Part of the winning team of the inaugural 1999 AR Emerging awards, Sixten Rahlff of 3RW Arkitekter speaks to previous finalists Joshua Bolchover and John Lin about building in ruraland developing contextsSixten Rahlff I was a masters student atthe Bergen School of Architecture whenHans Olav Hesseberg and I won thefirst AREmerging awards in 1999 (ARDecember 1999). We had constructed asmall orphanage in Chhepetar, a village inthe foothills of the Nepalese Himalayas, about six to seven hours northwest of Kathmandu. Today, I am one of the partners at 3RW Arkitekter in Bergen, onthe west coast of Norway.We are around30 people: planners, designers and landscape architects working primarily in Norway, but also with projects in Burkina Faso and other countries.Joshua Bolchover It is a happy coincidence, because I have just started doing some work in Nepal in the last year orso with the District Development Unit (DDU), an impact enterprise I founded in2020 that is based here in Hong Kong. Thegoal is to bring about scalable solutions with respect to affordable housing and civic infrastructure within a radius of a five-hour flight from Hong Kong. Since the Nepal earthquake in 2015, which devastated a lotof the countrys urban settlements, all ofthese beautiful old buildings are being replaced by generic tall concreteframe houses. With DDU, we are looking to createan alternative model which maintains seismic resilience, while workingwith theexisting urban fabric.Sixten RahlffSadly, the epicentre of the 2015 earthquake was near Chhepetar, and Ihave not been able to reach the orphanage or find it on satellite maps since. I fear that, although we built it to be very resistant, with earthquake anchors from the top to bottom beams, it may have been destroyed.Sixten Rahlff and Olav Hesseberg won the inaugural AR Emerging awards in 1999 with Eli Synnevg for their orphanage building in Chhepetar, Nepal (lead image), constructed while they were still students in Norway. Since, 3RW Arkitekter, founded by Rahlff with three other partners, has built school buildings in Mozambique and Burkina Faso (above), typically working on-site for extended periods with students and local construction workersCredit:3RW ArkitekterRecent projectsin Norway by 3RW Arkitekter focus onreuse, such as the Bergen Inclusion Centre, which recycled 65 per cent of the materials from an existing buildingCredit:Alexander CoppoJoshua Bolchover Did you find it difficult to return to Norway after working in Nepal?Sixten RahlffYes. We were there fornearly a year, living at the site and workingtogether. The concept was a small gathering of buildings a dormitory, main house and kitchen with a common open area in the middle. There was no electricity the whole project came together without it. All the stones came from the river and the timber from the forest. I think that in my time working as an architect in the 25 years since, my main realisation has been that there should not be as big a difference between building in Norway and building inNepal. The Nepal project taught me the fundamentals of building: there are people, there are materials and there is the climate.John Lin The challenge is that in economies like Hong Kong and Norway, thebuilding industry is so professionalised, making it very hard to build together as a community. Building is an act of social cohesion. The question is how we go about reclaiming that in the socalled developed world.Joshua Bolchover We are all grappling with this. But in developing and rural contexts, most buildings are not the result of a communityled process either. The places where we work Kathmandu in Nepal, Manila in the Philippines, and Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia are rapidly urbanising and there is a lot of building happening without architects and their expertise. Urban development is mostly determined by the global construction industry there too that is why it is all concrete frames, because it is the most affordable way.The Nepal project taught me the fundamentals of building: there are people, there are materials and there is the climateSixten Rahlff I wanted to ask about that. The model for doing the kind of work we are discussing is to be affiliated with a university, and academic funding. I used toteach a lot here at the Bergen School ofArchitecture, and our 2009 school in Govuro, Mozambique, came out of a student project. I have since stepped back from teaching, but it is still a goal to maintain this kind of work at 3RW. It does not pay as well as building in Norway sometimes it does not pay at all. How do you find the funds and time to work on projects that arenot profitable?John Lin I think we have all found that buildings that must earn profit are a very specific type of building. The profit motive warps the whole thing. Since completing ahospital project in Angdong, Hunan province, in China, with Joshua (as part ofRural Urban Framework) in 2014 (ARNovember 2016), I have actually had something of an architectural midlife crisis and stopped working on building projects. I have focused on research instead. AsFound Houses, for example, is a book Iwrote with Sony Devabhaktuni in 2020 that looks at 20 buildings throughout rural China, all of which are designed by what Bernard Rudofsky would have called the selfbuilder. Another project I did during the Covid19 pandemic was with a collaborator from the University of Hong Kong, Lidia Ratoi, who has a degree in robotic fabrication. We took apart an old wooden house and got a robot to 3D print new walls for it onsite. Afterwards, carpenters reassembled the wooden structure and roof. The idea was that thisuse of technology created a system ofconstruction that supports local and collective participation, while recycling andadapting traditional buildings.The 2020 book As Found Houses by John Lin and Sony Devabhaktuni documents 20 self-built houses in rural ChinaCredit:John Lin and Sony DevabhaktuniLins work also encompasses experiments in robotic fabrication within rural contextsCredit:John Lin and Lidia RatoiJoshua Bolchover University and NGO funding can also be fickle. Around the time that we were working in Angdong, therewas a change of government and subsequent crackdown on the role of international NGOs working in China andwe had been working with a Hong Kongbased NGO. That crackdown really began to affect the model that we were working with, which we had built up over time. When that was removed, it became increasingly difficult to do projects in the way that we had done before; to continue with projects in rural China, we had to work directly with local government, leading to fresh difficulties. Now, with DDU,we work almost as an architectural start-up, and have therefore been exploring alternative ways of generating financial streams for the work that we do. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investment has been one area we have been exploring so far, unsuccessfully. But we are working on it.Sixten RahlffIt is not that it is easier tobuild in the global south, but the process can often be so much more direct, in that you spend time with the community you are building for and typically have a restricted number of local materials at your disposal. You are certainly working with fewer materials than the vast catalogue that wehave here in Norway. But of course, it isa false freedom we need to change our approach and adapt buildings and already existing materials here as much as we do anywhere else.It is going to be interesting to follow as architects invariably have to find local ways of building things againJohn LinThere is this kind of crisis for architects because of the unsustainability ofthe building industry. In a way, I think that it can be a very positive thing it has brought about a deep introspection in our field. It is going to be interesting to follow in the years ahead, as architects invariably have to find local ways of building things again and also how building codes and regulations will have to adapt.Sixten Rahlff For many years now, 3RWhas worked on a project on a 20,000m2 site that houses a teacher training college. Ithas now been renovated as an inclusion centre for refugees coming to Norway and we have managed to reuse about 65 per cent of what was already there. That is quite a big number compared with the standard 15 per cent specified by the municipality. And for the materials that wedid not reuse in the new building, we organised a flea market of sorts, where people and businesses could come and take whatever was left over. To me, this felt like a way of doing architecture that was akin tothe projects we have done in Nepal, Mozambique and Burkina Faso but adapted to Norway. We did really have to fight for that process, though, because the municipalitys standards and regulations on reuse are so underdeveloped.Together, Lin andJoshua Bolchover have worked on several projects as Rural Urban Framework (RUF), including on the Ger Plug-in prototypes in Mongolia, which offer nomadic dwellers a more permanent abodeCredit:District Development Unit / Joshua Bolchover / Jersey PoonRUFs hospital in Angdong, Hunan province, China, doubles as a villagecommunity space. Lin wasa finalist in the AR Emerging awards in 2009, as were both Lin and Bolchover (as RUF),in 2012Credit:Rural Urban Framework / Joshua Bolchover and John LinJohn Lin One of the big questions in As Found Houses is what the global north can learn from these rural contexts, because in many ways, they are much more connected to the art of living, not just building.Sixten Rahlff This question of who islearning from whom is interesting. Whenwe went to Nepal as students, wewere almost totally unskilled, yet the community saw us as the experts. But we learned a tremendous amount from the stone cutters, the carpenters, and so on. What we could bring to the table in turn was the introduction of new forms of ventilation, and letting more light into thebuildings, as there are public health issues associated with cooking indoors without good ventilation in Nepal. It was afantasticexperience for a group of young, inexperienced architects, and also quite scary. It was definitely an exchange of knowledge and skills.Joshua Bolchover I think it is important to acknowledge that the global norths impact on the climate crisis and global inequality is really evident in the global south. The climate crisis might feel a bit abstract in Hong Kong, or Norway. But when you are somewhere like Mongolia, it is inescapable. You can taste the coal in the air when you are in the city of Ulaanbaatar. So how do we begin to address these two critical issues as architects the climate crisis and inequality and the ways inwhich they work hand in hand with eachother? A real challenge we face as aprofession is that we are completely undervalued in what we do. How can we create a shift in how we see the value in thenotforprofit projects we are doing? Because the impact that it has in the communities is potentially huge.John LinI think it is a question of value versus profit.Sixten RahlffAbsolutely. The idea of anarchitectural midlife crisis that you described, John, really resonates with me. Ithink I have reached that point myself. Iam quite fed up with the focus on shortterm income and the underdeveloped understanding of culture and quality here in Norway. I am much more into music now. Of course, I am not being entirely serious I have a very nice team that I work with, and I still find the work fascinating. But Ikeep returning to the memory of waking upin the fog in Chhepetar, and feeling thatwewere doing something that meant everything for the people trying to build the orphanage and also for us.2024-11-06AR EditorsShare AR November 2024Buy Now