Narratives of Timber in 1960s Norwegian Prefabricated Architecture

Abstract Timber is an ambiguous material, saturated with implicit values of sustainability, and locality, and at the same time globally ubiquitous. This essay examines the curious moment in Norwegian architectural history when timber, long associated with tradition and craft, became an industrial material of mass-production—in particular, through prefabricated structures produced by the Norwegian company Moelven Brug. By tracing the marketing narratives behind the company’s two main products—large timber housing panels and glued laminated (glulam) beams—this essay reconstructs a complex field of ideas related to building with timber. It argues that, on one hand, Moelven products reflected shifting architectural attitudes towards timber in mid-twentieth-century Norway, treating it as the most “neutral” material, and on the other, they shaped new narratives of “updated tradition” advanced through the use of engineered timber in representative buildings. A curious by-product of a marketing narrative, the myth of updated tradition survives until today, providing a local resolution to the homogeneous global typologies of timber construction.