ABSTRACT
The Norwegian hytte, or cabin, is a space where time seems suspended. Its architectural design layout, disposition in the landscape, and materiality suggest a pause from urban motion. This identification is about time, space, and place perception; it has historical value and is combined with other physical and symbolic material. If the cabin ‘holds time,’ if it contributes to holding a front-forward future continuity, this information has a perceptional base, given by architecture and architecture atmospheres. If the urban condition and distance from the forest support a time/space interference, there is something about a cabin placed in a natural landscape associated with continuity from the city to the forest. This has to do with a comprehensive inscription in space, in a determined place and relates to the use of memory. It is also about the state of mind in different scenarios and situations. This reference has to do with an idea of settling that includes and accommodates the insertion of the human body in space. This recentering/departing/arriving/triggering in space and time, where a forming self discovers home and completion is accomplished, has a pace. This article will discuss if a pause in city dwelling is a need and a reality. And, how this movement occurs in Nature, which craftsmanship qualities frame and contextualize the Norwegian hytte, and its associated metaphor, proposing a changing perception about time and space. If there is a core matrix, tracible, among the in-transition conception of moving into spaces here in analysis, which features are then there to be explored? How do these relate to housing comfort, personal sensibilities, and architectural value, deriving from cabin imagery and its atmospheres?
