Architectures of Transition_ENG

BILDMUSEET 19/06 202110/04 2022 ENGLISH

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19/0610/04

ARCHITECTURES OF TRANSITION /

INTRODUCTION

The exhibition Architectures of Transition presents Nordic architects and projects that, in various ways, represent a shift in contemporary architecture. What does society’s increasing demands for climate action mean for architecture, and what are the practical and aesthetic impacts rising from these demands?

How can architecture contribute to a society in transition to a new ecological paradigm?

Architectures of Transition showcases architectural answers to the challenges of the current environmental emergency, featuring innovative solutions, new materials and alternative ways of conceiving architecture and urban space. Through photography, film and large-scale installations, the exhibition presents ongoing, realized and utopian building projects that underline potential pathways towards decarbonization and eco-friendly construction methods.

Participating are 3XN (Denmark), Anders Berensson Architects (Sweden), Belatchew Arkitekter (Sweden), CITA (Denmark), Framlab (Norway), HappySpace (Sweden), Lundén Architects (Finland) and Norell/Rodhe (Sweden).

Architectures of Transitions was initiated and produced by Bildmuseet. For this project, Bildmuseet has invited curator, architect and writer Pedro Gadanho, Leob fellow at Harvard University and former director of MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, and former curator for contemporary architecture at MoMA, New York.

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In conjunction with the exhibition students at the Umeå School of Architecture, Studio 12 have conducted research and produced prototypes and visualizations stemming from the themes and questions in the exhibition. Their work will be presented at various events organized by the school throughout the exhibition period. Lecturer and Studio 12 leader Alejandro Haiek has also provided input for the exhibition.

Bildmuseet / 40 Years of International Contemporary Art in Umeå, Sweden

ARCHITECTURES OF TRANSITION /

A MUCH-NEEDED TRANSFORMATION

It has been repeated ad nausea: we are in the midst of a climate emergency. In-between the effects of global warming, the devastation of natural resources, pollution and loss of biodiversity an ecological crisis is slowly unfurling. So as to minimize or “flatten the curve” of its impacts, we must urgently decarbonize our societies, face degrowth, embrace any Green New Deals on offer, and find new balances with the planet’s ecosystems at every level of everyday practice.

While most sectors remain mostly unaware of the transformations required to face this global crisis, of which the current pandemic is only one aspect, we must undergo what some call The Great Transition: a radical shift of our ways of life, our consumption patterns, and the ways we build and tend to all of our environments, either natural or human-made. The so-called Great Transition requires that, from energy use to the economic and ecological realms, we revise, reverse, and radically reconceive the fossil-fuel paradigms we have been relying on for many decades.

With the field of construction contributing nearly 40% of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, this reversal inevitably comprises the way architecture is able to reconceptualize its practices. Contributing toward this debate, Architectures of Transition is intended as pan-European cartography of how architects in different climatic regions are integrating the imperative of an ecological and energetic transition into innovative contextual practices. The curatorial project identifies and reveals to a larger audience the experimental projects and constructions with which architects apply techniques of

decarbonization and regeneration, take energy efficiency to its next stages or investigate architectural forms adapted to new environmental demands.

Beyond well-known architecture offices that have been at the forefront of decarbonization efforts in the construction industry, the exhibition aims at identifying another emergent, exploratory and experimental practices, which integrate ecological needs at the very base of a reconception of architectural language for the coming decades. The selected projects, both built and utopian, highlight the pathways through which architecture must respond to the needs and conditions of the Great Transition, including less consumption of resources and energy, integration of circular principles, recycling, reuse and regenerative practices, as much as the exploration of eco-friendlier features such as organic materials, biomimicry, and interspecies design.

Pedro Gadanho

3XN /

URBAN SUSTAINABILITY

3XN is an architecture studio founded in Aarhus, Denmark by architects Kim Herforth Nielsen, Lars Frank Nielsen and Hans Peter Svendler Nielsen in 1986. Their designs rest on strong theoretical foundations that has been developed further through their innovation department GXN. For several years GXN has conducted extensive research about circular economics and circular design that manifests itself in building projects and publications and reports. They want the building industry to challenge and rethink the way we use and reuse resources intending to abolish the concept of waste.

Sydney Fish Market is the first step in an ambitious plan to link Sydney’s Blackwattle Bay with the green area of Wentworth Park and the entire Sydney community. Designed in collaboration with local architect BVN, GXN Innovation and landscape architect Aspect Studios, the landmark building is a working market that establishes a public connection to the water’s edge.

The building combines public areas with commercial wholesale without creating visual barriers between them. New sustainability and leisure initiatives around the market offer opportunities for this intersection between land and sea to educate the public about marine ecology and aquatic biodiversity.

The new building’s sustainability goals include a minimum 50 % reduction in energy and water consumption and a 50 % reduction in waste compared with the existing market. The sweeping timber and aluminum roof structure attains four efficiency and sustainability attributes: shading, solar energy, ventilation, and rainwater harvesting. The design of the buildings maximizes natural ventilation and thereby reduce the need for air

3XN /

conditioning. The roof is designed to house solar panels for energy production as well as a system for collecting and reusing rainwater. Much emphasis is put on saving energy, among other things absorption technology that turns excess heat into cold water and power hot water system and space heating.

The project’s identifying features – the roof, external landscape, mixed-mode atmosphere, plantings and materials – are all embedded in the building’s form and not elements added in the latter stages. With these aspirations in view, the design focuses on maintaining a human scale with the atmosphere of the marketplace while contributing to the city’s transition to a greener footprint.

ANDERS BERENSSON ARCHITECTS /

RESTORING RESOURCES

Anders Berensson Architects is a Stockholm based studio founded

by Anders Berensson in 2015. Their work is characterized by circular perspectives where local resources are utilized and refined and serve as the basis for entire design processes. Their projects demand an understanding of different places unique qualities and provide new perspectives on the use and lifespan of different materials.

Tibro Train Tracks is an ongoing city development project that embraces the unused railway area in central Tibro, a small city in Sweden with approximately 11,000 inhabitants. Through extensive dialogues, citizens and local craftsmen are made part of the decision-making process. An inventory of local resources and skills will enable site-specific projects to be manufactured locally. The project aims to develop experimental activities that rest on participation and co-creation by the citizens and craftsmen.

To a large degree, the architect’s role has been to make an inventory of the needs, resources and know-how that can be locally sourced and then use this knowledge to design the new environment. One of the most important shifts for growing cities could be to decide when we should refrain from demolishing in order to build new buildings and rather focus on how existing structures can be used in new and different ways.

Oval Office is Anders Berensson Architect’s former office. Using 16 large plywood boards to construct a big puzzle, they created an office that can be put together as an oval workspace. Being made entirely out of wood Oval Office can be recycled or dismantled, reassembled and reused by other functions. The oval shape of the design left large areas of plywood unused and to maximize usage and limit waste, the unused wood was used to make a line of wooden toys. The project is an example of how

ANDERS BERENSSON ARCHITECTS /

we can maximize the use of available materials but also how points towards how we can extend the lifecycle of interiors by making them mobile.

After the exhibition, Oval Office will be donated to anyone who has use for it. If you or anyone you know has a great idea for what to do with it in the future, feel free to contact someone of Bildmuseet’s staff.

Bank of Norrland is a utopian project that suggests a radical shift for the timber industry and the use of wood in our built environment. A large part of all harvested trees in Sweden ends up like paper and pulp. Paper can only be recycled a limited number of times and if we burn it we release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. If the tree trunk is kept intact, it can store the carbon oxide inside the wood for several hundred years.

During the hurricane Gudrun of 2005 the Swedish forests suffered damages equivalent of 75 million cubic meters, the total number of harvested timbers in a year. What if we could have used those trees to build new houses?

Bank of Norrland proposes the vision of a new wood megastructure in the year 2041. The ambition is that the greenhouse gases that are stored in tree trunks will remain there and that only harvested and naturally fallen tree shall be used for building. Anders Berensson has previously used similar methods in his projects. Central elements in buildings such as Camp Fenix and Vinkelladan in Stockholm were made of fallen trees from the local area and trees affected by elm tree disease.

The project involves a transformation of the timber industry, but it also proposes a shift in our relationship to wood and how we take advantage of and regard wood as a long-term sustainable resource.

BELATCHEW ARKITEKTER /

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Belatchew Arkitekter was founded by Rahel Belatchew in 2006 and work with a wide range of projects, from urban planning and housing to offices and public buildings. To investigate and test new approaches to urban and architectonical issues and to be at the forefront of innovation and sustainability, the experimental studio Belatchew Labs was started. These innovations include architecture with low carbon impact, sustainable food production and the ability to be more self-sufficient. The projects at Belatchew Labs are visionary and strive to inspire, question and challenge.

Strawscraper is a proposal for the reconversion of an existing skyrise in Stockholm that Belatchew Labs developed in 2013.

The Södra Torn skyscraper was completed in 1997, but of 40 intended stories, only 26 was built.

Belatchew Labs suggests restoring the building’s original proportions and attach thin straws made of composite material to the facade of the building. With the straws moving in the wind, this would allow the building to harvest wind energy with the help of piezoelectric technology. The piezo effect is a quality among certain electrically neutral crystals. When pressed together, the balance between positive and negative charges is disrupted, which creates a current. The effect is similar to what happens when you light a cigarette lighter. By deploying a large number of thin straws on the facade of the building, motion can be turned into electricity merely through small movements generated by the wind.

Additionally, the building comes alive with the constantly swaying facade giving the impression of a breathing body. While traditional wind parks are not suitable for urban areas, the

BELATCHEW ARKITEKTER /

technique used in this conceptual proposal has advantages compared to existing wind turbines. The new system is quiet, it does not disturb wildlife, and it functions at low wind velocity since only a light breeze is sufficient for the straws to start swaying and generate energy.

CITA /

HARVESTING BIOMATERIALS

CITA (the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture) is an innovative research environment at the Royal Danish Academy founded by Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen in 2005.

While exploring the intersections between digital technology and architecture, their research has recently evolved to ask how we can rethink sustainable building practices through a bio-based material paradigm. Through digital technologies, CITA questions what materials are and how we work with them.

Challenging the perception of our built environment as inert, it argues that a new conceptualisation of bio-based materials will allow for sustainable, renewable, non-toxic, biodegradable, versatile and reliable solutions.

CITA’s research reveals how a flexible and digital design can help conceptualise and make the complexity, behaviours and lifespans of bio-based materials more available. It proposes a holistic take on a bio-based architectural practice, which allows for carbon-neutral, renewable and materially optimised solutions to the growing shortage of building materials.

RawLam examines the potential of a new timber practice that connects different stakeholders from forestry and land management to design and construction. It asks how the emergent digital practices within these fields can provoke profound changes in the way we imagine timber architecture. Starting with the high-resolution scans of logs, CITA can manufacture glulam by combining lumber of good quality with lumber of poorer quality that by today’s standards are rejected by the industry.

This allows for reduced waste as more harvested lumber can go into production.

CITA /

It also brings forward a new aesthetic that welcomes the ability to use low-quality wood, with the rawness of the wane and knots given prominence and revealing a more visceral understanding of wood and its expressive potential. Accompanied by videos that offer an anthropological context and drawings that document the evolution of the piece, RawLam is intended as the demonstrator of a new architectural language.

FRAMLAB /

INNOVATIVE THINKING

Andreas Tjeldflaat founded the architectural research and design studio Framlab to drive systematic change in response to, among other things, the climate crisis. By combining systems thinking with product design and architecture, Framlab presents innovative solutions to social and ecological challenges.

The project Glasir is intended to support community-based urban gardening. By combining flexible modules with aeroponics, the technique to grow vegetables without soil, the project works as a self-sustainable, vertical greenhouse that can provide communities and neighbourhoods with fresh vegetables all year round.

With aeroponics using only 10% of the water and the area needed by traditional methods while also reducing the need for fertilizers and pesticides, its integration into architecture structures can be an alternative to industrial agriculture. With this logic, Glasir proposes a new architectural element in the urban space that contributes to a greener footprint, not at least by avoiding the environmental impacts of transportation and logistical infrastructure typical of the agriculture industry. With several small cultivation patches within the city, you could harvest your greens next door, decreasing the need for transports and at the same time lowering the prices.

The different modules in Glasir are interlinked to create a flexible system that can be arranged in an unlimited number of variations and appearances. It can be placed anywhere where a tree can be planted as the base only measures 60 x 60 cm. Integrated solar panels produce the required electricity and another system stores, purifies and re-circulates rainwater for water consumption. Artificial intelligence brings possibilities for the structure

FRAMLAB /

to be self-regulating and able to adapt to different environments and weather conditions. It can also distribute and share resources between itself and surrounding constructions in the area.

Fjellheim is a project that deploys vernacular, Norwegian architecture to combine traditional building techniques with high-tech manufacturing methods to construct climate-positive houses even in the most remote and harsh environments.

Each part of the building is designed so the building can be dismantled and recycled when no longer in use. Either as nutrients in the ground or re-used as part of another structure.

The inner shell is made of timber and the outer shell of lowcarbon aluminium. That allows for a weatherproof system with different climate zones inside the house. Sliding polycarbonate panels allows you to regulate temperature and humidity and integrated solar panels and wind turbines provide the energy.

The project aims to create sustainable and self-sufficient infrastructures by allowing the building to be restorative to its local environment. Like a tree, it harvests energy from the wind and the sun, purifies rainwater, captures and stores carbon dioxide from the air, and provides shelter and habitat for the fauna.

When it is time for the building to leave its site is does so as it found it, without a trace.

Oversky is a response to how households can reduce their emissions within the urban environment. As a total, private households are one of the biggest contributors to the emission of greenhouse gases. These emissions are often related to a city’s infrastructure such as energy and water supply and

FRAMLAB /

waste management. Oversky is Framlab’s proposal to a larger transformation by redefining how we look upon and use our residential habitat. Conceived as a multi-story building suspended above the street that connects households in adjacent buildings, Oversky centralizes various functions while using environmentally friendly materials that would be able to reduce combined emissions. The interior can be optimized to limit water pollution, acidification and raise the air quality indoors. The exterior would be treated with a titanium dioxide coating breaking down nitric and nitrogen oxides when hit by sunlight. The outer layers of the modules store solar energy while underneath it is made accessible for deliveries and waste management.

The project is focused on sharing resources and it targets big cities where Oversky’s positive impacts could be pooled by entire neighbourhoods. If cities will continue to be important hubs for people and the world economy in the transition to a more sustainable society, perhaps we need to change our perception of what it means to live in a city.

HAPPYSPACE /

EXTENDED LIFE

HappySpace is an architectural firm founded by Boel Hellman and Markus Aerni. Their projects range from private and public buildings, landscaping and exhibitions. One prominent aspect of their work is how they work with temporary and mobile architecture. Focusing on how people negotiate the use of buildings over time, they propose to change our perception of architecture as something static. Limiting the use of scarce resources, Happy Space aims to prolong the lifespan of architecture by radically changing a building’s context.

The Glow Worm is a mobile landmark that marks and describes the border between the mining site and the communities of Kiruna and Malmberget. These areas house the two largest iron ore mines in the world. For the mining to continue, large portions of the cities, almost 25 % of the population, have to be relocated.

HappySpace suggested a public space in which you can enter and spend time studying the zones you still can see but no longer can visit. The central elements of the construction are made of sheet metal that is stretched and punched, creating a material that is very durable and material-efficient. Its design, with interlocking rings, makes the construction easy to dismantle and relocate. When the structure no longer is in use, it can be transported to another area to be used with a new purpose instead of being scrapped.

The Covered Sandpit is a mobile installation that was built for the first time in Stavanger, Norway 2009. Placed by the square in the city, it created a temporary public room on the otherwise

HAPPYSPACE /

unused site. The construction, which is a mobile, wind-protected dome, lacked a stated purpose. It was the people who visited the installation that decided, and over time changed, how to use it and how it was intended to be perceived. It was a place for individual encounters and personal experiences and where random groups of people could meet. During the daytime, street musicians used The Covered Sandpit to perform and by children to play. In the evening, it became a natural place for the local fishermen to gather when they had anchored.

LUNDÉN ARCHITECTURE COMPANY /

SHARED ECO-SYSTEMS

Helsinki-based studio Lundén Architecture Company was founded in 2008 and focuses on developing architecture and urbanism as part of an ecologically-minded vision of the future.

By relying on collaborative and interdisciplinary practice, they are interested in the possibility to create a world that can support the symbiotic coexistence of both the natural and built environment. Addressing the need to rethink the relationships between our built society and ecology, Lundén proposes that we start to perceive buildings as organisms that are part of the ecosystem, rather than disconnected from it.

For this exhibition, Lundén Architecture Company has proposed a shift in our perspective of architecture. Rather than regarding buildings as something manmade in nature, we should focus on an aspect of co-existence with other species. The built environment could be seen as another species or organism, transforming the relationship between us and making us care for them as part of the ecosystem.

While working with an existing built environment one can still make nature part of the urban experience. By transforming key infrastructural elements in a city, such as levees or railway corridors, into attractive urban nodes that are responsive to natural phenomena, we can create resilient urban environments that serve multiple different kinds of functions at once.

NORELL/RODHE /

SCAVENGNING & RESTORING

Norell/Rodhe is a Stockholm-based architecture studio founded

by Daniel Norell and Einar Rodhe. The work of Norell/Rodhe couples abstract architectural traits, such as proportion and frontality, with a gritty world of untamed materials and found objects. It ranges from cultural buildings and homes to interiors and installations, with a growing concern with the notions of retrofitting, recycling and reuse. Recently completed projects include a transformation of a historical navy building on the island of Skeppsholmen in Stockholm for the Royal Institute of Art. Norell/Rodhe teaches, lectures and pursues research in Sweden as well as internationally.

Clarice is an installation that imagines architecture after reuse and redistribution have replaced endless extraction and destruction. Inspired by one of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the project commences with a scavenger hunt to collect discarded building elements and materials. The colourful “big bags” with demolition debris that populate the streets of Stockholm now become treasure-chests. An aluminium light fixture from the early 2000s, ventilation pipes from a short-lived loft kitchen, and mouldings from the turn of the last century. When set in a new structure, the reading of formal features and materiality of these objects begin to shift. Forms and details conceived for one purpose suggest other functions and alternative architectural vocabularies.

Clarice was developed within the artistic research project Interiors Matter: A Live Interior, funded by the Swedish Research Council and hosted by the KTH and Konstfack.

NORELL/RODHE /

Tower of Many Views is a proposal for the North Vidzeme Biosphere Reserve, in Latvia. Overlooking the landscape, the tower guides the gaze of its visitors to the diverse north Latvian semi-natural and natural habitats, from forests and swamps to pastoral scenes and distant landmarks. The structure is composed of a vertical gridded framework and seven sculptural architectural features that dramatically cantilevers from it.

Taking cues from landscape paintings, each feature emphasises a particular vista of the surrounding landscape. A tiny opening in a wall frames an intimate village scene and an expansive oculus window directs views towards vast woodlands. The viewing platform offers a panorama some 30 meters above the ground.

The visitors’ ascent towards the top sets up a continuously unfolding narrative of varying views, which turns the tower into a reminder of the surrounding biodiversity.

The seven-meter-tall model on view was specially commissioned for the exhibition.

ARCHITECTURES OF TRANSITION /

ZINEB SEDIRA / STANDING HERE WONDERING WHICH WAY TO GO

PETER ÖHRNELL / PAINTINGS

NAEEM MOHAIEMEN / JOLE DOBE NA

SWEDISH PICTURE BOOK OF THE YEAR / CREATIVE WORKSHOP

RECEPTION

ENTRANCE

NAEEM MOHAIEMEN / JOLE DOBE NA

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