The telephone kiosk is 89 years old on 11 December 2021

Have you seen any red boxes with "phone" written on them? Inside the door today you will find a mini-library where you can leave your own books and borrow other people's books. In the past, not everyone had a mobile phone, and the phone booth was important to be able to make calls.

The telephone booth outside the City Hall in Oslo, 1960s. Photo: The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology 's photo archive

When the first telephone booth was installed on Akershuskaia in 1933, not many people had telephones. The queue to get a landline was long, and the telephone booths became the salvation for those who wanted to call.

Should you call home to say that you did not come home at the agreed time, you could be left in a long queue. After 1993, the number of mobile phones increased radically - and when they eventually became universally owned, it made telephone kiosks redundant.

From telephone queues to protected reading kiosks

Siden 1997 har 100 telefonkiosker blitt vernet. Disse har nå blitt minibibliotek, også kalt lesekiosker, hvor man kan finne bøker og annet lesestoff. Sparebankstiftelsen DNB og Foreningen les står bak prosjektet. Her er oversikten over lesekioskene: https://foreningenles.no/oversikt-over-lesekiosker

The 1970s and 1980s were the "age of telephone kiosks", and at most around 6,000 were in use around Norway. To achieve contact and hold the line, coins had to be placed on the device. Many a poor student probably remembers that it felt expensive to call home at that time.

But let's go back 90 years in time:

On Saturday 11 December 2022, it will be exactly 90 years since architect Georg Fredrik Fasting's functionalist red telephone kiosk won the Norwegian Telegraph Agency's competition for a new telephone kiosk.

The design competition in 1932

In 1932, the Telegraph Agency announced an architectural competition for a new telephone kiosk. On 11 December of the same year, the winning draft was named.

93 proposals were received for the competition. The jury almost fell head over heels for the submitted model's tight and functionalist style. The name was "Riks".

"The draft shows a surprisingly simple solution to the task, both technically and aesthetically well thought out. It solves all the program's requirements in a satisfactory way. The author has hit the nail on the head both in terms of layout and structure. The draft has such a shape that a kiosk with this design can be set up almost anywhere. The instructions for use can advantageously be placed above the appliance, but the proposed suspension can also be approved. The door must open outwards.” it was said in the jury's reasoning.

Not until the competition was over were the sealed envelopes with the names of the contestants opened. The young architect, Georg Fredrik Fasting, was thus able to realize his design on a large scale.