Tautra Monastery / JSA

Architects: Jensen & Skodvin Arkitektkontor
Location: Tautra Island, Norway
Design Period: 2003-2004
Construction period: 2004-2006
Programme: New monastery for Cistercian nuns
Client: Cistercian nuns, Mississippi abbey
Project Architects: Jan Olav Jensen (pl), Børre Skodvin, Siri Moseng, Torstein Koch, Anne Lise Bjerkan, Kaja Poulsen, Torunn Golberg, Martin Draleke, Aslak Hanshuus
Budget: 6.000.000 EURO (US $9.27 millions)
Constructed Area: 2.000 sqm

The project is situated on Tautra island in Trondheimsfjorden. It is a new monastery for 18 nuns, complete with a small church and all the facilities needed to make a living, as areas for production and so on.

The original programme has been reduced with around 30% by eliminating almost all the corridors in the project. This has been possible by analyzing the way the monastery works. Usually all the nuns are assembled together when in one of the four important rooms. That means these rooms can also act as “corridors” and traffic area. Most of the rooms occur only once and have very different requirements.

This also implies that there is need for both some architectural freedom for each room, and for daylight to each room as the main layout is horizontal. Therefore the project consists of a system of different sized rooms that are connected in the corners and have courts between them, all together seven gardens.