Time-travels in Scandinavia is a collection of photos, notes, sketches and articles which I gathered during my summer studies of Nordic architecture and design through the program hosted by the University of Washington. Together with our professors P. Cohan and J. Dee we travelled in Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark exploring projects by great Scandinavian architects of XX century and today’s designers, while paying particular attention to the cultural and geographic aspects of Scandinavia. Our journey was not guided by a historic timeline and oftentimes we moved in time from a medieval old town into a modern planned suburb, while stopping at a traditional Nordic village and deciphering old runes at viking burial sites. Frequently we encountered places and buildings, where several “times” met together and architecture demonstrated profound responsiveness to the local context. This deepened our understanding of contemporary urban design and shaped a way of thinking that can be applied in our own endeavors.

Our tour started on June 19th in Finland, where we tripped around southern Finland and spent a week in Helsinki. Then we spent July in Stockholm, using the architecture school at the Royal Institute of Technology as our base. On July 31st we embarked an architectural pilgrimage through southern Sweden and Norway, with our last stop in Copenhagen, Denmark. Hope you will enjoy some of my artifacts from this trip!