Lines of sight, lines of site: Sverre Fehn, Arne Næss, and joined methods in environmental representations

This essay asks how architectural representation ought to be understood in relation to environmental ethics, using Sverre Fehn’s depictions of buildings in the Nordic landscape as case study. The central issue is whether these drawings confirm a view of buildings as defensive objects (worlds) set apart from nature, or whether they can also be read—when conceptualized as complementary companions to the insights of deep ecologist Arne Næss—as pointing toward more relational and ecological ways of inhabiting place. I show that Fehn’s studies suggest something close to Næss’s idea of 'ontological equivalence', a continuity between human and non-human beings, spaces, and systems. Their compositions give comparable weight and presence to structures and landscape elements, creating a holistic quality that does not require architecture to dominate or be diminished before 'Big Nature', nor reduced to tropes of refuge or raw materiality. By setting Fehn’s visual practice in dialogue with Næss’s normative framework, I argue that these works can be seen as offering a practical ethic of situatedness, one that moves beyond romantic idealization and mere protection against the natural world.