Northern Norway´s coastline is well known for its unique landscape of fjords and post-glacial mountain ranges. It is also home to the Sami-people, nowadays a minority but then the ancestors of northern Scandinavia. Lödinge is a community in Nordland fylke, a place where the owners of Boazzovazzi are trying to support and keep the Sami culture alive. In order to create a vivid cultural exchange they plan to establish a culture centre where Sami people and people from all over the world may come together. They offer various kinds of workshops, seminars and events about traditional Sami kitchen, bushcraft, Sami fables, reindeer herding and much more. The students’ task was to design an ensemble of buildings for the culture centre including some sort of forum, space for the seminars, accommodation and shelter for visitors, especially hikers.
The design is embedded in the overwhelming fjord scenery. It consists of several buildings, a big one, called Stor-Gamme surrounded by several small ones, called Lill-Gamme. A gamme is actually the traditional Sami cabin. It is a small, yet cosy hut, providing basic comfort, organised around a central hearth with a grass sod roof. The design adapts and translates traditional living and building techniques to provide the appropriate spacial frame for the Sami culture centre.
Small Gamme
Single cabin accommodation



Spacial scheme of the small gamme



Large Gamme
Workshops, community, hostel

Spacial scheme of
the large gamme
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Sami Rintala & Dagur Eggertsson / NTNU /
Norwegian University of Science and Technology / Trondheim / Norway / 2018
Norwegian University of Science and Technology / Trondheim / Norway / 2018