09/05/2026
Monocle :: Architecture Norway September 2026 issue 7 Min Read
Inside Hamar Atriumhus – one of Scandinavia’s most admired architectural templates
Since its construction in the 1960s, the Atriumhus has become one of Scandinavia’s most loved buildings and respected works of architecture. We meet its current custodian, architect Gary Parkes.
Along the green banks of Mjøsa, Norway’s biggest lake, industrial railway and timber town Hamar offers a lesson in the country’s architectural history. An hour and a half north of Oslo, it’s home to contemporary wooden villas, modernist apartment blocks and 19th-century period buildings. These sit alongside landmark structures such as Pritzker Prize-winner Sverre Fehn’s masterful Storhamarlåven museum building and Snøhetta’s Rådhus (Town Hall). It’s also the setting for a less obvious yet equally important example of Norwegian architecture: a low-slung wooden Atriumhus. This building typology, which was developed in the late 1950s, perfectly exemplifies the ideology, material use and design principles of the Nordic nation’s mid-century modernism.
On a secluded plot, the residence is part of the first set of atrium houses constructed in Norway. It was designed by Norwegian architect Are Vesterlid, a contemporary of Fehn and a professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, who lived in the building until his death in 2013. The unassuming structure, made of local pine and spruce, is a masterclass in egalitarian architecture. Deeply connected with Norway’s mid-century, left-leaning intellectual community, Vesterlid rejected the era’s bourgeois tendency for architects to design exclusively for wealthy clients. Instead, he championed a human scale of affordable architecture that suited the daily life of the building’s user.
It’s an approach to practice that appealed to the home’s current resident, Hamar-based Scottish architect Gary Parkes. His first encounter with the house came after a decade working for local practices on premier Norwegian builds he serendipitously found the property when it hit the market in 2014. Walking past the hidden plot on a crisp winter evening, he peered through the expansive glazing and watched the blue winter light filter through the central skylights. “I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck,” he tells Monocle, as we sit down for a cup of coffee under a black Louis Poulsen PH 5 lamp in the open kitchen. “I immediately fell in love with the space and the atmosphere.” Recognising what he calls its “brilliant structural footprint”, Parkes purchased the home directly from Vesterlid’s children, ensuring that the building’s design-friendly stewardship remained intact.
It was a significant coup, given Parkes’ appreciation of the structure’s history. In 1962, Vesterlid partnered with multidisciplinary collective Arkitim, alongside architects Finn Bø and Per Torp Ildahl and interior designers Hans Østerhaug and Edvin Helseth. Together, they drafted a radical neighbourhood master plan. It was intended to include up to 70 prefabricated, highly affordable homes in Hamar; only eight were eventually realised, with four inhabited by the partners and their young families. Dismissed by sceptical mid-century residents who derisively nicknamed them grisebinger (“pig houses”), the atrium buildings have since transcended that early criticism to become some of Scandinavia’s most coveted architectural templates.
A defining characteristic of these atrium houses, which reflects the social beliefs of the time, is a sense of communal living, exemplified by the large garden shared by the houses. Here, a powerful neighbourhood camaraderie still thrives. Seasonal garden work and spontaneous summer terrace parties are shared with a creative cohort of neighbours, including Finn Bø’s daughter, who works in film and television, and a pair of Oslo-based architects who use their house as a summer retreat. “The people who have lived in these homes over the decades have had long and happy lives and, instead of a care home, have lived in them until the end, says Parkes. “The way that these buildings are set up encourages a more collective way of living.”
more photographs and reporting [https://monocle.com/design/architecture/inside-hamar-atriumhus-norway/]
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