‘Nature Lessons’, Photolanguage’s building report on the Fredrikstad High School, Norway, by Duncan Lewis and Pir II Arkitektkontor, The Architects’ Journal, 22|05|03, pp. 28-35. (Cover image.)

Our report on the Fredrikstad High School, Southern Norway, was shot in temperatures of minus 12˚. The report emphasises Duncan Lewis’s strategies of site intervention and the use of materials direct from the site of excavation and land clearance – pine wood and granite: ‘The school’s relationship with its natural environment is established not simply on the level of the visual and the contemplative, through decorative mimicry or the creation of framed views of the surroundings. Instead, by actively internalising the rhythm and disposition of the landscape, the building’s relationship with its environment becomes direct and physical. To move through it is to physically retrace its integration with landscape’ (p. 35).