Atypical Neurotic writes:

59.915032
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About Atypical Neurotic
An Illinois-born refugee from academia who in late middle-age finds himself a civil servant in Norway. An unashamed city-dweller, he walks 30 minutes every day to a job where he is not paid to
be an economist (lawyer or accountant), only to
sound like one.
That’s a very…grim-looking building.
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It’s a funny one: trad made boxy and abstract. At least it still has a little color and texture. The little things we’re thankful for, eh?
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When I was a student in Amsterdam I noticed when you left the ring of old buildings but before you reached the modernist suburbs there was another ring that straddled the difference. Which is kind of odd, since the jump from trad to modern is often taken on a long jump, quickly, as with the rapid shift by composers such as Schoenberg, eager to leave the past behind. There’s often not much residue in the middle.
A Wikipedia search brings up a picture of some of the building style I remember, as well as a note about one of its proponents, Berlage. The Oslo building reminds me of this–what you would kind of expect in a transition style, but which you see less often because of the haste of the fall of the old, and the desire to put distance between past and present, maybe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Petrus_Berlage
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Because of a property bust at the turn of the last century, Oslo went directly from Victorian/Gründerzeit/Beaux Arts directly to 1930s Depression Modern, without stopping at Art Nouveau/Jugendstil or Deco.
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