Completed in 1964, Wenche and Jens Selmer’s home is an elegant, low-key example of one-family housing in the Norwegian postwar tradition. The Selmer House formulated ideals for a new domestic architecture with a particular eye for site and architectural detail. Its modest one-story layout reinterpreted the vernacular, opened the interiors to the garden, and used a simple palette of natural materials. This all appeared controversial in a conservative Oslo neighborhood in the 1960s.

Trained in Oslo, Wenche Selmer worked in Paris from 1946 through 1948, also at Le Corbusier’s studio, and later became an influential teacher at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Her design philosophy resonates with pressing contemporary issues. In her lectures she emphasized the importance of being “prudent in our use of the available means”, and critiqued the forces of the market: “Much is driven by the pursuit of profit, without care for people or places … It is strange that things can go so wrong in times of prosperity, which has largely been the case since the 1960s.”

In his archive-based essay, Joakim Skajaa discusses how the controversy of its inception has been replaced by a contemporary reverence, highlighted by the media focus and celebrity generated when the Selmer House was sold on the open market in 2022.

Joakim Skajaa is a curator at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo.