Norberg-Schulz, Christian

Date born:   1926

Place Born:   Oslo, Norway

Date died:   2000

Place died:   Oslo (?)

Architectural historian and architect. Born to father also named Christian Norberg-Schulz  and mother, Laura Lunde [Norberg-Schulz].  After World War II he studied in Switzerland at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, Zurich, graduating in 1949.  He spent the years 1950-51 in the Norwegian army.   He joined the faculty of the school of Architecture in Oslo in 1951, where he was appointed assistant professor.   In 1963 he received his Ph.D. from the Technical University in Trondheim. He was promoted to professor of architecture in 1966.  During the academic year 1973-74 he was visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Dallas, TX, in 1978. He was Dean of the Oslo School of Architecture. In the early 1970s he authored two volumes in the History of World Architecture series on Baroque Architecture which looked at the buildings both structurally and as works of art.

An expert in the modern architecture, his seminal book for architects was Intentions in Architecture (1963, US 1968).  His writing is greatly influenced by the Gestalt and phenomenological theories he read as a student. 

Home Country:   Norway

Sources:   [obituary] Architectural Record 188 (August 2000): 32;  Architects' Journal (April 20, 2000): 19.

Bibliography:  Late Baroque and Rococo Architecture. New York: Rizzoli, 1985;  Baroque Architecture. New York: Rizzoli, 1986; Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli, 1980; Architecture: Meaning and Place: selected essays.  New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1988; Architecture: Presence, Language, Place.  London: Thames & Hudson, 2000; Intentions in Architecture. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1968.