Knut Knutsen

Knut Knutsen believed that buildings have always been used to publicize their individual owners. He thought that “things” should be made unimportant. Mankind was what mattered. He felt, too, that “nature is the most valuable and greatest source of inspiration. We are never bored with nature but we are with buildings. We must preserve nature, and we can best do this by seeking harmony with it and making our buildings subservient to it.” In an article he called in own house “the unimportant house,” and his winning entry in the competition for the Stockholm Embassy was titled “The Considerate”. Knutsen was an opponent of the Modern Movement as it was understood in the immediate pre- and post-war periods; he also rejected the concept of style and all style-based architecture. […] Ideally, Knutsen felt, a building should be invisible, and he very nearly achieved his goal in his own summer house at Portør.