ar+d

Highly commended

Carl-Viggo Hølmebakk

Viewpoint Platform with Sight Apparatus

Sognefjell, Norway

December 2000

The jury was fascinated to find that they had chosen the viewpoint platform at Sognefjell in Norway by Carl-Viggo Hølmebakk, whose brick drum of a garden shed (AR October 1997, p46) echoed round the world. Clearly Hølmebakks talent is for generating intensity of feeling expressed in the simplest tectonic terms.
A way of preventing tourists feet from destroying the delicate ecological balance of the high mountain landscape was desperately needed. But the normal obtrusive apparatus of tourist control: signs, fences, asphalt paths and so on have been avoided.
Instead, there is a modest but monumental circular concrete platform on which a simple but fascinating sight apparatus of two vertical steel wires can be rotated to show which of the peaks on the horizon you are looking at. It is hoped that the mechanism, by its very presence, will focus peoples wanderings.
The wire sights are enclosed in glass panels which act as handles to rotate the whole affair. Everything has been done to protect the device from the elements, with the protective panels mounted 20mm off centre to prevent them rotating excessively in a storm, when earlier prototype models whirled at 100 revs a minute.

Contact:
Carl-Viggo Hølmebakk
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