| Nils Slaatto | |
|---|---|
| Born | 22nd June 1923 Lillehammer, Norway |
| Died | 16th March 2001 Asker, Norway |
| Nationality | Norwegian |
| Work | |
| Buildings |
Asker Town Hall |
Nils Slaatto (June 22, 1922 – March 16, 2001).,[1] was for more than two decades one of Norway's most prominent and influential architects, having a strong and distinctive impression on Norwegian architecture.
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Nils Slaatto was born in the winter sport town of Lillehammer, Oppland, Norway, on June 23, 1923. His father Oddmund Eindride Slaatto, was a functionalist architect in Oslo in the years between the two world wars. His mother, Anine Wollebæk, came from Lillehammer and was also an architect, graduating from the University of Technology, but never practised.
During 1938-39 Nils Slaatto took carpentry at the Technical School in Oslo before he enrolled into the Norwegian Institute of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, were he graduated in 1947.
The post-war period offered numerous tasks; the most demanding was the rebuilding of northern Norway, where Slaatto participated in the reconstruction of Finnmark as district architect in Vadsø and Tana from 1948 to 1950. Large parts of the area suffered major damage during the war because of the Germans' use of the scorched-earth tactic.
In 1949 Slaatto married Margit Bleken of Trondheim, the sister of the famous Norwegian artist no:Håkon Bleken. When they moved to Oslo Slaatto started as the leader of the Farmers' Architectural Office there. Here he met fellow architect and Lillehammer native Kjell Lund, who was also a fellow graduate from the Norwegian Institute of Technology.
As youngsters, Slaatto and Lund had both wandered around Maihaugen, an open-air museum consisting of many types of old wooden farm buildings. They were influenced by this Norwegian wood architecture, adapting age-old techniques to modern production demands. An example is the "Ål cabin" in the Hallingdal Valley, designed in cooperation with Jon Haug.
In 1957 Lund and Slaatto were invited to take part in a limited competition for an extension to the Akershus County Agricultural College at Hvam. In 1958, after winning the competition, they were able to start their architectural firm "Kjell Lund and Nils Slaatto", a partnership that lasted for three decades. In 1988 the company changed its name to Lund & Slaatto Arkitekter AS. Kjell Lund remained an architect/partner of Lund & Slaatto Arkitekter AS until autumn 2002.