Supervisor:
Rolf Gerstlauer
The summer of 2025, I attended a course in logging at Hjerleid Handverkskole. This course would become the experience which I based this diploma project on. I have always thought through my hands, and physical making has always been one of the strongest architectural acts to me. I wanted to partner up with Hjerleid in some way for this diploma, and when they asked me to collaborate on a project about pilgrims in Dovre, I said yes.
The project looks at the possibility of placing and transforming two old buildings, a house and a storehouse from the late 19th century, on a site next to Dovre church and making them into a daycenter for pilgrims.
The project has been a two-folded exploration of both the pilgrimage program and of the traditional techniques we wanted to implement in the rebuilding of the houses.
The techniques chosen with the context of them being made into a series of courses that were going to be hosted at Hjerleid.
The main building, “Klokkarstuggu”, was transformed into an information center, as well as guestrooms for janitors working at Hjerleid. The storehouse is transformed into a sauna for both pilgrims and local inhabitants, through the addition of a freestanding log box, placed inside of the storehouse structure. Changing rooms are also constructed to support the sauna program. Lastly a pavilion for exhibiting student works from the school was made, this to facilitate further courses at Hjerleid. All buildings are placed on top of a stonewall that is directly inspired by the stonewall surrounding the Dovre church. The wall became a way to structure the house's placement at site, but also functioning as the fundamentation itself.
The buildings will be assembled through mostly student projects, workshops or collective effort. All techniques that are implemented in this project have therefore been local and traditional ones, in a scale that is suited for courses or studentworks. I have looked at techniques like leir-rapping, logging, slating, and the making of traditional paints. I have used this project to reflect on how to draw for an unconventional way of building, and how this situation can bring an interesting form of education to myself and to the other students of these buildings.
The whole project is a documentation and conservation of non-material building tradition, manifested in a very material way.
To me this has been a new way of working with architecture and conservation, and I think this is a way to do projects that is going to be only more actualized going forward. The social ties people get to these kinds of buildings are unique. Remembering the house I restored last summer, it has now been further restored by many other pairs of hands, and I think all of these people have the same bond to the house as I hold. It gives a sense of purpose to the people building it, but also to the building in the end. A purpose I hope this projects manifests.
Contact
Hilde Hagen Loe