinking seems to come out of companies like Apple or Google, and government interference is limited. I wonder if the way Norway has made design a priority in major public works could ever happen in the United States?
TG The Nordic countries are a very interesting example worldwide. I think all of them are in the top 10 when it comes to business-friendly nations. We have a combination of strong government, a strong welfare state, public health care, public schools, and an excellent business environment. Our success is in having an active government and providing education that really brings out the talent in our populations. The public sector does a lot of things to promote the exchange of ideas and resources that the private sector wouldn’t organize themselves, because private companies are competing with one another. It may not be cost efficient for them to organize these exchanges, but it’s a good investment for society, so the government does it. For us, these things haven’t been a hindrance to business, they’ve been a promotion of business. Sometimes you can make more money doing these things collectively.

PM Norway Says and Snøhetta are examples of successful contemporary Norwegian design firms, and yet we know little about the early modernist designers in Norway, especially if you compare them to designers like Bruno Mathsson in Sweden, Arne Jacobsen and Hans Wegner in Denmark, and Alvar Aalto in Finland. Why is that?
TG We don’t have the big industry products or the mass consumer industries that other Nordic countries have. Traditionally Norway has had the closest links to nature, and this has become an interesting part of our design identity. It’s especially visible in our architecture, which is the leading force in Norwegian design right now. Many of our internationally successful young architects are inspired by the interaction between construction and nature. Just look at Snøhetta’s Opera House, which looks like a glacier.

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