Experiencing resonance: everyday life in modernist blocks of flats in Oslo, Norway

Abstract

Based on an interdisciplinary approach to architectural history, drawing upon sound studies and anthropology, this article offers a case study of contemporary experiences of resonance by residents living in modernist blocks of flats in Oslo built in 1964. Drawing upon ethnography and archival research, I ask how these sonic experiences affect people's relationships, both with other neighbours and the building itself. Moving from the outside and into the building, following architectural historian Katie Lloyd Thomas' theoretical approach to materials and how these materials come into being, I discuss the way resonance creates a series of tensions, affecting the way individuals relate to their surroundings, both affecting the way we see our built environment and social relations. Asking what it means to live in a modernist block of flats, I frame the residents' own stories of resonance within a larger context of changing neoliberal housing reforms in Norway from the 1980s until today. I argue that the experience of resonance creates new spatial configurations and also can stand as a critique of neo-liberal housing politics, forming connections that are both social and material.