Moholt Student Village

Moholt Student Village in Trondheim was built between 1964 and 1974. A competition for the restoration, densification and vitalization of the complex was launched in 2013 and was won by the young architects in MDH Arkitekter – Minna Riska, Dagfinn Sagen and Helge Lunder. The project is highly interesting as a bid for new student housing, and has in the international architectural press been discussed as a project representing the new timber age. In her essay “Etudes in Wood”, Ute Groba characterizes the Moholt project as Bois Brut: “Especially cross-laminated timber (CLT) opened for new application areas and, promising to function as a ‘carbon sink’, hit a nerve with society’s growing concerns with climate change. Simultaneously, questions were voiced about its supposedly expanded formal potential.” The project is indeed exploring the technical and formal potential of CLT in what architects might call an honest way. This volume presents the full set of drawings for the Moholt project. The architects’ documentation of the building process is accompanied by the photographer Ivan Brodey’s interpretation of the architecture.

Essay by Ute Groba.
Edited by Karl Otto Ellefsen.