JK Arkitektur: We want to shape places – not just draw buildings

By Celina Tran

For architect and founder of JK Arkitektur, Jo Kjetil Nielsen, architecture begins with a simple question: what can a building contribute to the place around it?

After graduating from Bergen School of Architecture in 1997, Jo Kjetil Nielsen established JK Arkitektur in 2005 in Leirvik, a coastal village between Bergen and Stavanger. Today, the practice consists of four architects, each with different educational backgrounds and complementary skills.

Before founding the studio, Nielsen spent seven years at an architecture office that grew into one of Norway’s largest practices. There, he primarily worked with competitions and early project phases. Over time, however, he missed being involved in the entire process; “I felt a longing to be able to be involved throughout the whole process and for someone to have continuous ownership of the projects.”

And so, JK Arkitektur was born, becoming a smaller practice where the same team could follow a project from A to Z.

Bekkjarvik drawing. Image: JK Arkitektur

No fixed style

Look through JK Arkitektur’s projects from the past 20 years, and you might notice something unusual. “You could say that we lack a style, a particular way of approaching the building task,” he says. “Our style and formal response are adapted through the landscapes and the people we meet.”

Rather than imposing a recognisable signature on every project, the practice sees architecture as a response to its particular circumstances. Clients, landscapes, climates and cultures differ, and each project demands a new answer.

Stolpehus. Photo: Helge Eek

Among its clients are what JK Arkitektur calls Stedsbyggerne, or place-builders: people who are interested not simply in constructing a new building, but in strengthening the community and identity of their villages for future generations.

“If we’ve achieved something unique, it’s through these people, their visions and the input they’ve given us as designers. The client often has just as much influence on the final result as the architect.”

The dramatic landscape of western Norway also plays an important role. Working in Sunnhordland and along the west coast allows the architects to be restrained, using relatively few elements to create powerful spaces and visual experiences.

Røyrøy staircase. Photo: Helge Eek

Building the spaces between

One of the clearest examples is the expansion of Bekkjarvik Torg, a mixed-use development of 8,000 square metres comprising shops, care homes, apartments and offices.

Bekkjarvik is a historic trading village and one of western Norway’s most popular guest harbours. Rather than responding to the programme with a single, unified building volume, JK Arkitektur sought to extend and complement the existing village. “The main idea was to build on and supplement the village, becoming part of it rather than creating the large, imposing and homogeneous volume the building programme might otherwise have encouraged.”

Bekkjarvik. Photo: Helge Eek

This meant giving as much attention to the spaces between the buildings as to the buildings themselves. Materials and forms draw on local building traditions and coastal architecture from Normandy.

The same sensitivity to context can be found in the project Les Espedrels, which saw the transformation of an old farmstead in the Midi-Pyrénées into a contemporary home with a guest house, pool and outdoor spaces. New buildings appear initially as simple, almost anonymous farm structures, connected by a long wall, but their personality emerges as the visitor enters the courtyard and begins to inhabit them. “We’ve tried to build a quiet sense of anticipation into the project, where you as a visitor should not only experience a main motif but be led through a series of experiences.”

Blikk. Photo: Helge Eek

Back in Norway, Løa på Røyrøy involved reconstructing an old barn, of which only the round-stone foundation remained.

The project completes the re-establishment of the original fiskarbondetun (a traditional fisher-farmer homestead) through a reinterpretation of local building traditions, including a solid-wood structural system developed with Solberg Sag on Osterøy.

At Kråko in Fitjar, the BLIKK project takes a different approach: ten holiday homes developed around a shared construction system. Here, each plot is given its own story through the relationship between building and terrain, while a restrained composition keeps the landscape in the foreground.

Even the practice’s own architecture follows this philosophy. Stolpehus nr. 1, JK Arkitektur’s branch office in Fitjar, takes inspiration from traditional notheng, buildings raised on posts, with open ground floors once used for storing and drying fishing nets. The studio occupies the transparent, public street level, while meeting, dining and overnight spaces sit above.

Les Espedrels. Photo: JK Arkitektur

Pleasing your neighbour

The principle underpinning all these projects can be traced back to Nielsen’s student days. As part of a course called Bygrend, students were tasked with designing individual homes within a collective urban setting. At the end of the introductory lecture, BAS founder and lecturer Svein Hatløy shared a piece of advice that Nielsen has never forgotten: “The person who answers this task best is the one who makes their neighbour better.”

For Nielsen, making one’s neighbour better captures the fundamental architectural responsibility of allowing the project to converse with and contribute positively to its surroundings. “For us as architects, viewing a building project merely as the shaping of an object is limiting. The interplay between the building and the landscape, in the broadest sense, must be the primary focus; this is what creates qualities that transcend the purely technical or functional. Our buildings should create space for experience and variety, rather than passive observation,” he says.

“If we draw a parallel to human interaction, encountering someone with a perfect facade is rarely enriching; we’re usually more drawn to individuals with distinct character, those who hold back a little and reveal new layers as we get to know them.”