Media: Image

Structural Model of Multigenerational Living Environment

Files:  abstract, poster, full paper (= extended abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

Multigenerational living environment as an alternative to existing institutionalized living environment of older population presents the main field of research. The high level of elderly segregation remains ever present despite constant developments in the area of institutionalized care. Necessity of elderly integration into general social environment reminds us of importance of active presence for all age groups in order to provide quality living environment. Furthermore, it opens numerous questions concerning the unexplored or underdeveloped potentials of living environment, when the needs of users of all age groups are taken into consideration.

The aim of research is to explore and understand how diverse needs of users of all ages can influence the development of wider living environment, building typology from urbanistic point of view, and on architectural design of living units. The goal is to develop a structural model of multigenerational living environment and test its applicability in diverse situations.

The basic research frame of structural model development is defined by the key properties of multigenerational living environment from the social and spatial point of view. How do these properties affect the content of an environment, how are they regulated and how do they relate to each other in order to establish multigenerational living environment of higher quality? These are the focus questions of the doctoral thesis. Research includes all of the users of a living environment of all the age groups as well as multigenerational living environment in itself.

Research terms will be inducted through analysis and categorization of the users needs. Study of relations among users is to be performed, exploring relations among the members of the same age group, as well as with the members of other age groups.

Based on established research terms, the further study should be conducted, how users interrelations are expressed upon living environment and what kind of relations does the living environment generate towards its users, thus forming a foundation of structural model development.

Structural model of multigenerational living environment as a system of social and spatial relations has three primary roles. Firstly as a system of initial design, secondly as a system of review in the planning stage and finally as a system for evaluation of living environment in use. Diverse modes of application include transformation-of or addition-to an existing living environment and establishing of a new living environment. Scale adaptability of the model enables application on the level of wider living environment, building typology development and architectural design of living units.

Keywords.

structural model, multigenerational living environment, age group

Penumbra as a Starting Point

Files: abstract, full paper ( = updated abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.
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This paper concerns strategic design principles arising from the study of solid light in space through the interstitial presence of penumbra. Penumbra (from Latin paene, “almost” y umbra, “shadow”) is understood and presented as the space of soft shadow between light and total darkness, an area where it is difficult to define the ending of one presence and the beginning of the other. The paper questions various processual modes that approach light as matter and posits the thesis that penumbra is a fundamental medium for understanding and approaching the phenomenal inseparability of light and shadow.

Through the work and reflections of Tadao Ando, Louis Kahn and Campo Baeza, the paper reviews the connotations of spaces conceived from the shadow, its characteristics as void, the role of penumbra as core element for holding content, the role of inner form for reinforcing syntax and the use of chiaroscuro for encouraging contemplation and movement. All principles are observations emerging from architecture in service of the phenomenon of light.

The paper concludes by stressing the role of penumbra when approaching design processes as well as presenting the idea of palimpsestic projections as a platform for creating correspondences between architectural processes and the manifestation of space.

Keywords.

projections, penumbra, shadows, light, design process.

Public Space at the Interface of Interior and Exterior

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Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.
/…/
What kind of relationship between interior and exterior public spaces create particular architectural qualities? How are these qualities to be put and evaluated in the historical and contemporary discourse? How can these qualities be translated into a design strategy?

I am intending to research the relationship of interior and exterior theoretically and practice based. Readability and orientation are qualities of perception, the dramaturgy of the spatial sequence a quality of experience. In the theoretical part I will examine and compare urban and architectural theories of perception and spatial experience, looking for similarities and differences. Starting with the concept of the “body-subject” (le corp proper /…/) and the “lived space” /…/ comparing different theories concerning the phenomenology of perception; I will look at relevant architectural and urban theories e.g. the image of the city and the visual sequence /…/, the serial vision/…/, the choreography of architectural spaces /…/, in order to find descriptions and categories of architectural qualities resulting of the perception and spatial experience in public spaces.

Within a case study I will analyse existing architectural concepts – such as the flowing space at city level/…/, the passage10 or the “traject”/…/ – with regard to historical development, variation and backgrounds. These build projects form the basis for the practice-based research. I am intending to address unused potentials or even weaknesses by carrying out a series of 4 architectural interventions or installations on different buildings on a scale of 1:1 and reflect the effect.

Keywords.

spatial perception, spatial experience, interface of interior and exterior

Learning from Bayanihan/Dugnad

Files: abstract, full paper (= updated abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract. “Learning from Bayanihan/Dugnad” explores how mechanisms of mutual support can inform collaborative design and build projects. The research is conducted through a pedagogical process, acting on the learnings from previous work. The output of the research is presented in the form of a series of booklets, lectures and exhibitions. Bayanihan is a Filipino tradition of mutual support that I first encountered when building a study center in Tacloban, Philippines in 2010, and later in the reconstruction efforts following the devastation caused by Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.

Bayanihan is a tradition where a group of people come together to achieve a goal that neither can achieve by themselves individually. The word alludes to the tradition of carrying each other’s houses, but the meaning itself goes beyond this effort. The tradition comes to play through collectively building homes, schools and community houses. It is also used in farming, for protection, to arrange weddings, funerals or other life events. The tradition is non-monetary and relies on trust and reciprocity. Knowing that other members of a community will support you, because one day they might need the favor in return. The work itself is a collective endeavour happening over a fixed period of time that works for all members of the community. Each participates with the knowledge and resources available to them. It is a social event that builds community cohesion and the host provides drinks and food after the work has been done. The tradition itself exists in many countries around the world, and in Norway we call this Dugnad.

My research is a continuation of a ten-year long process of working with different communities, exploring how these traditions can inform architecture and collaborative design processes. Commercial architecture is a part of a construction industry that relies on land speculation, human and natural exploitation for the sake of capital gain. Bayanihan on the other side provides an alternative platform for the profession, to become relevant and to work with communities around the world which operates outside of the commercial sphere. Sample of research work: Project for the sao Paulo Biennale, made through the brazilian tradition of mutual support, Mutirão.

Keywords.

Architecture, Participation, Collaboration

Home: Things and Bodies

Files: abstract, poster, full paper ( = updated abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract. /…/

Home is the site of our intimate lives/…/. To inhabit a house is to inscribe it in our habits, and while we habituate to it, the domestic falls into the automatic perception of habitual use/…/. The house becomes ours while we get used to the house, and it slowly starts to disappear in the background. As often said, “home is where the heart is”, but if we don’t feel it beating, we may be homeless.

The big and small architectural conventions that shape our quotidian lives can be observed and questioned3. By questioning them, we somehow question ourselves and we open a possibility for engagement and change4. Modifying the implicit characteristics and relations of the objects that take part on our daily rituals can destabilise their meaning, and can bring the estranged objects back to the foreground of our perception (2). Once they are here, we see them flowing free and open to new interpretations, creating a tension between the real and the possible, transforming the context and giving us the opportunity to imagine new ways of inhabiting.

The project proposes the use of alternative medial practices –collected and classified in a catalogue of references– to document and narrate specific domestic scenarios. The catalogue will be applied in 5 different case studies in order to train and sharp perception, and produce specific critical observations about every day rituals. These observations will be translated into different estrangement techniques of objectual specific qualities –categorised in relation to the catalogue of medial practices– that will introduce difficulties on the (re)design of household objects and their relations within the limits of the real, and will intensify their presence avoiding the absurd. The goal is to trigger reactions on the user and produce self-awareness about living practices hitherto hindered.

As the result of the study, the outcome of the catalogue –composed by the categories of medial practices and the related terms of defamiliarization– will be evaluated through the user’s experience. This may prove that there is a layer of meaningful information about real specific inhabitation needs that can be extracted from the documentation of the relationships between space, objects and inhabitants. Findings may indicate specific qualities of familiar objects and specific defamiliarization techniques with which to experiment in the field of design in order to inform the context, open reality to creative speculation and drive conscious social transformations.

Keywords.

domesticity, rituals, habituation, perception, joy, documentation, representation, speculation, object-based study, estrangement, self-awareness, transformation, integrity of living.

In my experience as an architect, focused on the production of the domestic environment, I have always been fascinated with the potential of architectural representation for documenting and speculating about inhabiting narratives from a different point of view than the user’s perspective. Moreover, my personal interest in conceptual and performative art has encouraged me to test other medial practices, not only as a means to deliver content, but also as an aesthetic experience in itself. In addition to that, my participation in several Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) workshops has helped me to refine my perception, and to become aware of my constant intimate interaction with the things that compose my personal domestic environment and my usual lack of perception.

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Observation, Registration and Interactive Documentation

Files: abstract, poster

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

This paper uses a collaborative project that is taking place three weeks in September as it´s point of departure. The project is observing, registering and documenting an area in Copenhagen, which is appointed for city development despite massive resistance from citizen. The area provides a structure for many different ways of living – for many different people. The paper examines and registers the process of the resistance of citizens and at the same time it scans the ongoing city development approach, the political situation and the opinions towards the area itself with its cultural milieu, built environment, landscape and social relations. It explores the motives and reasons for city development priorities as well as it explores the different living conditions and possibilities of the self-grown community. It reflects on the organizational and collaborative set up of the project; – on how 150 1. year students of architecture – in dialogue with the local community, teachers of architecture, anthropology and architectural theory, a choreographer and a specialist in cultural heritage – have come together to observe, register and document the situation.

I follow the course of battle through participating in a debate at ‘Sydhavnens Folkemøde’, (The People’s Democratic Festival at the South Harbour Area in Copenhagen) – and through writing and creating an interactive website consisting of edited material from the student’s observations and registrations.

The project emphasizes the general conflict between commercial city development and how citizens want to live their everyday life. In perspective of earlier projects from the practice – the paper asks what and how we can learn from self-grown situations and how city development can remind itself of the importance of things and situations that are not visible on city maps.

For the conference I will show a digital presentation including the interactive documentary “Ang. Stejlepladsen” and a printed map of the PhD structure (60 cm x 84 cm)

Keywords.

Observation, registration, communication, participation, improvisation, interactive documentation

Transformation of Cultural Environments

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Fragments from proceedings (‘paper submission’)’:

Abstract. 

The focus of the Ph.D. is transformation of cultural environments in Denmark. /…/ Almost like “branding” the perception of the cultural environment becomes vital for the collective development plan, and case-examples show how the narrative of the cultural environment can work as a strategic baseline for a development scheme and join the municipality, investors and the local community in the same development direction. /…/  the Ph.D.-project explores a democratic development by means of design interventions in a selected cultural environment. Through architectural registrations, qualitative interviews and field notes the project investigates the impact of the design intervention. The main subjects of the paper will consist of: the method ‘Research by Design’ as a catalyst for site-specific development,

‘Research by Design’ in relation to co-creation, and the balance of designer and researcher /…/  ‘Research by Design’ is present in physical site-specific interventions in the cultural environments with the aim to inform and invite the local community toparticipate in the development. ‘Action Research’ will allow the researcher (myself) to work to ways: both as a designer/facilitator and as a researcher.

Keywords. 

cultural environments, heritage, research by design, action research, co-creation, citizen participation

/…/

Process oriented design intervention

/…/ 

The integration of the local community and relevant parties can vary from e.g.: actual cooperation /…/ to casual interaction with the design (using it, watching it, touching it) /…/. The effect of the implementation of the intervention will be documented before, during and after, and this is done through a field log with photographs and the investigations described above. The intervention will, as mentioned, strive to activate the cultural environment, open a dialogue and invite the local community and relevant parties to engage. /…/ The design interventions will work as catalysts

and strive to activate the respective area, and it has the purpose of exploring the opportunities and to change the perception of the area.

The Ph.D.-project originates from the perspective; that cultural environments contains both physical and social understandings and should be developed in relation to its context of social network and its physical context. The initial research question examines a social aspect of cultural environments, concerning the social network, the use and the relational value. In the second research question the understanding of cultural environments, as being part of and influencing its context, is central. The third research question explores the method by which cultural environments can be developed.

Amplified Realities

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Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

This paper sets out the first outline of a research into the relations between signal, control and spatio-temporality — the concrete entanglement of abstract space-time and social reality and of abstract machines and social bodies. More specifically, it seeks to explicate how signal processing technologies and respective abstract models and logic are incorporated into spatial practice, into the production of global networks of so-called ’smart’ cities in particular. Although the implications of electronic media are widely discussed in the current discourses on space, the actual problem of control and the social realities produced by it seem to remain just partially addressed. First, the increasing dependency on signal processing machines and transmission networks, coupled with the decrease in clarity of their inner workings, which is in part inherent in their expanding complexity, may create yet unknown types of normalization and exclusion. Second, signal processing technology significantly modifies our sense of space-time. It allows for seemingly unconfined communication, navigation and localization (which in turn changes habit, perception and lived space-time) but simultaneously enables spatially diffuse or ubiquitous forms of centralized control. Last, the discrepancies between different theoretical and philosophical angles (in broad terms: new materialism and dialectics) seem to distract attention away from the problem of control and its implications. This trans-disciplinary research is situated at the intersection of architecture and sonology. The methodology is to conduct a theoretical study intertwined with research through sono-spatial practice, which primarily focuses on sonic space and the agency of signal. Practice-driven research allows for the concretization of abstract models into spatio-temporal configurations and sonic manifestations (i.e. making them audible by means of sound installations, compositions and spatial designs), interaction with listeners and context as well as thorough engagement with the machine. The theoretical research focuses on two distinct and seemingly incompatible angles that correspond to the aforementioned discrepancies. On the one hand, it explores the technicity of signal processing. For example, how these technologies operate, convolute and develop over time. On the other hand, it critically analyzes how these technologies and techniques are incorporated into the production of space, into politico-economic practices and architectures of control.

Keywords.
us signal processing technologies; architectures of control; spatial practice; abstract machine; spatio-temporality

Atlas of Thresholds

Files: abstract, poster, full paper (= updated abstract)

Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:

Abstract.

The continuous wars and conflicts combined with climate change, energy resources, and inequitable financial systems resulted in displaced populations spreading through different parts of the world, especially from the global south to the global north. According to UNCHR, 70.8 million people so far have been forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human right violations. Moreover, just in 2017, 4,4 million people sought protection abroad. These numbers prove that displacement is a more complex phenomenon that should be investigated concerning its political nature. To begin with, movement of displaced population across the international border(s) bring forth a more complex and comprehensible meaning to the concept of the border by the crossing act. Also, space can be lived, conceived, and perceived not only when it is fixed and stable, but also when it is movable and temporal. However, spatial strategies toward forced migration and refugees mostly seem to coincide with power relations. By exclusion or isolation from wider society, refugee narrative is built upon either on the humanitarian aids or the temporary solutions. The focal point of displacement and forced migration studies should be reconsidered because it is not isolated, uprooted or arrival environments that express and symbolize a person’s being and consciousness, but the common ground—including movement, journey and the stops along the way. Within this context, the research seeks to investigate the spatiality of forced movements and liminal phases by examining the mobility of border, its spatiotemporal constructions, and multiple formations throughout the journey of the refugee. Trying to expose political subjectivity of refugees and movement as a political act through spatial investigation, the time and space between arrival and uprooted living environment will be investigated. Critical mapping techniques and processes will be discussed to constitute a spatial narrative relying on both quantitative and qualitative data retrieved from Gaziantep and Izmir (cities of so-called transition country-Turkey), and they will be put into effect to represent the facts on the ground. At the intersection of migration, mapping, and border studies, there will be two additional parts of this research: an online platform to collect data and an “atlas” to contain that data. This process will include refugees and non-profit organization related to refugees. Undertaken by groups and networks, with feedback coming in from larger numbers of people, the result might be a process of creating a “common” territory from encountering difference/others. Hence, the participation of refugees is crucial in the research process. Even though atlases have been seen as a valuable source that provides information for the whole world, their content as maps, graphics, diagrams in various scales represents the world in terms of territorial divisions defined by nation-state borders. Thus, the main aim of the atlas is searching for “other” ways of documentation of displacement of beings/places/borders, which can also be understood as “suspended” in “betwixt and between” and trying to answer these questions: How data will be presented in relation with space, how a map/collection of maps can define a surface in interaction with its actors, and how multiple readings for the maps and their intended subjects can be produced?

Keywords.

mapping, displacement, migration, border studies, liminality

A Dialogic Approach to Urban Drifting

Files: abstract, poster, full paper

Fragments from proceedings (‘artefact submission’)’:

Abstract.

Collaborative poem-drawing is a verbal and meta-graphical expression of spatial thoughts and feelings. The works represent an unfinished dialogue of memories (and design dreams) that are related to a shared (and imagined) urban experience. They are fragile platforms of carefully layered traces of discussions between the two authors, from day to day. They are “remnants” of dialogues about places that are experienced (through derive sessions) or imagined (in design drawing sessions) not as entities outside ourselves, but between ourselves. As dialogic devices, these collaborative poem-drawings are bringing together two different ways of looking at the spatial reality, while avoiding closure of the finite meaning of the processed material.
Graphically representing the conceptual background of our desire: clouds of spatial amorphous envelopes (dreams and memories) are hovering above a semi-permeable membrane (our senses and our sensitivity to the given reality) laying upon vertical columns that rise from the “orthogonal” ground. These clouds are fragments of urban interpretations related to a specific place: their inscription into a format of collective poem-drawings represents the process of juxtaposition of the interpreted maps in scale (plans, photographs, sections) and their resonance in the present moment of re-creation of memory. They are a palimpsest of different degrees of reality: the tension between the Clouds of memory and the “Reality” in scale is what generates an abundance of meaning, each time a spatial memory is re-evoked into presence.

Finally, these collective poem-drawings are tools that aim to cultivate liberation from the Known in the present moment of inscription. The exhibition would include: 1.a discussion upon the artefacts (reflection on the process of making and reading the maps); 2.a collaborative drawing performance; 3.a (graphical and verbal) contextualization of the collective poem-drawing in the wider context of the PhD thesis. /…/

Keywords.

collective poem-drawing, dialogic, derive, urban interpretation, distortion of memories

/…/
Conclusion

Unlike the poem-drawings that are processual tools in a design task (few of them will be exhibited at the conference), the artifacts introduced in this sequence are flowers which sprouted from a trembling soil: without precise aspiration, without „why?‟ and „how?‟ and „what for?‟ They are there because they emerged as an urgent need to cultivate a spatial dialogue through means other than purely verbal meditations. Communicating in silence contributed to our thorough mutual understanding in relation to spatial doubts and questions. At the same time, we created a notation/artefact of that discussion that is transferable a wider range of indirect interlocutors.

The contribution to a collective learning environment, that such a research can bring, is the stimulation of the following points through search for order by the growth from the inside and releasing a particle of truth from the unrepeatable moment of creation: 1. learning to listen responsively (creative and critical compassion); 2. bringing a design decision / spatial judgement built upon such self-softening; 3. continuous recording and erasing of experienced spatial values: a simultaneous cultivation and destabilization of the value system, beyond any authority. /…/

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