Audun Engh: founding Chair of INTBAU Norway, a Founding Member of INTBAU, and a long-serving Secretary of the INTBAU College of Chapters.
(15.09.1948 – 27.03.2023)
Audun Engh was a lawyer, editor, local activist and a champion of traditional architecture and urbanism. For 35 years he worked at the film festival in Cannes, where he wrote many articles as a freelancer, in the publications Klassekampen and Agenda Magasin, whilst also reported from the film festival to radio stations. From 1971, Audun was active in the Gateavisa editorial board and the anarchist milieu in Hjelms gate. During the first 17 years of Gateavisa, from 1970 to 1986, he edited and published a book together with Ulrik Hegner. On 8 February in 2001, together with Petter Olsen, His Majesty King Charles III, Robert Adam and others, he founded INTBAU, which today has close to 9,000 members and 39 Chapters. In 2016, Engh was one of the founders of Arkitekturopprøret Norge, the Architecture Uprising movement in Scandinavia, who are also hosting events to commemorate his passing.
Below, Audun’s fellow Chapters, colleagues and friends share their memories as a testament to Audun’s dedication to INTBAU.
A loyal supporter of INTBAU from the network’s conception to his passing in March, 2023, Robert Adam remembers Audun for his steadfastness. “In the long life of INTBAU, Audun has always been there, enthusiastic and vigorous. He was a strong personality and lived life to the full, believing that his ability to keep going and his enjoyment of life should be shared by all around him. In the last years of his life, Audun managed his advancing illness with great strength and good humour. He will be missed, his willingness to travel, to bring with him many others, his enthusiastic contribution to INTBAU, his strong voice, and his sense of humour should be remembered. He was one of the key founders of INTBAU and INTBAU will not be the same without him.”
Audun’s energy and enthusiam has been noted by many as integral to the success and formation of the network in its early days. Professor Matthew Hardy commented that “on the initial Steering Committee, Audun always one of the most engaged committee members, carrying a huge portfolio always bulging with papers, and juggling a host of projects and events all the while. On the committee he was a forceful presence arguing for a broad-based and democratic management structure, in which the London office served the committee, and not the other way around. He was always encouraging the formation of other chapters, notably those in Romania, Cuba, Germany, Scandinavia, and others. Speaking a number of European languages helped, along with his natural good humour, wit and powers of persuasion.”
In a wonderful testament to his life and work, friend and collaborator Associate Professor Susan Parham stated that, “the reason we have so few pictures of Audun is becasue often he was taking the photographs – documenting an alternative history of urbanism in which he has, despite his own modesty about his role, been a central figure: a thinker, a polemicist, a doer, a convenor and connector, passionately, indefatigably and often very amusingly advocating for civilised place making everywhere.”
You can read Susan’s tribute here.
Thank you for your unwavering commitment and contribution to INTBAU Audun!
