Jossingfjord Senteret

Jøssingfjord is a place that has been intensely altered by humans, and it is these transformations that give it its exceptional value. The Jøssingfjordsenteret embraces its fully artificial character and, as such, connects to the infrastructure networks and fits into the landscape as if it were one of them. But it also establishes a link with the rocks, scree slopes and stony mountains that are the origin of mining in Sokndal. This stony character of the centre is reflected in its exterior construction, in its façades and roofs, made entirely of polished black concrete, which time and weather will alter and bring to life. The concrete will have a mixture of black, green and white aggregates, giving it a metallic appearance, sometimes shiny, like a large wet rock. In this way, the pieces that make up the museum are intensely material, heavy and inert, empathising with the nature of the mountain and “disordered” in balance with the randomness of the rocks in a scree slope. But at the same time, its construction without edges or joints gives it an abstract immateriality, sophisticated and cultured like a composition by Joel Shapiro.

The Hellerenhusene are exceptionally beautiful, not only because of their historical value, but also because of the paradox between the immense black, heavy, unchanging and balanced mass of the mountain above them and the extreme delicacy of their coloured wooden construction. It is in this balance between lightness and heaviness, between solidity and precariousness, that they find their greatest power and magnetic appeal. The Jøssingfjordsenteret exploits this gravitational condition of the Hellerenhusene, also in a paradoxical way. The senteret is constructed as a set of pieces raised on a horizontal tray, so that they appear to float weightlessly despite their heavy, stone-like nature.