Conditions magazine #1 by Conditions Magazine

CON DITIONS

Magazine for architecture & urbanism

THIS ISSUE:

STRATEGY FOR

EVOLUTION

Regis Cabral & Terho Tikkanen Winy Maas/MVRDV Bernt Stilluf Karlsen Fernando Donis Leif Edward Ottesen Kenneir Powerhouse Company Matthew Butcher & Megan O’Shea Ole Møystad & Hettie Pisters Kalle Grude Van Toorn & Markus Miessen Bad Architects Group nOﬃce Henrik Sørensen OnOﬃce Lene Basma Siebert Lars Ramberg

SPRING ISSUE

www.conditionsmagazine.com

0109

INTRODUCTION

CONDITIONS*01 Cover You are now holding in your hand the first issue of CONDITIONS magazine. This is a Scandinavian magazine debating the conditions for architecture and urbanism.

Because we see that most of the existing magazines tend to focus on the superficial reality of architecture; image and brands are taken more into consideration than existential values and truly important issues. Architecture magazines become showrooms of vanity, imitating formats of easy digestion and fast consumption. Unfortunately, generating no reason, or subject of debate. While the grand part of the architecture society is focusing their attention on the glossy images and the flashy interviews, their ability to analyze and convert the real conditions of society into architecture is disintegrating. We experience that no different from other disciplines architecture has been affected by a tragically cultural mass destruction. Although buildings continue being built, architecture as a cultural endeavor is lost in the morals of meaninglessness, without any representative power to materialize true values. Belonging to the global village, architects more and more face the difficulties to engage in a contextual background, culturally, politically, economically and historically. CONDITIONS, wants to raise awareness to global matters in society, politics, economics and culture to embrace the factual conditions for architecture. Conditions are an integrated part of architecture and urbanism and it is irrelevant to discuss architecture separate from its conditions. Therefore in opposition to ignorance and superficiality this magazine is conceived in order to search for knowledge and predicaments for our continuously evolving society. It is organized in a fluctuating network of agents reflecting the present globalized state of a dynamic society, economics, politics and culture which are the motivators of architecture. Through a play of thoughts in an open ended forum, predefined “facts” will be unsecured and constantly reinvented. The forum that the magazine is, will gather the architect, client, politician and the public, a communion of ideas creating conditions for evolution. The world is undergoing a radical alteration with several overlapping “crisis” and now is the time to acquire new knowledge to reposition your self. We realize that there are several globally operating theory based magazines, but very few with a focus on Scandinavia and even fewer exploring and debating the conditions for architecture and urbanism. Scandinavia is interesting to consider as a region because of its differences and similarities, historically, geographically, politically, economically, globally and culturally. Hopefully CONDITIONS magazine will be able to operate as a theoretical portal between Scandinavia and the world. The magazine is topic based. But different from other magazines we see that the more we explore a topic the more interesting it gets. Because ideas, topics and themes are linked and interwoven we see it as intriguing not to limit the magazine to a single topic per issue, but to discuss the different topics in relation to each other, introduce them, let them fade away, resurface. This is a difficult task, but hopefully making the magazine a continuum of explorations and ideas. As you will discover the magazine opens up for the new and unknown voices in a balanced mix with the established, everyone has potentially a say. This mix will create a space for the unexpected and undiscovered to take place. This first issue introduces an agenda and a standard, but opens up for all kinds of feedback. We hope that the magazine will initiate a lust for debate and communication and hopefully prove the rumors of the architect’s inability to read and write wrong. Enjoy the first issue THE EDITORS

Joana, Anders and Tor Inge

CONDITIONS An independent Scandinavian quarterly exploring the conditions of architecture and urbanism. EDITORS:

Joana Sá Lima, Tor Inge Hjemdal and Anders Melsom

ADVISORY BOARD:

Markus Miessen

GRAPHIC DESIGN:

Juve design Ole Peder Juve

PRINT:

Zoom Grafisk AS

EDITORIAL OFFICE: Prinsens gt 3A, 0157 Oslo, Norway BUY SINGLE ISSUES: www.conditionsmagazine.com RATES: 15Ð + shipping and handling SUBSCRIPTION: www.conditionsmagazine.com subscription@conditionsmagazine.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES FOR 4 ISSUES: 60Ð + shipping and handling CANCELLATION POLICY: Cancellation of subscription to be confirmed in writing 1 month after receiving the last issue of your subscription period. Subscription not cancelled on time will be automatically extended for 4 new issues. ADVERTISEMENT: advertisement@conditionsmagazine.com DISTRIBUTION: ISSN: 1891-2672 CONDITIONS #1 have been made possible with the support of Statens Kunstnerstipend, Norway The editors of CONDITIONS have been careful to contact all copyright holders of the images used. If you claim ownership of any of the images presented here and have not been properly identified, please contact CONDITIONS and we will be happy to make a formal acknowledgement in the future issue. Copyright 2009

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www.conditionsmagazine.com

CONDITIONS

EDITORIAL N° 1 The first issue of Conditions is devoted to

strategy for evolution in architecture and urbanism. Evolution is a deceptive and seductive phrase, it has an appealing ring to it and something everyone wants to relate to and be part of. It is easily recognized looking back when you are able to separate actual progress from variations. Our concern is how to interpret the contemporary situation and how to maneuver and act upon the present ensuring that you are truly evolutionary. Architecture has always been a dependent discipline, never able to operate on its own. To discuss the progression of architecture we therefore cannot discuss architecture as a singular profession, but as responsive and dependent. Historically evolution within architecture has been a reaction or reflection to changed conditions. The technological, political, economical or changes in our society have in the past been readable in architecture. But the architecture produced today seems unable to reflect or interact with the ever changing situation and is therefore seen as arbitrary. The never ending quest for newness overshadows the need for a strategy to act and ensure an actual evolution. The strategy, seen as a long-term plan for success, depends on your perception of evolution. There are several options; one is evolution as a “gradual passage from one state to another, a diﬀerent and usually more complex and better one”, meaning that there has not been a break from the past, but a gradual process and a development. Darwin’s theory of evolution includes natural selection and chance as key concepts implying that you survive because of coincidence or because you are the stronger. But who or what endures depends on the conditions. Evolution might also be perceived as a punctuated equilibrium. Which means that “species” remain virtually unchanged, not even gradually adapting. They are in equi-

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CONTENTS No 0109

GROWING INFRASTRUCTURE

librium, in balance with the environment or conditions. But when confronted with challenges or changes, sudden climate change, for example, they adapt quite quickly. These periods are understood as punctuations, after which a new equilibrium exists and the “species” remain stable until the next punctuation. Many people will argue that we now are in the middle of a punctuation with a financial disaster, climate crisis and political instability. What would be the most fitting strategy to respond to these rapid changes in our situation? Either you believe in evolution as a gradual passage from one state to another or as a punctuated equilibrium you need a strategy and knowledge of the conditions so you are able to navigate and be part of evolution and not part of the production of quantity. The articles and content of this issue is dedicated to possible strategies to ensure an actual evolution.

by Ole Møystad and Hettie Pisters SHELTER FOR ONE STONE/ ONE TREE/ TWO PEOPLE AND FOUR BIRDS 46

by Kalle Grude ARCHITECTURE AS POLITICAL PRACTICE BY ROEMER 52

Van Toorn and Markus Miessen WE LOVE DIPLOMA 60

INTRODUCTION 01

by Ursula Faix and Paul Burgstaller A NEW CINEMA 66

EDITORIAL No 1

by Vilhelm H. Christensen

by Conditions

MANIFESTO 68

TIMELINE

by nOﬃce- Miessen Pflugfelder Nilsson

by Conditions

NUMBERS 72

CASE STUDY CALATRAVA CASTROVALVA 08

by Regis Cabral and Terho Tikkanen This text was written the 20th of December 2008 and worked as a backdrop for when we started our quest for contributors. We thought it was interesting to leave this text as it was for you to see our initial thoughts in an Editorial 1. Our afterthoughts you can read in Editorial 2 in the back of the issue. Enjoy!

WORKING CONDITIONS WINY MAAS INTERVIEW

by Conditions PLANNING FOR SUSTAINABILITY 74

by Henrik Sørensen TURBINE CITY BY NOOFFICE

by Tor Inge Hjemdal and Joana Sá Lima

Joao Vieira Costa

WORKING CONDITIONS STILLUF KARLSEN INTERVIEW

THE DIAGRAM AS A STRATEGIC TOOL

by Tor Inge Hjemdal and Anders Melson

by Lene Basma Siebert

EVOLUTION IN THE AGE OF CRISSIS

by Fernando Donis EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND BIOASTHETICS

LARS RAMBERG INTERVIEW by Tor Inge Hjemdal Editorial No 2 92

by Conditions

by Leif Edward Ottesen Kenneir

DEAD OR ALIVE ON VESTBANEN 94

DENMARK FOR ALL 34

by Charles Bessard and Nanne De Ru SOME THOUGHTS ON ARCHITECTURAL EVOLUTION 38

By Matthew Butcher and Megan O’Shea

AND ASPLUND LIBRARY

Scandinavian timeline

year old Danish-born machinto America in 1891 and soon

founding of SAS is a multinational food

- 100 years of evolution through some important (and some obscure) events, inventions and personalities

Luftfartselskab A/S, Svensk

Merzbau Lysaker invented the tetrahedral

Jens William Ægidius Elling

of medium-format cameras and

Birger Ruud leader Roald Amundsen, the air-

the medium-format cameras it This building has been more or

sor in series, a combination that

Elling gas turbine

To obtain a land connection

hasselblad

Wittgenstein’s cabin genstein emerged on the inter-

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany had this colossal statue of Fridt-

Brente Steders Regulering (Regulation

the islands Hven and Saltholm

same time he began his life-

Kaiser Wilhelm II

He started early on visiting and

statue is 12 m high and is

Carl Larsson

Ruben Rausing’s

brother, erected the building in

included in the Nazi exhibition titled of central Stockholm) and on Brunkeberg over-

sical architecture of the 1920s, and during the last decade of

Sverre Pedersen, the dominating nor-

architect and designer, exemIn addition to his architectural highly original chairs and other

both attended the unveiling of the statue in 1913

in a relatively small and com-

Lallerstedt, Corbusier, Tengbom

Stockholm International Exhibi-

Arne Jacobsen

Lars Magnus Ericsson 1911, beating Robert Falcon Scott and his ill-fated

Louis Ferdinand Celine exile

roof are covered in a giant fresco,

Arnstein Arneberg architect, often considered the

The entry to the mausoleum is erfangsel and others, because of accusations

the ashes of the artist is in a niche above the entry, thus forcing all ish authors, and one of the

his time, active as an architect

the cheese slicer

one of the fathers of modern from the city of Lillehammer

August Strindberg

Folke Bernadotte

Leo Trotsky exile

Greta Garbo

ation of the release of about

American actress during Hollyas one of the greatest and most inscrutable movie stars

fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by

received a German surrender offer from Heinrich Himmler,

Ingrid Bergman

be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab-

from then-Justice Minister Trygve Lie to enter the country, Trotsky became a guest of Konrad Knudsen

Knut Hamsun Nils Dalen

by Isaac Bashevis Singer to be

Nobel Laureate and industrialist, the founder of the AGA com-

The Saab Automobile division

salem in 1948 by members of duties

and by King Haakon to be Nor-

safe and reliable automobiles,

World titles than any other ladies

such as trucks, buses and contems for marine and industrial

high treason and subsequently exe-

Henrik Ibsen

of the founders of modernism in

almost rivalling Roald Amund-

Edvard Munch

is an area of central Stockholm,

Georg Brandes

(1866–1910), has erroneously

Ragnar Östberg seen as the theorist behind

he received the Nobel Prize in

Carl Dreyer Willy Brandt exile

for designing Stockholm City

Raol Wallenberg

tician, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)

one of the greatest directors in chemist, engineer, innovator, armaments manufacturer and

Stockholm exhibition

By aggressive investments and

the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922

remained in a blackened land-

and commercially released in

Kon-Tiki is the raft used by

Evert Taube

car, it cost almost as much as

Kreuger co-founded the conTaube is regarded as one of the

ous role as an iron and steel

designed in the 1940s in Denmark and have achieved an

and the naval and air forces

mental contributions to understanding atomic structure and

1870s through the turn of the

countrymen created a national myth based on the false

The Russian offensive on the German Northern Front settle-

Niels Bohr

July and December 1944, he

Heyerdahl in his 1947

he is the longest serving Prime South America to the

Willy Brandt to avoid detection by

foundation controlled by the could not serve more than about 100 subscribers, it could hardly

death has long been a source of

his enormous fortune to insti-

an exhibition held in 1930 in Stock-

of the Nation), he is generally considered one of the main architects of the rebuilding of

the German government revoked his

a Ponzi scheme, based on the

Alfred Nobel skier, and soon became interland by ski, and achieved great

1951, 1955 - 1963 and 1963 -

Sven Markelius

Einar Gerhardsen Harald Hals

Trygve Lie

Ivar Kreuger

became noted as a zoologist

Tage Erlander In 1931 a book-length manifesto

mat, eventually becoming Commissioner of refugees for the

modernism as a set of cultural

cratic Party and Prime Minister

Paulsson and the architects Sven Markelius, Uno Åhrén, Gunnar

Erlander holds the record as the longest serving head of government of any democratic coun-

ter under birch trees as the German

1910

090518timelineC.indd

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1920

2-3

1930

1940

18.05.2009, 17:41

1950

Ivo Caprino

Lillehammer

Lars von Trier

approaches

Ingmar Bergman ABBA

1960

090518timelineC.indd

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1970

4-5

1980

1990

18.05.2009, 17:41

2000

CALATRAVA – CASTROVALVA FROM TURNING TORSO TO TIME TAPESTRY The Turning Torso is the tallest building in the European Union and second-highest residential building in Europe giving shelter to 350 tenants.

With its 190 meters and 54 floors, the Turning Torso, located in the Swedish southern city of Malmö, can be seen in a clear day from the Denmark, in the other side of the Öresund straight. It gives the city a new skyline after the cranes from the Kockums dockyards disappeared in 2002. The Turning Torso had its opening day on August 27th, 2005. It was designed by an artist, the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. In fact the building is inspired on a Calatrava sculpture with a similar name, the Twisting Torso. Calatrava, Castrovalva. The two names

REGIS CABRAL AND TERHO TIKKANEN Regis Cabral (above) is a historian of science, physicist and poet who spends most of his time writing on innovation and knowledge transfer. With more than 300 publications, he is currently director of FEPRO – Funding for European Projects. www.fepro.eu/regiscabral

CASE STUDY

Terho Tikkanen is an engineer student from Oulu University of Applied Sciences, Finalnd. He is currently completing his studies at the department of civil engineering, aiming at becoming a production engineer in house building. He is currently a visitng student at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden.

08 | CONDITIONS 0109

are almost anagrams for each other, with a few letters in between missing. Almost like Dr. Who and Torchwood. Castrovalva was, in fact, one of the fifth Dr. Who adventure. In this adventure, Dr. Who still needed to stabilize his new body. Similarities and parallels? These architectural tapestries are reflections of our own time, reflecting its spirit in many phases and shapes of our lives.

For those who do not know (Is there any one who does not know Dr. Who?), the 903 years old Dr. Who is one of the longest living TV series, with over 40

years of continuous TV history. A child of BBC golden years, it has renewed itself becoming a guiding light for what a TV science fiction should be. The character as also survived by a successful process of regenerations. Every so many years, Dr. Who’s body collapses due to adventures incidents and he regenerates. The same Dr. has a new body represented by a new actor. Currently the series is on its 10th regeneration with actor David Tennant playing Dr. Who. The fifth Dr. Who was played by Peter Davison. Castrovalva was first aired in January 1982. Christopher H Bidmead wrote the story with Eric Saward as script editor. The director was the brilliant Fiona Cumming, with visual effects by Simon McDonald. As usual in the Dr. Who stories, the title music was by Ron Grainer and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, in this case arranged by Peter Howell. Regeneration is also complicated, followed by a small period of instability. To achieve stability, the fifth Dr. Who is taken by his friends to a place of peace, called Castrovalva. All seems to be as it should, but soon Castrovalva reveals to be a maze of rooms that disappear. Castrovalva, a land of fiction that collapses into itself, was created by Dr. Who worst enemy, The Master. A fiction created inside a fiction, shapping itself and its environment. The sanctuary transforms with time into a trap, a space/time trap, showing that illusions can also be deadly.

The key to escape is free will, even the free will of created people like the Castrovalvans. Castrovalva is a wonderful Escherian architecture, with rooms and walls that disappear. It has also stairs that go into themselves. And in the utmost example of mazes that fold into themselves, the tapestry that is Castrovalva is to be found in a wall of Castrovalva. It exists into itself and folds into itself. It is a story inside a story inside a story, shapping the viewers perception of their own daily reality. The people trapped in the tapestry can go round and round, see motions that do not exist and failing to see, because of the nature of Castrovalva architecture, what are the real motions of the event they live in, of this tap-

estry shaping its own landscape. The author of Dr. Who’s Castrovalva inspired himself on Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott, on Jorge Luis Borges’ Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and of course on M.C. Escher’s recursions. Escher’s architecture and geometry, twisted and possibly impossible, were duplicated in the plot as stairs went into themselves, making the TV story into an architectural poetry. Castrovalva is also Escher’s creation. He painted a mountain with a walled city on its top and gave it the name Castrovalva. From the Escher’s painting to a TV film; from a sculpture to a skyscraper. These are signs of our times, as one field of human creativity inspires another. It is a time where boundaries are crossed, academic disciplines merged and reshaped. The Turning Torso is also an example of boundaries crossed. A sculpture became a landmark, a shaper of landscapes. So the readers of this architectural concrete and metal tapestry see a white marble that rotates as it rises to reshape the city of Malmö landscape. It has also reshaped the city symbolically. The Kockums Crane of the dockyards represented a landscape, an iron tapestry, weaved by industrial workers to an industrial age. As the city succeeded in escaping from that fate that folded into itself, it remerged

CASE STUDY | TURNING TORSO

Dr. Who, Castrovalva, BBC

in a new tapestry of webs and nets of the information age. It also retains the highest ever pumped concrete in Sweden, if not in the whole Scandinavia. Rooms do not disappear and floors and stairs do not collapse into each other. Escher would have done it differently and so would Castrovalvans. But like Castrovalva, the Turning Torso psychologically turns and moves but keeps us in the same place. And, inside the building, the shape and form of the outside world changes. Just like Castrovalvans in their Escheriang world could see, if they dared to look out, a changing world. The Turning Torso gives opportunity for the gazing out. There are viewing room between the seventh and eight blocks and between the eighth and the ninth block. The 43rd and the 49th levels also have viewing rooms. So what is real, the Turning Torso inside or turned world outside? Great architecture changes and reshapes the world they are set in. This is why the Turning Torso is a landmark shaping Malmö’s city line. It is a reality changer. But the world can-

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Illustration by M.C. Escher

not experience this view from the inside, only invited guests. Just like only invited guests and inhabitants of Castrovalva can see the world from the Escherian perspective. It is a world closed on itself.

“

ESCHER’S ARCHITECTURE AND GEOMETRY, TWISTED AND POSSIBLY IMPOSSIBLE, WERE DUPLICATED IN THE PLOT AS STAIRS WENT INTO THEMSELVES, MAKING THE TV STORY INTO AN ARCHITECTURAL POETRY.

In the Castrovalva story, a local inhabitant asks Dr. Who if he can see Castrovalva.s spatial anomaly. To which he answers “With my eyes, no, but in my philosophy...” As new generations Malmö citizens get used to the Turning Torso presence, they will not see its modifying presence. Visitors and prisoners of the tower twisting will see it straight in a twisting town. To see its greatness, one has to go beyond the eye’s gaze. It is poetry and philosophy that reveals the universe the Turning Torso creates around and inside itself in the new tapestry of architectural time. It becomes a living representation shapping the horizon but also revealing that, today, our horizons are shaped by people who dare to cross boundaries and how dare to transfer the living experience from one dimension of human/nature interfaces to another.

WWW.HAY.DK

Winy Maas (Schijndel, 1965) founded in 1991 to-

WORKING CONDITIONS

gether with Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries MVRDV. Early work such as the television centre Villa VPRO and the housing estate for elderly WoZoCo, both in the Netherlands, have lead to international acclaim and established MVRDV’s leading role in international architecture.

INTERVIEW WITH WINY MAAS 26/3-09 TOR INGE HJEMDAL AND JOANA SÁ LIMA

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The working conditions in Scandinavia might be different compared to other places. In what way do you think this affects its architecture? How are the conditions different? Winy Maas: oh, that is a very wide question, and I have a limited experience but, in a way, each Scandinavian country is very different: Denmark is a bit more open to foreign and young architects than Norway up till now, even though recently it has been opening up. In Sweden, little is happening; it seems that there is not a deep interest in architecture. Finland has its own tradition and therefore its own interpretation and there’s slightly more interest in foreign architects. In Norway, some peculiarities are obvious as well. There is a big role for the state. It would be interesting to investigate how many initiatives are still stateoriented - you have Statsbygg, Statoil, the town planning institutions etc. They have a strong role in the planning process of the country. Thus influences the architecture. It is very functional and rational. This leads to very strict urbanism. I remember a competition in Ber-

Winy Maas lectures and teaches throughout the world and takes part in international juries. He currently is visiting professor of architectural design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is professor in architecture and urban design at the faculty of architecture, Delft University of Technology. Before this he was professor at among others Berlage Institute, Ohio State and Yale University. In addition he designs stage sets, objects and was curator of Indesem 2007. He is member of the research board of Berlage Institute Rotterdam, president of the spatial quality board of Rotterdam and supervisor of the Bjorvika urban development in Oslo. He is director of the Why Factory, a research institute for the future city he founded in 2008 which is connected to the Delft School of Design.

BERGEN

OSLO

STOCKHOLM

KØBENHAVN

gen for the Dentist’s Faculty Building where all rules became so strict, because it was state oriented, state organised, state money. Thus, freer interpretations that go beyond the strong set of regulations that have been built up in the local society, can not appear. How good is that? It is not al-

ways helping the architecture. There is a strong accumulation of rules that makes it harder to innovate and create something diﬀerent: all the constraints related to urbanistic rules, the budget, the technical, environmental and functional requirements – they are all logical and under-

standable –but then they lead to the same architecture. Sometimes this seems very good and reasonable, makes sense, but it is not so surprising. Architecture then becomes quite predictable and close to each other. You can consider that as a potential style, but it seems now too restricted and

WORKING CONDITIONS

corporate to give it a recognisable style. In Bergen we couldn’t do anything. There was a big issue about height. It is rather ridiculous here: Norway has huge mountains and should therefore the buildings be very low? It is maybe a fine concept, but then you get a problem with density; you get boxes and small houses everywhere surrounding the old cities. The same in Bergen. One should reconsider this: maybe it is better to make a robust monumental block, a stronger element on the mountain and leave it more open, instead of cladding it completely with boxes that are close to each other. It would be interesting to see this kind of modelling better developed. Maybe this has been studied in universities but I never saw it. I would love to see these kinds of urbanistic reflections… But is that because of the process? The traditional way in Norway is that the architects come in very late in the process and a lot of things are given. WM: That’s true, the visualization of all the constraints, in urbanistic terms in this case, are very hermetic. So, how do you allow for criticism on that? I give an example of a culture with self criticism. When we were working on the Mirador in Madrid, we have been given a commission to make a housing block. But there were so many blocks there! Should

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that be continued? –it was getting boring! So we proposed to flip the block and put it on its side so that the normal invisible patio became exposed and more public. - and they accepted. It became a piece that due to its ‘resistance’ became remarkable and created attention to the otherwise somehow unremarkable area. Here criticism became in a way a society’s self criticism and I think that is the highest standard we can have in a democra-

“

IT WOULD BE GOOD TO INVESTIGATE HOW MANY INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTS ARE ACTUALLY WORKING IN SCANDINAVIA AND COMPARE IT WITH SPAIN, FRANCE OR THE NETHERLANDS.

cy… In that respect: how to develop, how to make self criticism possible? How to open up oneself? In a way, our Barcode developments are an example of that. But we met limitations. We criticized the initial demand for urban blocks. By proposing the strips, we created more streets and opened up the whole area. It leads to more transparency between the city and the fjord. And the buildings would have an address to the city and the fjord, and there would thus be more potential for more expressive individual architecture along Nylands allee. As a result of this opening act, the average height of the buildings needed to be higher. That leaded to much discussion, which is exemplary of the situation. One needs and wants more density, but it is forced under strict height conditions. It can easily lead to fewer streets… The freedom was there for limited and we wanted to have more streets, more transparency and do higher buildings in between. If we had had more space, less legislation, the Barcode could have been much more exciting. It shows a certain kind of cultural openness in the end of the process but still not everything is possible. And Denmark? WM: Denmark is currently suﬀering a lot

from the credit crisis and that makes it rather vulnerable. Exactly at the moment that became more open towards foreign architects. Our Gemini building was the first building by a non-Scandinavian architect since decades. Afterwards buildings by Jean Nouvel and Zaha Hadid emerged… Denmark is a small country .and there is a limited amount of builders and developers. In a way, there is a need for more constructors. It is good that now more foreign constructors are coming in and that should reduce prices. The availability of builders dictates these markets, even though in Denmark prices are slightly less expensive because it is also more open, more southern. I am proud on our Gemini building where we could convince the developer and the city not to restore the old Frøsilo’s in a classical way by filling them up with (impossible) houses. They allowed us to hang the houses and to keep the interior open and monumental. This shows the openness based on logics. And as such a piece of allowing criticism and innovation. Recently we won the competition for the highest building in Copenhagen, the Pixel Rock, that deals with the credit crisis because it is highly flexible: it can easily transform itself from housing to oﬃces, and vice versa. A new type of building therefore.

Is Denmark becoming a breeding ground for innovative architecture? But on the other hand, the discussion we had over the Metropolezone project for the centre of Copenhagen was very, very limited. the municipality was searching for a vivid city centre for Copenhagen, with more density, more urbanity but in the end they didn’t want to have anything. It was very unsuccessful. I don’t know why it was that way...again, fear? Political fear? It would be good to investigate how many international architects are actually working in Scandinavia and compare it with Spain, France or the Netherlands. We are now in a very specific process with the DnB Nor Bank within the Barcode masterplan It has been a partly introvert process as well, with cost calculators and an engineering team that are part of the client. And that is thus not as connected with the architect as in other countries normally. It is therefore not always very transparent. On the other hand, we can comment on things in the process. Is this normal in Norway? It might indicate that the profession of architect is maybe not as respected as in other places. Here, it might seem that everyone can be an architect. That’s actually true; the work of architects is always up for grabs and you can shoot them down, anytime, while the engineer is always taken into consideration. WM: If you want to accomplish something beautiful, it sometimes costs money, and then you try to pull it from somewhere else. In the case of the hanging houses we could afford the extra costs of the structure by reducing the demands and specifications for the interiors. That is a tactic you normally do in other places, but that becomes more difficult in situations when not all the classical elements of the architectural production like cost calculations and engineering are part of the responsibility of the architect. In what way do you adapt to local conditions in your global practice? WM: We are one of the first offices of our generation that always work with co-ar-

chitects, even in the Netherlands. So that implies immediate adaptation to the local legislations and financial issues as the local collaborator does that part. Secondly the physical climatic elements are interesting: how to adapt to a local climate, to a physical climate, what eﬀect does that have on the more generic thoughts. As you know, I am not against the generic – since they share the globe’s collective needs and desires. Architecture has enormous generic issues as sustainability, spatiality or theatricality, I still love our building in Japan, the MATSUDAI museum, where we only tried to make a plaza which would work in that harsh climate, with meters of snow in the winter and super hot and humid conditions in the summer. What eﬀect would that have? And that was all we did. It is a very neutral building (say generic) and I think it is very contextual. As it is adapting to the local situations. We raised the neutral building to provide a climatic shelter for the plaza. The supporting stairs that connect the raised museum with the

“

I ONCE WROTE IN AN ARTICLE THAT DANISH ARCHITECTS SEEMED TO DO SOMETHING AS JAPANESE DID IN THE 80’S. THEY SENT PEOPLE OUT TO OTHER COUNTRIES TO LEARN AND EVEN ABSORB THEIR TECHNIQUES, AND THEN THEY SHOULD COME BACK AND DO THE SAME IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY.

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surrounding hamlets cause a funky pattern. But of course your question is about cultural adaptation. Up to here I still didn’t talk about culture, because there is an enormous danger about culture. It can be easily lead to simplifications. For example, in the beautiful patio houses Rem Koolhaas made in Fukuoka in the patios a bamboo garden was made, it is highly criticisable, one can see it almost as an insult to Japanese culture, it is like Disney. I think that there is a much profounder way of dealing with cultural interpretations. I mean, I love the house typologically, but the bamboo garden in the entrance of the place becomes too much; so it is very tricky to refer very directly, especially as a foreigner, to local traditions. You can easily make big mistakes. The best is to be yourself.

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Another example of contextuality. Yesterday, in Florence, I suggested to get the shopping mall out of the periphery and place it under the Uﬃzi palace. That’s much better. Most people are coming there, you would give this old city a podium and you don’t turn the old city centre into a tourist ghetto. They were surprised with my proposal. It would improve the Uﬃzi palace and it would regenerate the centre of the city, avoiding the “museumification”. Am I then contextual? Yes, highly. The Italian desire for shopping malls is combined with a subtle connection with the local history… Am I culturally contextual? I think as well because I give criticism from my point of view and local criticism is, by definition, contextual. Do you see the new young Scandina-

vian practices as an import of architectural ideas of the heyday of Dutch architecture? Is there a mutation or a further development? Are they developing their own direction? WM: It takes time. I once wrote in an article that Danish architects seemed to do something as Japanese did in the 80’s. They sent people out to other countries to learn and even absorb their techniques, and then they should come back and do the same in their own country. That makes it even difficult for foreigners to come in. It is part of reductionism, a smart, contemporary way of being protective. We have a lot of Danish people in our oﬃce and we still collaborate with some of our former employees. It is a bit of a double feeling I have with this phenomenon. Of course it makes it diﬃcult for us to work in these countries because this “direction” is al-

ready there. But in the other hand, you see things that we have been working and fighting for enlarging and that’s beautiful; I don’t want to be exclusive, and it challenges our hypothesis. And it is evolutionary. We are faced with people that sometimes do it better than us. That’s completely acceptable or more than that as it makes things deeper and sharper. I myself recognise my own background as I have been working 2 years at OMA and I think we respond to that. We found elements there that I think we brought one step further, deeper and wider, almost in evolutionary terms,. The word “content”( in OMA’s latest book) is answered by the word “depth” in KM3. Another issue is the step from scenario thinking into the evolutionary, interactive post-scenario thinking as in SpaceFighter. Or how research is translated. Or how parameterization lead to maximization ( as in our “Datascapes) , to optimizations ( as in the functionmixer) towards the evolutionary performances of data ( in SpaceFighter). I hope in that way to respond in an intellectual way. It is my guess that such a method challenges each other. So, not only through buildings, but as well through the approach towards that ( I think that humour, and irony are equally important for instance) and the intelligence that surrounds the buildings. Such a ‘dialogue’ sharpens our agenda and the things we are concerned about, so I think the evolutionary aspect is fantastic. But in order to develop it, we need to critique, and on that I expect a lot from you, to say if that is happening; if it is only copy/paste or if it is only copy/comment or a more responsive approach… In these last years of the Venice biennale, the Danish pavilions demonstrated a strong connection with Dutch architecture; there you could see the strong Scandinavian-Holland axis. But also the US and Spain have shares… What do you see as important conditions needed for evolution? WM: For evolution or Revolution? We see evolution and revolution as two diﬀerent things, opposites.

WM: they belong to each other; revolution is

an intensification of evolution. The shocks, the disasters, the crises are the accelerators of evolution. They are all completely connected. Evolution is always there. More specifically in Scandinavia? WM: One could make the hypothesis that

things stay like this forever or that it maybe develops in a limited way, I don’t judge that. Personally, I love acceleration, because I think it is more exciting, I love uncertainty, “unknown-ness” and I love curiosity, so for me it would not be the perfect place on earth to survive. I mean, in Darwinistic terms, I would die in a culture of stand still! What could I do? I would have to change myself … or I would have to change the rest, or start a revolution, or go away…

“

I LOVE ACCELERATION, BECAUSE I THINK IT IS MORE EXCITING, I LOVE UNCERTAINTY, “UNKNOWN-NESS” AND I LOVE CURIOSITY, SO FOR ME IT WOULD NOT BE THE PERFECT PLACE ON EARTH TO SURVIVE. I MEAN, IN DARWINISTIC TERMS, I WOULD DIE IN A CULTURE OF STAND STILL! WHAT COULD I DO? I WOULD HAVE TO CHANGE MYSELF … OR I WOULD HAVE TO CHANGE THE REST, OR START A REVOLUTION, OR GO AWAY…

Or start a magazine? WM: I like the comparison to Darwinist

evolution a lot – in the SpaceFighter book I wrote how I see that, and I am so happy that there are now computer models that can deal with that. They show the intelligence behind it, to understand evolution and to model it. I am interested in what forms and what changes evolution is becoming visible and applicable and thus how we can change things, what causes changes and how long it takes before things change, and that’s what architecture is partly about. If not for consolidation, then you are aiming for acceleration and change. With the current crisis, in which direction do you think we are heading? WM: I think this is, as said by many, a very interesting moment in time. We learn something and we can look back and we can adapt things I mentioned. The greediness of the last decade was also connected with a greedy kind of architecture… More specifically, for architects, the shift more directed to economy will lead to investments that are more oriented towards infrastructure than toward individual components, and I adore that, that’s a good thing! I love the discussion about what kind of society should there be after the crisis – that’s a political question. We can start painting another kind of society. I would be criticised if I would raise that subject five years ago – the issue of “makeable” societies? The 3rd thing I think is that the complete shift now in finance, leads to other types of ground properties, because owners are suddenly changing. Maybe not so much in Oslo, but in other cities in Europe, that gives an enormous potential to make other types of urbanism, to re-make the cities. We never had so many urban commissions as now: the vision for Grand Paris, the doubling of Almere; the new passages in The Hague, the national parks in Albania; so everywhere there is a desire to use that reshuﬄing and to combine it with new infrastructural input to see what kind of “next” cities should emerge out of that. And the last thing I would like to mention is that we have so many commis-

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sions these days, not to build but to make building permits; so you see that everyone is preparing themselves, they get building permits and then they wait to build; this is interesting because maybe our buildings are only built in 10 years, so this will of course influence the objects that we design now. They become more flexible, more speculative, not only in flexibility, but as well in appearance because they need to be marketable, which is nice. Sustainability? WM: Sustainability is a very general word,

which is fine, whatever that is. I am happy that the awareness has given us a collective agenda. But it becomes more and more a ‘re-

ligion’ that is starting to dictate good and bad. It gets moral side effects. And in the meantime I am shocked by the incredible ugliness of almost all sustainable architecture. It is reduced to a grass roof, the rest becomes bullshit. The fact is that it costs 15% extra and to make architecture is even more diﬃcult. And it leads easily to “all of the same”, since for instance, now all facades need 30 % of windows instead of 50% that would be in the past, so you will know how it will look like. It starts to look all the same. This green movement has already a long tradition. I think Farmax and KM3 are about that as well. KM3 used the ecological footprint as a calculating device, and it is good to see that that appears more and more in that world.

But I am as well very sceptical about some of the developments. The sustainability issues lead as well to more and more restrictions, not the best source for a free world…. And it starts to limit creativity seriously. It makes fear for experimentation sometimes even bigger. In our latest study for the Greater Paris we stress the need for being ‘more’ instead of less, already purely for being competitive and ambitious. “Paris Plus”: ask more, don’t do less. There is such a danger of being less, everything is reductive, and there is no ambition anymore. There is only fear! In a way the current credit crisis helps us discuss that. There are smaller budgets; there will be more public investment. There will be discussions on what direction this should take.

INTERVIEW WITH BERNT STILLUF KARLSEN 23/3-09 Bernt Stilluf Karlsen is heavily involved in the enormous reorganization of the Oslo harbor. The plan is to move all the activity of the Oslo Harbor to one spot, Sjursøya. This will free a lot of property along the inner Oslo fjord. How this land is being developed is causing a lot of discussions …

Bernt Stilluf Karlsen holds a Master of Science in Business and Economics from Bergen, Norway. After several positions within the Norwegian governmental system he has since 1980 had key roles in different Norwegian industrial companies such as Saga Petroleum, Aker Norcem, Aker/Kværner before establishing ProCorp ASA in 2000. Karlsen is the former chairman of Miljøtransport AS and Oslo Sporveier / Ruter and has since 2000 been the chairman of Oslo Havn KF (The Oslo Harbor).

TOR INGE HJEMDAL AND ANDERS MELSOM

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One thing I am very happy about for instance, is the discussion on private transport, with the acceleration of the battery car suddenly we are again allowed to drive. But that implies if that becomes successful, and I am sure about that, that it will become busier on our roads and that we need to continue to make more roads, it is good to see as well how the crisis helps in theoretical terms. In my lectures of the last weeks, I tried to show how the crisis of the 30s’ influenced architecture. There are two types: one is hyperconservative and the other very experimental. I find it intriguing, and I see an analogy from that as well in these days and it is good to analyse what happened then and to openly discuss and guide that. When I look at all the renderings of

You are involved in various urban planning processes where you take on diﬀerent roles and identities, and defend various interests. Do you feel that these roles in general are increasingly becoming blurred today? BSK: I don’t think so, our role is clear but

contested. The role is a role we have taken, not been given. It is clear that the relocating of the port into one place to increase port eﬀectiveness, change logistics and increase productivity would result in vacant areas suitable for urban development. With vacant areas, we were facing the choice of giving the areas away to someone, or saying that on the areas we were leaving we would take on the role as landowner. That decision has ever since been contested by many. In 2000 we found it hard just to leave the areas to someone. Who should we leave them to and at what price? Should we sell them, or just give them away to the first ones who came to “claim the land”? And selling

architecture oﬃces from the pop star generation (that generation is always called by their first names, no family names, Zaha, Rem, Norman, etcetera) with their flashy images - which have been taken over radically in the past 3, 4 years by young people, magazines with the same shape towers - I see a style that is so much connected with the clients that got bonuses. A certain greediness is mirrored in architecture…. So we should criticize that kind of architecture we would like to oﬀer. How good is that? Do you mean iconic architecture? WM: Let me be clear: I am not against Icons,

I love Icons, but we have to judge them. But now it is just a twisted tower somewhere in Malmo, so what? What does such an ef-

was not easy. According to the municipality, we can (should) only sell regulated land. We had not regulated the areas for any new uses; the areas were regulated for port activities. We have tried, at an early stage in development of Bjørvika, to give plots away to the municipality, due to the complexity of the development that turned out to be diﬃcult. Laws and rules were also part of defining the

“

OUR LACK OF COMPETENCE IS THE NEXT DISCUSSION THAT REAPPEARS ALL THE TIME IN THE MEDIA AND AMONG CERTAIN INTEREST GROUPS.

fort say? Icons need to say something, make a statement, something that we can become proud of, that thus become symbolical for an ‘achievement’. Most of these were only shapes , with in their best performance a technological achievement, but most they didn’t say much. They were simply flashy. This crisis can be used to say that it is time to make another type of architecture. That becomes ‘exemplary’. Last thing I would like to say about the crisis is that I wonder if this crisis is a real crisis. The real crisis is maybe the food crisis, the war crisis, the religious crisis, the energy crisis, and those are much more important. Can we find urban and architectural ‘agendas’ in that???

role (as landowner) in a negative way, ESA rules, state aid, subsidies etc made it diﬃcult to sell cheap to get out of the role as landowner fast … We have encountered a lot of examples where people/institutions/businesses expected to take over plots for free, and then sell parts of the plots to finance their idealistic purpose. This could maybe have been a model as well, but possibly a pretty chaotic model. So after a discussion we ended up taking the role as landowner and as a consequence of that we became urban developers, an area where we have no competence. Our lack of competence is the next discussion that reappears all the time in the media and among certain interest groups. They constantly try to nail us on this: You know nothing about this, you have no right to take possession of the areas, and therefore all your proposals are unusable. As an answer we have taken up the challenge, and filled the role with content. Our task appeared twofold, firstly to

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be accommodating development processes to achieve urban development on the plots we were leaving, and secondly, to make sure that the most competent and talented people got involved in developing the plots. If you look at our organization, you see that we have not built up any in-house competence or resources of architects, urban planning or property development personnel. But we have consciously taken part in the processes that have established the development structure of Tjuvholmen, in Bjørvika through the development of Bjørvika Utvikling and Bjørvika Infrastruktur AS (infrastructure) the latter a company building the entire infrastructure for the largest urban renewal in Oslo in modern times, and we have developed a good relationship to OSU, Sørenga Utvikling and the other operational companies carrying the practical burdens of reshaping the city. In the port authority and in HAV Eiendom (our subsidiary) we have hardly had one person on the property side, there have not been developed any specialized staﬀ here, we only lease in competent people when we need them for a special task, like for architectural competitions and so forth. How is the collaboration with the planning authorities, who are supposed to be the professionals of urban planning? BSK: My personal attitude is that the main task of the planning department (Plan- og bygningsetaten) today should be to accom-

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MAYBE THIS IS HARSH TO SAY, BUT I DON’T EVEN THINK THE PLANNING DEPARTMENTS SHOULD HAVE THE MOST TALENTED PEOPLE.

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Vestbanen

Frognerstranda

Rådhusplassen Filipstad

Bjørvika

Aker Brygge

Tjuvholmen

Akershusstranda

Loenga

Kongshavn

Sjursoya

Ormsund-Bekkelaget

modate good processes and to achieve momentum in urban decision making. But in reality, I have experienced that the planning department is more occupied with the architecture and building design than the general process, and here we clash time after time. My understanding has always been that our processes should lead to the engagement of the most talented architects, planners, landscape architects, engineers and road planners and so on, and then they have to solve the challenges of the plot. In addition it is my understanding that you find the most talented people outside the public planning apparatus. Maybe this is harsh to say, but I don’t even think the planning departments should have the most talented people. They should choose between the best propositions, not try to compete with the accumulated talent in the private sector. What you are actually talking about now is the idea of governance. Earlier there was more of a hierarchy in relation to who was planning and who executed. The government was then more involved as planner

and often designed master plans that were executed by property developers. Now, there is a much more horizontal structure where everyone contributes at their own will, more in line with the idea of governance. There are two questions actually: how is governance turning out in real life, which is what you are describing now, in relation to trying to accommodate the various processes. What kind of dangers or possibilities do you see in relation to this shift from earlier procedures? BSK: The change from previous procedures I don’t know, I never participated in this earlier, I am a model 2000, just from this century. To put it in another way: if the planning department had been much stronger and clearer, would it help the cooperation or make it even more diﬃcult? BSK: The most strong and clear should be the most competent people .In my opinion, the planning department will never get back to a situation where they draw the big city map and we others simply build at full speed according

to this city map. The planning and building laws that we have now makes it more complicated and time consuming than ever to plan in “big lines” and with momentum in large scale urban developments. In the processes I have been involved in so far we have not missed a strong planning department, but we bitterly miss decision strength to sort out conflicts at an early stage. It has been very diﬃcult for me to look at the conflicts we could see on day one in the processes, when all the interest groups were meeting across the table, that they still are unresolved after 3-5 years of reports and studies of all kinds. And it is still as hard to resolve the conflicts, because either someone has to forcefully implement their opinion at the expense of others, or a compromise has to be made, a compromise that could have been made very early on in the process. Instead we produce paper year in and year out. Extremely slow progress as almost the only result. So very few conflicts and issues are resolved along the way? BSK: Yes, concerning the big issues I think so. There have been terribly slow processes in Oslo, we have allowed our self a way of planning and executing which is incredibly cost demanding. If there had not been some big events that force a decision to be made, like with the Opera in Bjørvika, either we decide now, or else the state will not participate in the financing of the new road system, then something happens. Concerning Deichmann and Munch (recent competitions in Oslo), there seems to have been more speed involved? BSK: Until now, yes! When you look forward, it can go both ways. In relation to your own position, what do you see as the abilities of the architect and what role does the architect have today? BSK: I see the architect as one of the truly creative forces in society. And if there’ s something we really need, it is this kind of creativity. I think the architects in principle are allowed to contribute too little. Lots of people say they have too much influence, but I think they have too little. They have an ability to make a

synthesis of many issues like aesthetic design, relationship to the context and more technical issues like roads, water etc. There are not so many professions who have this skill of making a totality of complex issues. Whether they are good or not is another case. But they have a very important role to play, and should have a more important role than the ones of us just running processes and the formal planning expertise. The formal planning expertise sit and look at the laws and regulations, discussing in east and west, make consequence analysis, all the issues turn into a mechanical checklist. But the ability to make a synthesis and turn this into a project that achieves an extraordinary visual design, gives us new experiences, establishes relationships between people inside the building, on the outside, and now also on the roof, that is truly only the architect that can. We hardly have any professions that can achieve this, in this way the architect is a truly unique profession, at their best, they create things we others later can enjoy for hundreds of years. To reduce this profession to designing a building limited by a rigid urban plan, made by a planning department leaving a square in the middle where they can draw a building is not bringing the world ahead. Then you have reduced the creative force to nothing, you have overstepped the unique potential of the architect to create something unique of lasting value. The practical matters can always be solved later. So in your opinion the architect often appear too late in the planning process, and could have more to contribute with on an earlier stage? BSK: They should have been there earlier, with more resources. In all projects all the big mistakes are made at the very start, and often the big mistakes are made because too little resources are put in at the early stages. Later, enormous resources are put into drawing walls and calculating strengths of floor and roof constructions. But in the opening stages, there are too little room for creativity. How can the architect get there? BSK: I don’t think the architect can get there, I

think we who make processes must steer more of the force at an earlier stage. At Tjuvholmen we drew a line around the area within where you could draw almost whatever you wanted, and then we received 3-5 quite unique proposals. The same model was tried for the Munch museum. We drew a red line, within this border you had the possibility to think freely. From this starting point 20 very diﬀerent concepts emerged, 12 out of 20 challenging the present plan for the area. This tells me that more creativity should have been involved earlier. This time the established plan overruled the creative potential of the area. This shows that there is a genuine ability to create the unique. We others must facilitate processes so that it is not lost. Afterwards we can start to dissect this: is it aesthetically pleasing, does it create good public space, is it interesting at street level, will it look good from Ekebergåsen, where are the tourist buses going to park, etc. But you can’t start there, as many processes do. Then you only get square boxes between two sidewalks and a road, and that is really sad when you have a profession where the best have ability and competence to create something others can’t create. If we can continue at the other end of the scale. When it comes to the selection of projects it is often interfered by politicians, in opposition to the professional judgement. Architectural evolution governed by selection through politics. Do you have any comments to this? BSK: Yes, I am quite relaxed to the fact that politicians engage themselves in architecture. The reason for this is twofold; they are the ones that pay, defend the investment, at least if it is a public building. Secondly, I can’t see that the so-called “professional arguments” for a project A or B are really that professional. There are a lot of feelings and taste involved there too. The judgement of politicians is not necessarily any worse than the judgement of a professional jury. Can the politicians be said to represent the public majority, making bad decisions?

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BSK: Politicians represent their own opinion

and that is good enough. I would rather say that “bad decisions” are more likely because there is a great danger of not having enough daring alternatives to choose from, resulting in “professional” selection of projects that are scaled down to almost nothing and square boxes . If you look at what has actually been built in Oslo the latest years you won’t find a lot of daring projects. And then you can ask: Why so few daring projects? Is it because the politicians don’t select the daring projects, or simply that they had no daring projects to choose from? From what you know, we want to ask you, how can you compare the conditions for urban development in Oslo with the other Scandinavian capitals? BSK: I know the harbour situation. There are great differences here. If you take Helsinki, they are in the same situation as Oslo, with the difference that they have a place outside the city were they can move the whole harbour. Moving out from central areas in the city, the largest area being the West Harbour, you see that the ownership conditions are different. The harbour hired the plots from the city, when they move the municipality becomes the landowner that can accommodate the new urban development in the port areas. The port authorities are not involved at this stage. So there is sort of a public client? BSK: Yes, and there I see the planning au-

thorities having a much more important role. As planners? BSK: Both as planners, and simply because

next to the planning office is the property department who owns the plots, and the planning department and the property department share the same administration in the city council. Conditions are different, processes becomes different. In Copenhagen they decided another model. Shortly said they simply made a new harbour Copenhagen/Malmö outside the city. Then they turned the old Copenhagen harbour into a property company. In Stockholm the

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situation is more similar to Oslo. It is a capital harbour. Do you look much to other Scandinavian cities as reference or exchange experiences, when strategies are established? BSK: No, the situation in Oslo is special. I believe it is important when you have selected a role that you play it to the max. You can’t just say: ok, we take the responsibility as landowner, but we don’t care how it works out. You have to put some effort it, and the more effort you put into it, the more resistance you meet, because it implies that someone else with different opinions meet this energy. Strategy can be seen as a long term goal for achieving success. What are your goals and what is your strategy for reaching these goals? BSK: Personally I have had no specific goal, but when we started this transformation, we said that we should complete the whole moving of the port without financial support from state or city. It has been a major process, even if we don’t talk about the urban development part. Within the harbour a lot is happening. In relation to strategy, our aim was to move the port, liberate all the areas for new development, without any financial turbulence. You are saying that the moving process is the aim, and economical sustainability, a certain speed and the accommodation of processes are the means to achieve it in an effective way? BSK: Yes, we don’t have and we should not build up “urban” competence. We can think through how this competence should be composed and assembled, but ultimately it should find a home somewhere else. And we have been very concerned with including the architects from an early stage, knowing that we will need a lot of competence in the future to achieve good solutions and realizable proposals. We have tried not to abuse their creativity, but we see that architects get a bit abused, since they are so keen on competing.

They put down more work in competitions than it is possible to pay them for. That’s just the way it is, it is not possible to give them full compensation. In Munch/Deichman we just had 20 entries, the chance of winning is greater than with 140 entries, and the 20 are of higher quality and of more substance, making their work at least more usable in future marketing and presentations. Then a part of the study of the potential for the area is already done? BSK: Yes. We have chosen different competition models every time, to see what different results it leads to. Tjuvholmen was one model, the Sørenga pier was another model, Deichman & Munch was a third model. Do you do this because you never are satisfied with the results, or just because each situation is different? BSK: The situations are different, and also the models give different possibilities. There are still some major tasks left before we are finished. But it moves along at a terribly slow pace. There is no reason for this slowness. Things could have come much farther, especially on Fillipstad and in Sydhavna (the new major port area). Do you think the stance of planning department here is part of the cause for the lack of progress? BSK: Yes, I think we have seen some terrible, totally unnecessary and expensive processes, lots of it has been wasted. It is important to understand the structural ties that are imposed over time on the creative and synthetic abilities of the architect. It starts with the rules from the municipality saying that you should only sell regulated property. To sell regulated property, you have to regulate it, but for what functions are you going to regulate, when the program has yet to be decided, the market is changing, the use is uncertain or the future owner is unknown? That is part of the challenge now, there is too little room for thinking freely about an area and say: be creative. And then have a very general overall plan that can easily be changed when you at a later stage have more knowledge.

The Belly of an Architect, Peter Greenaway. MGM Studios

Ludwig Wittgenstein questioned the relationship between meaning and the use of language. He highlighted the fact that conceptual confusions surrounding its use is one of the main roots of philosophical problems. Knowing the meaning of a word, he argued, can involve the knowledge of many things. An accurate theory, consequently, can begin by explaining the precise meaning of words.

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FERNANDO DONIS

EVOLUTION IN THE AGE OF CRISIS 024 | CONDITIONS 0109

Crisis [From the Greek. krĂsis meaning decision (to decide, separate, judge). A stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events, esp. for better or for worse, is determined; turning point; a condition of instability or danger, as in social, economic, political, or international affairs, leading to a decisive change.]

It is already widely seen and written that the factual economic downturn has brought crisis to the current architectural production. It is easy to survey that the atrocious condition for the profession is that of recession and mass unemploy-

Fernando Donis was in charge of numerous projects as senior associate at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture with Rem Koolhaas for seven years, such as the Renaissance Tower and Porsche Design Towers in Dubai, the New Jeddah International Airport in Saudi Arabia, and the designer of the CCTV (China Central Television) Headquarters building in Beijing. He was also responsible for leading international competitions such as the Aramco Cultural Center, Gazprom Headquarters, Baja Resort Mexico, Guangzhou Opera House, CBD Beijing, Beijing Books Building, Gent Forum, Cordoba Congress Center, and Dubai Future City and Dubai Land master plans, among many others. Coincidentally founded on the 15th of September 2008 (the day the market collapsed), DONIS is an architectural office developing a grammar for the city while rethinking the relationship between economy and architecture. DONIS is presently developing projects in the Netherlands and Mexico, as well as international competitions. Among its recognitions, DONIS received first prize for the design of the National Courthouse in Paris. Fernando Donis is also a PhD candidate at the Berlage Institute and the TU Delft University. www.donis.org

ARTICLE 1

ment, and not for a short period. Following J.M. Keynes and I. Fisher’s tactics, governments awake state interventionism and nationalization, changing the laissezfaire epitomized logic. If it is true that the economic crisis and its frugality is affecting architecture in its construction, its discursive core has been in a more vital ‘crisis’ for a longer period when following the opposite factor: excess. The market became architecture’s raison d’être: the more incomprehensible and careless the financial strategies, the more excessive architecture became. This dramatic ideological impasse developed and grew within the last decades, vis-àvis the different cycles of economic crisis. Named in well-known architectural mottos, those years can be summarized as an accelerated process of ‘trial and error’, celebrating the city trapped within the complexity and variability of the global market. Since the late 1960s, most forms of production –including architecturehave been changed, distorting the system of values where the major industries focused mainly on technology and information. Mass production was replaced by a Post-Fordist flexible specialization, where the production of trends occurs as fast as fashion. Over excitement about the every-Monday morning discovery and disillusion about its almost immediate inapplicability has and dominates the production of ideas and buildings. Architects aimed for kitsch multiplicities, hybridization, ‘hypers’, and whatever was necessary to match the continuous economic ups and downs. With the excuse of ‘multi-cultural pluralism’, architecture strictly followed neoliberalism, becoming increasingly superfluous where the blurrier the confusion the higher the admiration. Architectural offices shifted several times from theoretical and idealism; to producing successful projects; to bankruptcy out of the impossibility of building those projects; to superficial in order to pay back that insolvency; and finally

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to masking it all by a new millennium corporate ‘serious’ character. When producing the very architecture though, and opposed to the actual seriousness of the initial dialectical ateliers, the sincerity was very much wrapped by irony, nonsense, and ‘romantic’ eurekas, lacking recognition of any rule or grammar. Architecture theory has become a recording apparatus, rather than a reflection arena. The result, a critical paradox in which the search of constant newness resulted in architectural languages and types that are outdated, before even being built. Thinking of the meaning of crisis again, we have made several wrong decisions. The common to all is underlined by the fact that architecture has not offered alternatives ways of relating to economy, but that of chasing its changeability. In the light of the current events, many questions arise today. What should happen to the urban sprawl? How can sustainability be approached in a serious manner? How can architecture cooperate on the development of a more egalitarian production of the city? What are the urban models that can project the city with an ‘economy of means’? How can

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…ARE YOU A MODERN ARCHITECT MR. KRACKLITE? – NO MORE MODERN THAN I SHOULD BE. – NO MORE MODERN THAN BOULLÉE WOULD YOU SAY?...”

Peter Greenaway – The Belly of an Architect

we avoid the same mistakes for when the economic recovery come? How should cities evolve? Evolution [From the Latin ēvolūtiōn meaning an unrolling, opening. Any process of formation or growth; development, unfolding, change, progression, metamorphosis.]

It is well known that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in ‘The Origin of Species’ (1859) introduced the idea that species evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. Species more suited to the environment are more likely to survive and reproduce and leave their inheritable traits to future generations, unfolding the process of natural selection. This process results in populations changing to adapt to their new environment, and ultimately, these variations accumulate over time to form new species. In architecture, swift material adaptations and discourses are already on the way in order to be part of the ‘natural selection’. Assumptions have already been published declaring that we could compare this coming period to the innovative production of Modernism after the Great Depression. This is by some means mistaken as the development of Modernism vis-à-vis crisis -not only economical but within the World Wars- was more complex in its making, and incidentally the ‘heroic’ period of Modernism occurred after the First World War and before 1929. A similar ready-made series of ‘adaptations to the new architectural environment’ are already being highly proclaimed: a combination of moralization and ‘sustainability.’ New generations of activist semi-puritan designers with an almost outdated anti-icon campaign, are shifting into a superficial change that it does not seem to be well rooted. These premises are already producing undefined buildings that accumulate sophisticated ‘flexible’ boxes, very specific overall functionality and composition with no clarity, on the fear of being iconic (even though disagreeing with the aim of the iconic generation,

one could wonder already whether those where less harmful). All of it underlined by more diagrams than plans and a very detailed -post-attached and afterthoughtsustainability strategy, must-have façade solar panels, and roofs covered with green; catchy salesman slogans and an identifiable identity aim to complete the oﬀer. The well-known architects on the other hand, will quickly turn upside down the diagrams of expensive buildings and strategies of yesterday to diagrams of hope and change, and look at the previous years with disdain and irritation yet with eyes of ‘sincerity’ and ‘compassion’. Like a serial killer with no sweat and tremble confessing ‘I did not do it’, they have secretly become the leaders of a ‘guilt’ generation. Whatever the reasons are, the despair to keep the limited power, the hunger for square meters, or maybe simply the need to have gotten used to the ‘lifestyle’, these architects have lost conviction. The aftermath: the reassurance of theories that are simply copies of yesterday’s newspaper and practices that anxiously expect the market changes of tomorrow. Is the agenda of architecture so weak and vulnerable to become whatever appears tomorrow? Is it possible to negotiate the cultural and economic trends rather than absorbing them without any question? Does architectural history finish at today’s newspaper? Is it possible to bring back any stable conviction for architecture? It is perhaps important to understand Evolution again by its definition: an unrolling. If it is true that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is one of natural selection, it is also one based on a slow gradual process. Darwin wrote, “Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variation; it can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps.” Architecture should certainly be optimistic about the future and change, but in a cautious and consensual way aiming for a longer-term social and politi-

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ARCHITECTURE SHOULD CERTAINLY BE OPTIMISTIC ABOUT THE FUTURE AND CHANGE, BUT IN A CAUTIOUS AND CONSENSUAL WAY AIMING FOR A LONGER-TERM SOCIAL AND POLITICAL AGENDA, UNLIKE BEING BASED ON A FIVE-MINUTE UNSTEADY DEMAGOGIES.

cal agenda, unlike being based on a fiveminute unsteady demagogies. Hoping that this coming time does not become another reaction to the reaction, the rethinking should aim to the awakening of consciousness, to the acknowledgement of the historical principles of architecture, to locate where we are now, and to determine how to complete another historical stage rather than reduce it to a ten-year mental tabula rasa. Instead of seeing the coming years as a total recession, it would be vital to push for an actual evolution by rethinking the relationship between economy and architecture, where architects can ultimately engage and consciously project the city, rather than retroactively continue accepting its incomprehensibility. Balance, economy of means and thinking, inventiveness, historical awareness, knowledge, dialogue and consensus, a grammar for the city, can undoubtedly redeem the language of architecture. As we were handed over to improve

the scope of the millennial heritage, architecture significance should be based not only in its ability to become contemporary but modern. It seems that, in our urge and creative obligation to continuously discover new paradigms, we have probably forgotten the difference between these two meanings.

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND BIOAESTHETICS Our minds and perceptual systems are largely made up of activity in evolved mental mechanisms. These evolved to solve adaptive problems that our ancestors faced in through the species’ evolutionary history. These both enable and constrain our perception of beauty today - as Don Symons put it “beauty is in the adaptations of the beholder”. Due to the time the evolutionary process takes our mental mechanisms are adapted to our ancestors’ environment - most mechanisms evolved more than 100 thousand years ago.

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LEIF EDWARD OTTESEN KENNAIR, PHD

Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, Phd., is Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He wrote his thesis on the evolutionary psychology of psychopathology, and has written an introduction to evolutionary psychology “Evolusjonspsykologi - en innføring i menneskets natur” (Tapir Akademisk Forlag, Trondheim, 2004; translated to Danish, 2005, Copenhagen, Akademisk Forlag). He has written on topics such as political science, war, music, mate choice, sexual behaviour, harassment, jealousy, development, play and anxiety from an evolutionary psychology perspective.

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This paper introduces evolutionary psychology and the evolved mechanisms that make us perceive beauty or consider ecological features. Within nutritional studies the suggestion is that our health will improve if our diets better resemble that of our ancestors. From an architecture theory perspective we might thrive more in our modern ecologies if these were modelled on environments in which our ancestors thrived. As such evolutionary insights might provide the basis for creative strategies. A postscript is added that suggests how one might be able to use a natural selection approach to architecture, based on similar attempts at mobility and mathematical problem solving.

What is Evolution? The process of evolution – and especially the principle of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin’s great contribution to science – is the only explanation of how life adapts and diversifies over generations. From the

simplest beginnings – replicating chains of amino acids – to the complex brains of primates; all life that exists today may be explained by this grand theory. This does not mean that all evolution is due to selection – or that all results of evolution are adaptations. It means that the process that can adapt an organism to its environment across generations is the process of natural selection. In other words, the creative designing process is natural selection. But evolutionary theory is more than natural selection, and the totality of modern evolutionary theory provides the only scientific explanation of the diversity of life in general. Darwin’s original work on natural selection was combined with genetic science in the 1940’s. The result is the modern synthesis. The modern understanding of evolution is therefore based on knowledge of how genes – the smallest packages of information – replicate and are selected, based on the traits they code for in interplay with environmental input in the environments they develop. Further these environments act as selection pressures, deciding through the array of adaptive problems the environment poses, what genes reproduce. Different genes will provide differential traits – and differential traits will have differential survival and reproductive success. Note: survival is only important if it increases likelihood of reproductive success – but therefore survival is important in any species that needs to mature sexually in order to reproduce. This is the basis of natural selection. The best adapted traits will spread in the population, and this will continuously adapt organisms to their environment – even as environments may change. This process has designed solutions to problems such as that of camouflage for Australian sea horses that look perfectly like sea weed, or insects that look like sticks, leaves or orchids. Also the nests of weavers, the dams of beavers, the hives of bees and the temperature regulation structures of termite hills are the result of evolution by natural selection. Sexual selection – selection based merely on increasing reproductive success – has designed our

sense of beauty, the peacocks’ tail and the colourful, almost artistic displays of bower birds.

Is Evolution a Strategy? My answer to this question is no. Evolution is not a process with a specific aim – it is teleonomic not teleologic. It is not a process that is progressionistic – thus sharks or crocodiles are good solutions to aquatic predation and have been around for hundreds of millions of years. Evolution is inherently a process that is fuelled by randomly generated genetic variance, and thereafter this variance is winnowed by the fact that the most eﬃcient genetic evolved and developable solutions necessarily

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THUS EVOLUTION – SELECTION - MAY DESIGN SOLUTIONS THAT MAY BE CONSIDERED STRATEGIES – BUT IS NOT A STRATEGY IN ITSELF.

will reproduce with greater likelihood than other competing traits.

Thus evolution – selection - may design solutions that may be considered strategies – but is not a strategy in itself. An example might illustrate: A species of colourful beetles migrate out of the colourful jungle and settle on a greyish-bluish rock, partially covered by green moss and small red flowers. A species of birds that hunt for small insects using colour vision already live nearby the rock. After many generations the beetles only have three colours – the yellow, orange, purple, cyan, and white beetles are gone. They were, due to their colour, more visible to the birds – and being eaten at a greater rate interfered with their reproductive success. The three colours left were bluish-grey, red and green. Then the flowers died. And the red bee-

tles were eaten at a greater rate. The moss spread, covering the rock – and thus in the end, on this rock, this species of colourful beetles ended up being only green. Was this strategic? No. It was a result of ecological conditions – selection forces. This is evolution. We could have set it up as a breeding experiment, with a predictable outcome. For humans that would be both impractical – as it would take very many generations to see any results - and not least unethical. Also, it would not change the architecture, it would change the organisms. My suggestion is that insights into the results of evolution might be helpful for the development of strategies within architecture – but that it would empty the concept of evolution of meaning to suggest that evolution is an available strategy... it simply would take too long or else only be another word for development.

What is Evolutionary Psychology? Evolutionary biology is interested in how biological systems and organisms in general have evolved. Evolutionary psychology is interested in how the process of evolution and our species survival and reproductive tasks – adaptive problems – in the relevant environment of our ancestors, has shaped our mental mechanisms.

Our mind is a mosaic of partially compartmentalised, partially communicating mental mechanisms. The important mechanisms would likely be evolved adaptations – mental mechanisms that process information according to evolved rules. These mechanisms would have perceived and interpreted our species’ past ecology and calculated behaviours, emotional responses and further cognition based on our ecological cues. Our collection of evolved mental mechanisms makes up our universal and species specific human nature. Evolutionary psychology has investigated several areas of human nature and psychology from an evolutionary perspective. By using all available information about our ancestors past environment – the selection forces that designed them – we may make predictions about how our minds work today. This is because evolution takes long time – and we have not had significant mental changes the last 100 thousand

ARTICLE 2

years, since our species evolved in northeast Africa. Evolutionary psychologists therefore can predict our mental mechanisms, our cognitive adaptations – because what increased out fitness – our reproductive success – in our species past environment are the basic parts of our mind today, too.

Bioaesthetics Within many arts and humanities there has been a surge of evolutionary approaches – from Darwinian Literary Studies to biomusicology. Within these approaches one considers e.g. the origins of music or how to understand typical themes of human literature. Also in many arts and humanities there have been cognitive or constructivist movements that focus on how we perceive and create meaning from diﬀerent kinds of stimulus. It is important to note that from an evolutionary psychology perspective the cognitive mechanisms specified by different psychological approaches will often be evolved mental mechanism. This suggests that they evolved to solve specific problems, perceive specific ecological cues. There are two types of sexual selection – selection that increases reproductive success; often at the cost of mere survival oriented traits. One kind – intrasexual selection – increases the ability to compete against members of one’s own sex for access to several members of the opposite sex – such traits would include size, strength, antlers, ability to fight etc. The other type – intersexual selection – designs traits that the perceptual apparatus of the opposite sex find sexually attractive. Intersexual selection is therefore a theory about selection of traits in one sex, and the perceptual mechanisms in the other sex.

Thus the perception of beauty is due to evolved mechanism. As anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Don Symons pointed out: “Beauty is in the adap-

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tations of the beholder”. But beauty will also be in the fitness that the traits being beheld – and what they convey about the health, condition, genes, age, and general mate value of the individual. Beauty is often not as relative as certain post modern approach would have it. Peacock’s have their impressive tails due to what these feather displays convey about his genetic qualities – the fact that he can survive with this ornate signal of health and good genes makes this an honest signal. But the also the extended phenotype – buildings fashioned be the animal – may convey information and be considered aesthetic. Bowerbirds construct bowers – colourful displays of objects the male has collected, in order to attract a mate.

Peacock

Geoﬀrey Miller suggests that human intelligence and arts evolved through sexual selection. Often as male displays to attract women. Often young males are the most creative. But all bioaestethics need not be due to sexual selection. Steven Pinker suggested that music is considered stimulating due to it stimulating an accidental array of mental mechanisms – including mechanisms evolved to assess ecological features. Orians and Heerwagen considered more survivalist perspectives, pointing out how

our evolved landscape preferences are due to what landscapes where most bountiful for our ancestors.

Mismatched – Urban Ecologies as Intentionally Alienating Stimulus One of the important qualities of the evolutionary process is that it takes time. If there is both available genetic variance and strong directional selection evolution may speed up, but due to a greater portion of chance never be as quick and guided as the breeding of animals. But this is rarely the case: In many cases one might need to wait for a fortuitous mutation. In many cases the selection is not as strong as under artificial selection, breeding. And processes such as genetic drift will limit the directional process of selection. Thus, evolution takes time. For our species it means that only small genetic changes and no fundamental changes have happened in our species the last 100 thousand years.

One of the few genetic adaptive changes the last 100 thousand years has been to make us able to metabolise lactose – making us able to drink milk beyond childhood years. A very recent genetic change – for paler skin - makes it possible for us to live far north with less sun, without suﬀering to much from a lack of Vitamin D. Some theories suggest that we have not yet been able to adapt to the rapid changes of diets – work by Mysterud and Poleszynski suggests that our health and psychology is influenced by modern nutrition and toxins. Some evolutionary psychopathologists explain mental disorders with the mismatch between our modern environment and the past environment. If one should wish to illustrate how cities make individual feel alienated one might use inorganic, evolutionary novel stimulus to achieve this. The important contribution that the evolutionary perspective provides is

an understanding of the fact that one would already have the feeling of alienation due to the already mismatched urban and technological surroundings. Highlighting this might achieve an increased emotional state. But due to individual differences for some individuals such changes might be more intellectually stimulating. In this manner an elite might find the emotional and intellectual stimulation positive – but it would be worth noting the possible affects this might have on the general population. One might therefore attempt to design environments to be matched to the evolved psychologies of humans, or one might even use such knowledge to create effects that most people do not find aesthetic or pleasing. As such knowledge of evolution may inform architects’ strategies.

as threatening, social belonging as positive. Strangers as threatening, colourfulness as beautiful. We also evolved to capacity to wish to play around with our emotions by stimulating ourselves and our surroundings in diﬀerent ways – partly as intellectual games and as part of ideological structures that identified our own status and social belonging. Thus evolutionary insights and research from evolutionary psychology may inform choices to achieve specific eﬀects. But evolution is not the strategy – that would take hundreds of thousands of years. I therefore conclude that some strategies we use will be better understood from an evolution-

Conclusions Evolution is not a process that is similar to a goal directed progressive, intelligent designer’s strategy. There have been evolutionary theories that had such qualities – but not modern evolutionary theory based on the process of natural selection.

This process has the ability to design solutions to ecologically defined problems. But rather than being a strategy – it is the biological basis of our mental, cognitive apparatus that predicts how huLil’ Wayne mans will respond to diﬀerent types of stimulus. Therefore knowledge about our evolved preferences and information processing can be the basis for diﬀerent strategies. Thus our mental mechanisms – in this case our perceptual cognitive apparatus – is a result of our social, primate evolutionary past. We evolved to perceive darkness

ary perspective. Also, one might use knowledge of our evolved psychology to achieve aesthetic or non-aesthetic goals, creating more or less well-being. But this is not evolution as a strategy, but knowledge of evolutions products to pick solutions. The fact that I therefore may not, as the evolutionist contributor to this special

edition, have actually provided what the editors were hoping for, makes me wish to attempt to provide an alternative approach – accepting the call for papers’ content more. Let me therefore make the following suggestion in a postscript:

Postscriptum: Natural Selection as Strategy? Evolution in nature is not a strategy. It is not a process with either a consciousness, or a goal. When considering evolution one ought to decide whether it is merely a synonym for “development”, whether it is a metaphor for some kind of process of development or whether there really

In a number of disciplines one actually utilises “evolution”, i.e. selection, random combination (sexual reproduction) and random mutation, to provide artificially generated constructions and solutions. Such as NASA research into mechanisms that solve problems of mobility in unknown terrain. Rather than preprogramming the Artificial Intelligence, there are a set of preprogrammed learning rules and solutions are evolved to suit the current ecology rather than designed based on fixed prior knowledge. Above I focused mainly on the results of evolution, and how one might utilise knowledge of our mental adaptations to acquire biologically matched experiences of wellbeing and beauty. Or intentionally create a sense of alienation, angst or dissonance. But as the NASA research above, one could imagine a similar project within design and architecture. If one really should adopt an evolutionary – or more specifically, a natural selection approach to architecture one would need to consider a set of rules. 1. An atomistic pool of instructions (archi-genes) that could generate architectural morphs, without being changed. 2. New mutations might appear at a certain rate – thus randomly increasing the variance of archi-genes.

ARTICLE 2

3. A set of instructions for how archigenes may be combined randomly with other archi-genes (archi-sex). 4. Developmental rules for how these archi-genes may generate more complex structures (archi-types). 5. Selection criteria that decide which archi-types may reproduce their archi-genes in the next generation. Developmental rules need to be specified so that the information makes sense, is interpreted, and structures, sizes, colours etc are formed based on the information of the combined archi-genes. A certain understanding of evo-devo interplay is important – the process of building a structure will be influenced by evolutionary processes, but also influence future evolutionary possibilities.

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EVOLUTION IN NATURE IS NOT A STRATEGY. IT IS NOT A PROCESS WITH EITHER A CONSCIOUSNESS, OR A GOAL.

Finally, one needs selection criteria that suggest whether the result works in its environment. This would be breeding if the subjective criteria of a human judge decided what archi-types may reproduce with each other. If possible there ought to be other criteria. Both objective criteria such as structure stability, or more ergonomic criteria – can one actually live in the structure. But subjective criteria might also be used – aesthetic judgements by a panel of possible future clients. What selection criteria to use will ultimately decide what solutions will evolve – be selected. That is why evolution is a predictive science, too. This will therefore also be the most challenging problem for the developer of rules for this creative strategy. Because providing the selection

criteria must not be the same as providing the desired solution. Also, providing selection criteria would suggest that there were some kind of correct or incorrect solutions, a possibility to define solutions as good or bad. Architecture would thus be defined by other criteria than subjective taste, alone. I am aware that this will seem meaningless, reductionistic, and empty to most readers. Note it is merely an example of how the process could be considered – on a par with Richard Dawkins suggestion of memes being the basic replicated pieces of ideas that make up culture, or e.g. language. Neither he nor I mean to convey anything more than this: Selection is a basic process, it might work with other information than genes, please consider this example as an ex-

ercise. But I am also sure that some readers will find this intellectually stimulating and may be able to do something creative with it. This is an intellectual, logical and engineering challenge. It would certainly teach students and seasoned architects a lot about architecture: the creative process, constraints, and both the atomistic, reducible pieces of architecture as well as the seemingly irreducible complexity of the finished structure. Actually, whether it is feasible will suggest whether natural selection is a viable strategy for architecture.

Further reading Evolutionary Theory Dawkins, R. (1976/1989). The selfish gene (New ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Dawkins, R. (1982). The extended phenotype. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Ridley, M. (2004). Evolution. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Evolutionary Psychology Buss, D.M. (2004). Evolutionary psychology : the new science of the mind. Boston: Pearson. Buss, D.M. (Ed.). (2005). The Handbook of evolutionary psychology. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Kennair, L.E.O. (2002). Evolutionary psychology: An emerging integrative perspective within the science and practice of psychology. Human Nature Review, 2, 17-61. http:// www.human-nature.com/nibbs/02/ep.html Kennair, L.E.O. (2004). Evolusjonspsykologi – en innføring i menneskets natur. Trondheim: Tapir Akademisk Forlag. (Danish translation Copenhagen, Akademisk Forlag, 2005) Sexual selection Miller, G. (2001). The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature. London: Vintage.

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MORE SUMMERHOUSES = LESS DENMARK ?

FOR ALL

Though summerhouses are a genuine part of the Danish landscape, their proliferation is today perceived as a threat to the landscape. Eroding open nature with dead end streets, fences and residual gardens, summerhouse areas slowly consume the Danish landscape, transforming it into a sterile sprawl of cabins. In this situation more summerhouses means less Denmark.

If in the past summerhouses were privileges reserved for the wealthy few, then why at the economic climax of social democracy are they not an aďŹ&#x20AC;ordable luxury to the many? With a generous territory along the coast and one of the highest average incomes in the EU, having a summerhouse in Denmark remains a privilege for only 16% of families. Why?

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Tradional summerhouse areas have square plots. Only few have view on nature. Neighbors all around. # "

My own private Denmarkâ&#x201E;˘ proposes long plots to guarantee a fully private view. A suggestion of being alone in endless nature. And only two neighbors.

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Current state

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Fear Sprawl

RESEARCH

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Yet the results so far are troubling. To hold this increasing pressure on the land, past governments have implemented a series of strong and even discriminative limitations, seen within the current process of integration in the European Union. Regulations for summerhouses include a limitations in the allowed time to use it (not more than x months and/ or y weekends a year), a prohibition to use it as a first residence (except for pensionados who

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www.powerhouse-company.com

Regulating mediocrity

Powerhouse Company was founded in 2005 by architects Charles Bessard (1970, France) and Nanne de Ru (1976, The Netherlands). The office is specialized in architecture, urban design and urban research and is working on projects in The Netherlands, Denmark, France, Russia and Thailand. It is based in Rotterdam and Copenhagen.

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CHARLES BESSARD & NANNE DE RU

The phenomenal development of summerhouses during the second half of the twentieth century in Denmark is intimately linked to the development of individual transport. The constant increase in car ownership since the seventies and the recent construction of the StorrebĂŚlt bridge and the Ă&#x2DC;resund bridge that link all Danish Islands together (as well as Denmark and Sweden) has increased dramatically the accessibility of the whole Danish territory. It is possible to cross Denmark East to West or North to South in about three hours, which is considered an acceptable distance to drive occasionally for a weekend break. An hour and a half drive is a comfortable drive for a â&#x20AC;&#x153;every weekend houseâ&#x20AC;? and it is said that no cities in Denmark are further than 50kms from the coast. Baring this in mind and the general fact that the coast is the Danesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; favourite destination one can easily understand how high the presure is on the open landscapes around the coasts. The risk of a rapid sprawl of summerhouses over the territory are evident and likewise the necessity of the authorities to regulate the development of these recreational areas.

In the last decades, Denmark has witnessed a phenomenal rise in the amount of summerhouses build around the coasts and natural areas. Once primitive retreats intimately linked to nature, these houses have now become mini-mansions filled with all modern day conveniences such as hot-tubs, bulthaup kitchens and home-cinemas. New summerhouse developments fail to address the crucial link to the Danish landscape and the new emerging living qualities. In attempt to overcome this situation, we have analysed the current paradox of Danish summerhouse areas and proposed an alternative model.

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Neighbours all around = less privacy

Gardens with no views

No more natural landscape

Excerpt from the project booklet.

have owned their summerhouse for more than fifteen years), high taxes that prevents to use summerhouses as a speculative asset, a limitation in the size (max 110m2) and very tight building code. One of the direct results of these regulations is an appalling uniformity of houses and a proliferation of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;dumbâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; catalogue houses that result in a decrease in architectonic and landscape qualities. Protectionist coast

At the same time, Danes really keep the

houses and speculating along the Mediterranean or Atlantic coast without any legal limitations. This protectionist and debatable measure points at one of the deepest changes in the current European landscape: the increasing pressure of leisure and tourism on particularly beautifully landscaped regions. One can find numbers of striking examples where the most attractive areas for leisure and tourism in Europe have been the subject of an accelerated urbanization and real estate speculations. As a direct result of the opening of the frontiers and the real estate markets in the past decades, many sleepy towns have boomed into tourists resorts, raising prices locally to unprecedented levels. This trend has far reaching consequences on the local life, the social structure and the economical sustainability of these areas. For example the sky rocketing prices in the valley of Chamonix Mont Blanc is gradually vacuuming the city of its local residents and exclude the younger generations who cannot aďŹ&#x20AC;ord a house anymore rapidly transforming what use to be a regional centre with a specific local life and culture into a seasonal resort losing identity and diversity.

Danish coast to themselves. One of the most controversial regulations on Danish summerhouse development is the prohibition for foreigners to buy a summerhouse in Denmark. Despite Shengen and EU agreements a non-Dane cannot buy a summerhouse unless he has lived for a minimum period of 4 years in Denmark. This is a rather polemical position within the framework of the European union since Scandinavians, living in the coldest region Europe, are since long massively acquiring

Denmark with its low density and its 7000kms of coast represents an Eldorado for numbers of large continental European countries with a very limited access to the sea such as Germany. If such trends has motivated the strong Danish protectionist attitude they do not justify the scarcity with which new summerhouses development are allowed within the domestic market. The reluctance of the authorities towards summerhouses is in fact motivated by another fear, namely the fear of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sprawlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Since summerhouses are assimilated to single family houses, they are therefore suspected as potential vector for the development of Sprawl though they radically diďŹ&#x20AC;er in their use and location. For a country like Denmark with a strong social-democratic tradition and an homogenous and cohesive society, Sprawl represents the negative image of an individualised and atomised society opposed to its traditional political values. However, opposed to single family houses in the periph-

Summerhouses around cul-de-sacs, location. The long plot allows for views quality public space. Where once was Danish nature or country-side, deadend streets service little groups of fenced summerhouses. The problem of

own garden and nature. Continuous zones of intense Danish nature are overlaid on the long plots. These natures

CURRENT SITUATION: NO VIEW, NO QUALITY, NO NATURE, NO PUBLIC SPACE

RESEARCH

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NO! MORE SUMMERHOUSES = MORE DENMARK!

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The Powerhouse Company proposes to reverse the current downward spiral and create a development model where more summerhouses mean more landscape, more nature and more views. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Denmark for allâ&#x20AC;? is a strategy based on a radical change in the geometry of the average plot for summerhouses. Is this possible? Yes, and we believe it is actually simpler than one might think.

local characteristics. In combination with its open architecture, a plot of My own

construction method, with a light-weight wooden structure, one typology allows for a maximum diversity of architecture within a clear frame. By using patios, overhangs and roof terraces, the houses blend into the spectacular gardens. Rooms can be customized to meet

retreat from hectic everyday life. My own owner to create its own small paradise.

els: from an aesthetic and landscaping perspective, and second from an environmental point of view. In terms of landscaping, the existing form of summerhouse areas tends to develop poor landscape quality replacing open land with kilometres of fences directly issued from the local DIY shop (Do It Yourself ), square kilometres of trimmed turf instead of a diversified landscape, gardens resembling more residual depository for all sorts of garden paving, mini fountains, dwarfs and light concrete sculptures then nature areas. Basically developments that result in a consumption of the collective landscape in order to satisfy individual and private interests. As a consequence, from an environmental point of view, the summerhouse areas are endangering biodiversity, let alone the impact of the infrastructure and energy consumption needed. At the same time, we have realized that all of these issues are design issues that require a new and appropriate approach, that addresses both the individual desire of a rural retreat as well as the importance of a collective landscape.

Power to the house!

# % !" This is how we do it: More views: the plots are stretched into long strips that oďŹ&#x20AC;er a real perspective onto nature. Here 100% of the plots have a direct view onto the landscape. Less waste: the narrowed width of the plots allows for an increase in the number of addresses on each street, thereby considerably reducing the area needed for roads. >>>

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Only first row houses We propose to instigate a new building code which split each plot in three zones. At the extremities of the plots a defined zone of minimum 15m deep is to be left uncultivated and wild. No fences are allowed along this zone creating a continuous landscape stripe along the access roads and paths. It creates more privacy by creating a buďŹ&#x20AC;er zone between the circulation accesses. Both ends of the plots are used for accesses, one for car access and the other exclusively for bike and pedestrian accesses. But in both cases the traditional alignment of prefabricated fences flanking the public accesses are replaced by a wild and lush stripe of vegetation where one can retrieve again the pleasure of a stroll and an immediate access to nature. Every house benefits of two opposite views on this continuous landscape stripe and benefit of the same advantages as theâ&#x20AC;&#x153;first rowâ&#x20AC;? houses: a long distance view and direct access to the landscape. The next twenty meters section on the plots is dedicated to the pleasure of gardening. In this section fences only vegetal fences are allowed. Shielded from the public space by the wild stripe, the garden stripe becomes more intimate and allows to each owner to realised is own Arcadia. The central section of the plot is the only part where it is allowed to build forming a continuous urbanised stripe increasing density locally and reducing infrastructure such as cabling and ducting and reducing wind speed and cooling through convection.

>>> More intimacy: Each house has only two

direct neighbours enhancing the feeling of privacy as well as eliminating the need for fencing the plot along the entire perimeter. More nature: Though wild and unused landscape requires minimal maintenance it remains a heavy financial burden for rural municipalities. Therefore in our model, each plot is crossed at its tips by a stripe of wild nature. It is a share of the landscape that in retribution must be conserved and maintained by the owners.

More nature The wild stripe will the subject of tigher regulation regarding fauna and flora. According to the specificity of each region and landscape a local code for plants and trees will be implemented. Within this zone one can only plant the vegetation specified by the commune. It will ensure the preservation and the development of the local natural identity as well as create a monolithic and continuous stripe of wilderness. The continuity of wild landscape as opposed to its fragmentation is essential for the development of biodiversity for both flora and fauna. The separation between car access and pedestrian and bicycle traďŹ&#x192;c generates a quiet and safe zone much more favourable for redevelopment of the fauna. This strategy do not only create more landscape but it is only more economically sustainable. Where intensive monoculture depleted biodiversity and polluted with fertilizers the wild stripe recreates continuous stripe of â&#x20AC;&#x153;natural parksâ&#x20AC;?. Though wild and natural landscape requires minimal maintenance it remains a heavy financial burden for rural municipalities. In this proposal the wild zone is conceived a share of the landscape that in retribution to the occupation of the land must be planted, conserved and maintained by the owners. In practice this will mean a shared maintenance program through the home-owner association. In this way the owners become contributors to the expansion of the regional landscape. By placing public paths in the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;wild zoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, its diversity and wild life is oďŹ&#x20AC;ered to the gaze of the public. It recreates a synergy between private and public interests.

es long plots to guarantee a fully private view. ss nature. And only two neighbors.

fences are limited in height at 1.8m. In the stripe configuration the small spaces between the house and the lateral fence can be integrated in the architecture as private pockets, terraces protected from the wind, patios or winter gardens. To fully trigger this possibility the height limit of the fence along the house is raised to 2.2m ensuring a better privacy along the house and allowing for maximum appropriation. The plot pattern over the site are designed an adapted radial configuration which utterly reduces â&#x20AC;&#x153;bad triangularâ&#x20AC;? plots to its minimum. Narrower plots create more addresses and entrances along the street which allows to significantly reduce the need for road and infrastructure.

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Project description

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Excerpt from the project booklet.

ery of cities, summerhouses do not intend to replace the city, they are not a new form of urban growth. Instead they can better be understood as a qualitative complement to Danish compact cities. One could argue that they even have a positive social role as they are often use as opportunity to invite family friends for a weekend, families also often loan, share or exchange their summerhouse for a holiday. As opposed to the suburban single family houses, summerhouses

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are located at a great distance from cities. They also have a positive economical impact on certain rural regions which otherwise are being gradually deserted due to the continuous increase in farm sizes as well as the ongoing process of urbanisation. Dwarfs and turf

If summerhouse areas are to be compared to urban sprawl, and therefore critiqued for its lack of quality, it can be done on two lev-

Question In 2006 Realdania, launched an open competition to investigate new forms of summerhouse developments. This competition was organised as a preliminary study on several agricultural sites which were to be converted as summerhouse area. The brief emphasised the question of the diversity of architectonic qualities as response to the current uniformity. When we entered the competition and researched summerhouses urbanism we realised that the issue was perhaps less about the architectonic qualities than about the issue of the transformation of the Danish landscape. For us, the question was how to create summerhouse areas in such a way that they do not consume the landscape but, to the opposite, generate and develop a qualitative landscape both from an environmental, an aesthetical and a social point of view? Observing Marienlyst To address this question we choose possibly the most diďŹ&#x192;cult site located in Marienlyst. It was a desperate site in the sense that it was of a very large size and therefore posed immediately the question of diversity: it was an open field with a monoculture and no existing landscape quality and it coastal edge which is the most attractive location for summerhouses. In many aspect it was a non-site a sort of agricultural tabula rasa and therefore was asking for fundamentally new approach. Where those poor qualities could be seen as diďŹ&#x192;culties we actually approached them as very interesting premises for a transformation. In this particular case the development of summerhouse areas could have the following positive impact: - create an attractive summerhouse area away from the coast and therefore allowing for coastal conservation - replacing the monotony of the recent extensive farming with the redevelopment of vegetal diversity - replace social desertification with inhabitation - and most of all create a landscape that could foster biodiversity rather than deplete it. While researching existing summerhouse areas we made three observations: The first one was that at the first gaze the market for summerhouse

Urban plan

Excerpt from the project booklet. didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look very dynamic but did reveal extreme and interesting contrasts in price. While coastal location, the proximity of the sea and the beach are essential assets in the value of a summerhouse it is amazing to see prices diďŹ&#x20AC;erences in the first hundred meters from the shore. A house on the first row with a view to the water costs approximately four times the price of a house on the second row only few decade of meters further from the sea but with no view. This fact reveals that view is crucial qualitative parameter for a summerhouse. The second observation was also related to the view but this time to the neighbours. Where there was no neighbour there was no fences. Within the classic plot division the fences transform the space between the house and the edge of the property into small scale and residual areas with no qualities and which are therefore used as dumping areas for unused garden furniture and building materials, camping vans and other undesirable objects for the view and the neighbours triggering further fencing. The last observation was the total absence of a qualitative public space. A summerhouse development basically exists out of roads and plots, and since most plots are fenced, due to the lack of view, its public space is a fenced road. Indeed a very poor environmental and landscape quality that excludes the summerhouse from what is

the most precious for it: large scale natural landscape. Instead, this experience is reduced to the few hundred square meters of a fenced private garden. Springing from those three observations we proposed a radical reconfiguration of the plots based on three strategies: one for enhancing privacy and intimacy, one for enhancing views and public space qualities and one for the development of nature and biodiversity. More intimacy and less waste The traditional squarish plot of approximately 30x40m with the house placed in the middle is replaced by a long and narrow plot of 120x10m. This configuration reduces the number of immediate neighbours from three to two and opens two long distance views on the garden. The enlarged distance from the edge of the garden to the house creates more privacy and suppresses the necessity of visual fencing in the two longitudinal directions. The spaces between the house in the other direction are reduced in area and in depth. In the traditional 40x30m rectangle distance from edge to house are very homogenous and average creating neither contrast nor particular qualities. They are two small to create a sense of perspective and view and too big to create an intimate space secluded from views and

New standard house Within this framework the traditional standardised summerhouse must be reconsidered. The thinner and elongated house plan allows for better use of natural lighting and sun exposure and thus independently of the orientation of the site. This new configuration will break the straightjacket of the traditional cabin typology and will challenge the use of traditional materials reopenning the possibility to use the full array of contemporary materials and innovative architecture. The houses will be less exposed and allow for less conservative architectural rules, more creativity and more diversity without jeopardising the unity of the landscape. In any case the houses should be designed as no emission and sustainable architectures and if possible â&#x20AC;&#x153;oďŹ&#x20AC; the gridâ&#x20AC;?. To test the architectural potential of the plan we designed series of summerhouses prototype that could apply. To each according to his needs The moral as well as the environmental sustainability of summerhouse cannot be discussed independently of their location. The potential for a qualitative development highly depends on the existing conditions of the sites. Implementing summerhouses in existing natural and protected zones will never be a valid option especially within the current trends for more summerhouses. But this proposal suggest that with a new approach to planning and design and appropriated designated locations summerhouses could become a positive re-colonisation and improvement of large areas devastated by the expansion of extensive and subsidised argriculture. Exploiting the pro-pensionist laws this proposal could on the long run repopulate certain areas of the country currently being deserted and sustain a local economic development while creating more identity and more diversity. And perhaps could we not imagine it as an interesting alternative to single family housing areas, with families living in the city during the week and taking advantage of its services and social life while enjoying and supporting nature during the weekend?

SOME THOUGHTS ON ARCHITECTURAL EVOLUTION Architecture is the most public of all art forms and as such it has a responsibility to make manifest its contemporary cultural context through its relationship to its physical site and also through its representation of histories. In addition it has a responsibility to allow for and to generate possible futures.

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MATTHEW BUTCHER & MEGAN O’SHEA

Graduating from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, in 2004 Matthew Butcher is currently running his own practice Post Works based in London. His work has been widely published and exhibited. Butcher currently teaches at The School of Architecture, Nottingham University and on the Diploma Course at the Bartlett School on unit 12 with Jonathan hill and Elizabeth Dow. www.post-works.com

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Megan O’Shea has worked in the contemporary art world for the last seven years. She started her career at frieze magazine and subsequently worked for the inaugural Frieze Art Fair. Currently she works at Greengrassi Gallery in London. She has previously had written work published in Untitled magazine.

The evolution of architectural discourse is ongoing and its projection forwards must necessarily involve a certain referencing of its past, not as a justification of conservative typologies but rather as a tool to create contemporary architectural languages. Even the most radical of architectural forms are necessarily attached to their roots. In his most recent essay, The Radicant, Nicolas Bourriaud refigures Giles Deleuze’s concept of the rhizomatic. He writes about ivy and other creepers, which carry their roots above ground so that their past is always visible and present. These creepers move forwards from diﬀerent enrooted positions. Evolution within architectural practice should similarly be a circular movement of evaluation and change rather than an imposition of the new. An evolving architecture should work against any desire for stylistic hegemony by adopting a fluid approach to interpretations of history. It should resist the desire to become defined and didactic. In The Parametricist Manifesto, presented at the Venice Biennale in 2008, Patrick Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects declared parametric design to be ‘the great new style after modernism’. His statement sought to reinstate a linear trajectory of history, subverting postmodern discourse and the ensuing climate of multiplicity within architectural practice and urbanism. The historic desire of architecture

“ Model for a Monument: The Anarcho-Syndacalist Town Hall

to define its epoch by inserting itself through brute force in the present and further proclaiming itself as the future was resurfaced. The future suggested by Schumacher is purely parametric and his utopian vision risks divorcing architecture from the continuous narrative of its history and, through doing so, making it ever more impenetrable for its occupiers. His vision of the future seemingly denies the importance of a continuing, Foucauldian reassessment of the histories of the past and the consequent generation of multiple presents. Rather than imposing a

TOTHE FUTURE SUGGESTED BY SCHUMACHER IS PURELY PARAMETRIC AND HIS UTOPIAN VISION RISKS DIVORCING ARCHITECTURE FROM THE CONTINUOUS NARRATIVE OF ITS HISTORY AND, THROUGH DOING SO, MAKING IT EVER MORE IMPENETRABLE FOR ITS OCCUPIERS.

future, we would argue for a rethinking of the linearity of time so that there is no obvious projection towards an illusory time to come, which is then allowed to shape the present. In conjunction with the computer-generated eﬀects of parametric design we should ensure a continued connection with the actuality of the real. As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in The Gay Science: ‘We want to have us translated in to stone and plants; we want to take walks in us when we stroll through these hallways and gardens.’ Running parallel to the modernist dic-

ARTICLE 3

cessible the meaning of its forms and spaces. The installation of Matthew Butcher’s recent pavilion, Model for a Monument: The Anarcho-Syndicalist Town Hall, in Russell Square created a frame for a section of the real world. This framing was an interruption in the apparently seamless fabric of the real, which caused the pavilion’s temporary occupiers to reassess their own position in the everyday. Its open structure denied it a full presence and in both form and concept it seemed a remnant of past experimental architectures created and discussed in Bloomsbury. A new architecture generated through reference should diminish the role of the

Model for a Monument: The Anarcho-Syndacalist Town Hall, Concept drawing

tates of parametricism is the revision of the much-maligned postmodern style. Architectural practices including Fashion Architecture Taste Ltd and AOC are making ironic reference to their origins and roots through their architectural forms. Paramount to the postmodern project was an interpretative attitude to history that countered the acceptance of modernism as the conclusion of an evolutionary process and its attempt to create a certain future through the definition of a singular pure architectural style. Postmodernism attempted to eradicate the modernist legacy of conceptual hegemony and strict stylistic parameters. It promoted a multiplicity of formal and spatial ideologies and the styles of history were raided at the whim of the individual in the development of new architectures. Postmodernism may have preached multiplicity but the reality of post modernity is narrowed through the defining pressure

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of the global market economy. To counter this, local histories, narratives and vernaculars should be revisited and architecture should remain open both conceptually and formally. The public position of architecture means that it must allow its occupiers space for their own interpretation of their histories through being referential without becoming dictatorial. Nietzsche wrote that ‘Architecture for those who wish to pursue knowledge’ would involve ‘a whole complex of buildings and sites that would give expression to the sublimity of contemplation and of stepping aside’ . His sentiment echoes through the stated commitment of AOC to explore and enrich the relationship between people and ‘the complex, messy world that surrounds them’ . Architecture should not be partisan but should rather enable its occupiers to think their own thoughts within it. Architecture must open itself up to multiple interpretations in order to make ac-

architect and open itself up to the occupier, but the architect should not become obsolete nor should the occupier be revered. Exploring authorship through the use of quotation results in architecture that is not the vision of a single individual and the signature architect controlled by capitalism is abolished. Architecture should exploit further the concept of gaps and rifts that arose with postmodernism and should resist categorisation in order to further enable, within its forms and spaces, the imagination and subjectivity of the occupier. These gaps should not become unbridgeable gulfs, however, and insisting on the importance of a space for the occupier should not result in a kind of cultural vacuity. Similarly architecture should not become too self-referential. Referencing the past should open it up rather than narrowing it and should generate myriad potential pathways towards an uncertain future.

GROWING INFRASTRUCTURE OLE MØYSTAD AND HETTIE PISTERS

Ole Møystad is architect

Hettie Pisters is land-

MNAL, professor II at NTNU and partner in STUDIO hp AS. He writes and lectures in several places. www.metamorfose.ntnu.no, folk.ntnu.no/brandvol/ metamorfose/

scape architect, partner in STUDIO hp AS and professor at MLA programme of The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) www.studiohp.as

in front of us. Biology does not - since early renaissance - have any ambition of changing, or improving life as such; like for instance to lay out a plan whereby life would unfold in more accordance with the declaration of human rights. Modern biotechnology, which sometimes is accused of trying to do exactly that - improve life - is in fact intervening only piecemeal and locally. No wonder then that in our struggle to understand our architectural environments, we seem to be returning to the architecture of nature/landscape in our search for explanations and for possible windows for action and intervention. OIKO- LOGICA

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In Xénophôn’s text Oikonomikos, Socrates is seen turning from studying abstract ideas towards a fascination for things of practical use to human beings. In his text Socrates discusses the practices of household management (oikonomia) and land management as being particularly important skills (tekhnè). He describes these skills as being a viable metaphor for state management. The derivate Oikologos is another type of practical “household knowledge” whose object is the relationship between organisms and objects on one hand and their environment on the other. The term ‘ecology’ as we know it was coined in 1866. ASSUMPTION

Planning used to be a prospective activity: Think (plan) first, then act (build). This order has for years been failing to produce the intended results, and, worse, planners have failed to realise that the conditions of their discipline have changed.

Nature has long since been recognized as not behaving according to a grand plan. Not since the planners of the Soviet

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Avant Garde planned to change the direction of the Russian rivers, have planners even thought of interacting with nature in any oth er way than piecemeal and step by step, from down up. This has been demonstrated to us by the natural sciences; by the “hard sciences”, by the guys who really know. Biology is retrospective in the sense that it studies life as it is already there; unfolding

Both oikonomos and oikologos have always been significant subjects of study in the discipline of landscape architecture. Land management, especially the reallocation of farmland (to avoid fragmentation) and the practice of changing land-use patterns in areas endangered by flood erosion for example, also depends on “household knowledge”. Firmly based on common sense, household knowl-

edge has historically often led to important political, social and economic reforms. Swapping patches of farmland can be seen to have another oiko-logic too; one which relies on the knowledge of how infrastructure and land relate to each other in the dynamic living system we call ‘landscape‘. Today the focus of the landscape architect has shifted from reorganising farmland and managing field operations towards designing a more eﬃcient use for each patch of landscape. The landscape architect now works to crossbreed agriculture, architecture, nature and infrastructure, to put these diﬀerent disciplines to work in one flexible project. The process from swapping patches to actually creating land(scape) has become more and more complex. The area of cultivated land has increased, while the oikological problems related to landscape - such as the redistribution of surface water - are today so complex that they sometimes seem impossible to solve outside the confines of academia. The “City”

The biologist Ilya Prigogine once said “We must try to understand nature in such a way that it is not precluded that we (man) are part of it.” Likewise it seems that we should understand landscape in such a way that it is not precluded that the city is part of it.

The problem is that the city has grown so complex that our concept of it seems to have become inadequate to the reality of it. The city is becoming “city”. Grappling with the increasingly ambiguous distinctions between urban and rural; between city, suburb and countryside, the urbanism discourse not surprisingly embraced ‘landscape’ - in the sense of cultivated nature - as a useful conceptual frame in which to capture this complexity. ‘Landscape’ or ‘urban landscape’ were more and more frequently seen to replace ‘the city’ as concepts of reference in texts that tried to analyse, describe and reflect on this new nature of the urban environment. New? Let us go back a few years. The Vézère valley in Dordogne, France, is a good example of how landscape works as an agent of change or as an overall space of reference

depend on a well functioning communication system with the other villages along the river, and due to the verticality of their territory the villagers could always escape either up to the plane on top of the cliﬀs or down to the plane below it. Each settlement formed a vertical connection between the valley floor and the plains and forests on top. This landscape urbanism project avant la lettre illustrates how successful human settlements developed over a long period of time by introducing economic networks with the help of landscape-based communication and infrastructure systems. The Vézère valley is a 40 000 years old demonstration of Manuel Gausa’s claim that communication and transportation infrastructures emerge as the most evident lines of the urban territorial system. LANDSCAPE

within which infrastructure, communication systems, and (architectural) objects interact in an urban, or con-urban structure. In fact the Cro- Magnon man was a resident of this conurbation some 40 000 years ago. In the cliffs lining the Vézère river were clusters of cave dwellings. The caves were partly natural, partly cut out in the soft yellow sandstone rocks towering high above the floor of the valley. The river formed a system of transportation connecting the different settlements as well as providing irrigation, fish and fresh drinking water. In addition to this piece of infrastructure, the settlements were also connected by a communication system. At intervals throughout the length of the valley a system of caves high up in the cliffs were fitted with cairns, or beacons, by means of which signals could be sent to warn the next cluster of incoming enemy or game. This urban system was successful; it evolved over time and by the Middle Ages several of the caves had become villages. These villages were self sufficient with regard to infrastructure; they contained everything from a drainage infrastructure, provisions, storage supply used during military attacks, and there was room for cultural activities. For both food and military activities each cave-village could

Infrastructure used to follow in the footsteps of urbanization. When the traﬃc between village A and village B outgrew the muddy trail between them, a road was built to meet the need for safe and eﬃcient movement. In Val de Vézère, urbanization followed infrastructure (the river). Today again, within the urbanism discourse, we see infrastructure described as rather propelling urbanization, directing and shaping it.

In “The generic City”, Rem Koolhaas refers to infrastructure as a strategic means to

“

LANDSCAPE CANNOT BE BUILT. ONE DOES NOT PLANT A FOREST, BUT ONE PLANTS ONE TREE AT A TIME. SOMETIMES ONE DOES PLANT A LOT OF TREES IN ONE GO, BUT ‘A FOREST’ CANNOT BE PLANTED.

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enhance the development of a region and attract investment, rather than the answer to a practical need. Landscape is not something which is built. Landscape is the eﬀect of an urbanization of nature, the construction of a new geography. And how is that built? Piecemeal, because it grows. And usually the first piece is a piece of infrastructure; a road, a railroad, an airport, a fibreglass cable network or a system of GSM transmitters. Traditionally, the city was conceived as an artefact. It was construed and considered as a large work of architecture, or rather - on object of architecture. Not until the 1920’s was this understanding questioned. After the Russian revolution the Soviet Avant Garde set out to turn architecture into the mould of the new socialist citizen. Architecture was construed as a dynamic and event-based political power structure. In order to build a socialist state, free from capitalist structures such as the historical bourgeois city and free from old antagonisms between city and countryside, the Soviet avant garde boldly questioned not only the form and structure of the city, but the city as such. They claimed that neither the state nor the city could be taken for granted. Two groups formed: the ‘urbanists’ who argued in favour of reinventing city, turning it into a socialist collective and the ‘de-urbanists’ who simply wanted to abolish the city altogether. They adopted the idea of architecture as a dynamic, cognitive agent in the struggle to develop a new social awareness as well as the physical and spatial framework for developing the new socialist man and his society. Just as household and land management became metaphors for the just rule of state for Socrates in Xenophon’s text, the concept of landscape became the metaphor for anticapitalism and for the de- urbanists. They studied how landscape and land-use could be reorganised through the redistribution of power (energy), public facilities, transportation etc. through grids of infrastructure. These eﬀorts were generally considered as totally out of touch with the reality of their time; and rightly so. Now, however, almost a century later, these proposals are re-emerging

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as central topics in contemporary urbanism: the edgeless city meets the edgeless landscape, the deconstruction of the city by means of a new system of infrastructure, settlement and nature emerged in each other, the construction piece by piece of a new geography: landscape. REFLECTION AND PROJECTION:

The shift of perspective from city to landscape may seem obvious, but the significance of its implications is radical.

Landscape cannot be built. One does not plant a forest, but one plants one tree at a time. Sometimes one does plant a lot of trees in one go, but ‘a forest’ cannot be planted. The Kamchatka Palm was introduced as a seed, and created a change of the vegetation in North Norway. Around the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin there grew a biotope of Siberian vegetation due to seeds carried as dust by the cargo trains between Siberia and GDR. Haute cuisine is not something to be

cooked - or roasted - one does not cook a kitchen, or “a meal”. One cooks rice, grills a fish and prepares the vegetables. And if the cooking is really good, it may, as a consequence, become haute cuisine. The same is true for cities and other territories. One house tends to trigger the construction of the next, but one street does not usually trigger the next street. Within a network however, one needs to open new territories, or to restructure old territories by establishing new connections. Sometimes these connections cannot be based on the programs or the economies of the territories they are supposed to link - simply because the conditions or the economies are not there; that is what the new link is supposed to remedy. Therefore the new link may need to be autonomous, it may need to carry its own conditions with it, to have its own economy and hence its own capacity to realize itself, embedded in it. That is where landscape and real estate meet. Landscape has the capacity to provide new criteria of development, and real estate has the capacity to act on these criteria. In this setting planning as we used to know it, is a retrospective activity, an à posteriori mapping, analysis, assessment of landscape; and as such laying the grounds for a productive critique. The case of Val de Vézère gave us the basic elements of an urban landscape: the landscape (the valley, the cliﬀ, the river), architecture (cave, shelter, settlement) and infrastructure (harbour, cairn, canoe). The relationship between architecture, landscape and infrastructure is therefore that we interact with architecture, we build infrastructure and landscape is the frame by which to understand it: the field. The basic property of a field is that every point in the field contains all the properties of the entire field, a bit like a DNA profile. The application of the field concept to the (urban) landscape implies two things: 1 There is no centre-periphery, only variations of density. 2 Every point in an environment must basically contain all the properties of the whole territory which forms it.

VERTICAL LANDSCAPE URBANISM

One of the properties of the urban landscape is verticality. This property is present in the Vézère valley. The configuration of cliﬀ, water and cave/tunnel, is also typical of any fjord landscape in Norway.

Large parts of the Norwegian coastline is inhabited according to the same algorithm: the juxtaposition of cliff (communication node), cave (settlement) and waterfront (transportation system). In the small town of Holmestrand at the Oslo Fjord, the urban context of the cliff is such that it creates a rupture between the urban centre at its foot and the suburban population at the top of the cliff. In a study of the cliff as vertical landscape the goal was to establish a piece of infrastructure based on a real estate approach, drawing on the cliff ’s potential as urban landscape. Program

The prime function of the project is to bridge the rupture formed by the vertical landscape. Technically this will be done by means of an elevator. The concept is to compose a program of development by which the cliﬀ is turned from obstacle to opportunity; using the elevator shaft as an infrastructural spine.

The rock itself will be conceived as part of the structure. This will allow a piecemeal development. It is possible to build the top floors first, then the bottom floors, and maybe later the middle floors - if the space is needed. This constructed geography will be programmed with culture- and leisure facilities together with public services, and lining the edge of the cliff a belt of high end housing. The top half of the elevator, rising outside the cliff, will then form part of a building structure starting from level +40.0 rising to +90.0. This structure will contain high end offices spaces, conference facilities, apartments and a restaurant on the top floor. At the foot of the cliff there will be a horizontal 3 storey building providing parking and office facilities as well as space for the administration of the municipality. Around the lower half of the eleva-

tor spine, the proposal shows possibilities for drilling horisontal shafts, branching off from the main elevator shaft. These “caves” can serve as pavillions, or spaces, for various cultural facilities, conference spaces, cinema halls etc inside the rock, as well as production such as storage of cheese and cognac, or the cultivation of champignons. The green area between the cliff and the coastline should be upgraded as a culture park serving the local culture festival etc. In front of the hotel and its planned extension there is a planned yacht harbour, serving visitors to the various facilities as well as providing private yacht parking for the residents of the cliff.

in developing this vertical landscape as a part of Holmestrand’s urban extension. In 2008 the City of Holmestrand commissioned a new study how to program and develop a section of the cliﬀ wall in connection with the new railroad station below and a kiss and ride facility on top of the cliﬀ. At this point STUDIOhp AS invited their partners L.E.FT Architects as part of the research team. www.studiohp.as www.leftish.net

Oslo, april 27th 2009

Final remarks

The cross breed between landscape urbanism and real estate seems to be a viable answer to the deficiencies of traditional planning. By conceiving interventions that have programmatic, functional and economic autonomy, it is possible to strategically redirect an evolutionary process. The strategy is known from marked driven real estate development of private property where it has proven a tough challenge to public planning authorities.

In a world in which public authorities are deregulated and under-budgeted, where demographic, political and economical stability is yielding to accelerating processes of change, it might simply be our best option to apply the same old household logics to the development of public infrastructure. We may need directing lines for the construction of future geographies which can withstand the challenges of a rogue marked. Then these lines, these infrastructures may need to have their own criteria embedded in them like DNA in a seed. Holmestrand: Vertical Landscape Urbanism is a project initiated in 1999 as an R&D project by STUDIOhp AS in collaboration with the Municipality of Holmestrand and the Research Council of Norway. The first phase of the project dealt with investigating technical solutions for structures hanging on a cliﬀ. The second phase was looking at how to apply new techniques

Footnotes 1 By Ernst Heinrich Haekel according to the Oxford Dictionary of Ecology, 1994. It is interesting to note here that the term oekologi, was coined one year earlier than the second Exposition Universelle of 1867 in Paris. Here objects were displayed in their contexts. This gave the object meaning which would not have happened if the objects were shown as artefacts alone. Also important in this 2nd universal exposition was the encyclopaedic organisation of the exhibition . Way-finding systems, interconnections and corridors, and an interest in ecological influences were seen as important issues in exposition matters also. 2 Elaborated in: Møystad, O., “Urbain par Implication”. In: Morphodynamiques de la ville., Isabel Marcos ed., 2006, L’ Harmattan, Paris. Pp. 163 ﬀ.

“Field” was coined as a scientific term by the British physisist Michael Faraday when he discovered the magnetic field. To Faraday ‘field’ seemed a perfect metaphor – taken from the rural landscape- for what he had observed between the two magnetic poles. The metaphor has proven so productive that it has spread beyond physics and entered a rising number of other - fields - such as for instance architecture and landscape architecture. In Møystad 1994 and 1996 the Field of Architecture is elaborated and discussed extensively. 3

S hel ter for One S tone / One Tr ee Two Peopl e / and Four Bir ds Work in progress / Kalle Grude 2007- / Steel tubes, KeeKlamp joints, Waterproof plywood, Glass / 3 500 x 4 600 x 22 030 mm

Kalle Grude is an artist educated

ARTWORK

from the Architecture School and the Art Academy, Oslo. He works within a conceptual tradition and in various medium. He has been active in the art scene since the late eighties. In recent years, he has worked on projects at the border of architecture, with projects such as the marble roof of the new opera in BjĂ¸rvika, Oslo (with Jorunn Sannes and Kristian Blystad). He has been a professor in arts at the Bergen School of Architecture since 2004.

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T he stone came first some 10 000 year s ago. Somehow it made a groove in the bare rock-face. Later this was filled with earth. Grass, bushes and trees followed. When I came along a big pine tree occupied the site. For a lot of reasons this is the site for the shelter. T his is not architecture. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s art, simply because I am an artist, not an architect. As an artist I got time, not money. So why make it big when small is enough? Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the kind of attitude I am looking for. Or why use new materials when used materials are everywhere? Strange things are happening these days. Like drilling holes in the ground when the roof is harvesting all the water you need? Why pay for polluting energy when the sun and the forest give you the energy you need? Why make things permanent when needs are changing? Or why harm the ground when you can save work and money not doing it? I use what the building companies throw away. Which is steel tubes going out of business because system scaffolding in aluminum is taking over. KeeKlamp joints are constructed for reuse, but very few take the effort of using them a second time. Together they shape a repeating steel structure giving space for the stone, the tree and being support for the three human shelters. For the latter I use waterproof plywood made for the molding business. When the surface of this wonderful material is not perfect the companies throw it away. You get it almost for free. It takes some work to clean them, though. Glass is the hard one. The authorities seem to restrict reusing of glass. T he steel str ucture is touching the ground like a table is touching the floor. In the wintertime it is simply strapped to the ground. On one hand the standard formats of the plywood fit into the steel frame and make it a rational structure. On the other hand the whole thing is flexible, easy to expand, contract, or demount for remounting on another site, for another purpose. The only thing you need is an umbraco key and a screwdriver. So far the stone is fine. The tree seems to like the situation. I really hope my girlfriend will be happy. The birds? Not yet invited.

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090510kalle_grude.indd 6-7 10.05.2009, 15:14

Markus Miessen is an architect, writer and curator migrating between Berlin, London, Cambridge (MA) and the Middle East. In 2002, he set up Studio Miessen, a collaborative agency for spatial practice and cultural analysis, and in 2007 was founding partner of the Berlin-based architectural practice nOffice. In various collaborations, Miessen has published books such as East Coast Europe (Sternberg, 2007), The Violence of Participation (Sternberg, 2007), With/Without –Spatial Products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East (Bidoun, 2007), Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of Spatial Practice (MIT Press, 2006) and Spaces of Uncertainty (Müller+Busmann, 2002). He frequently contributes to magazines and journals. His work has been exhibited and published widely, including at the Lyon, Venice, and Shenzhen Biennials. Miessen has taught and lectured internationally at institutions such as the Architectural Association (AA), Columbia and MIT. He has consulted the Slovenian Consulate (NYC) during Slovenia’s presidency of the EU council, the European Kunsthalle, the Serpentine Gallery and the Swiss think tank W.I.R.E.; in 2008, he initiated and now directs the AA Winter School Middle East (Dubai). Miessen is a Harvard fellow and a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, London.

ROEMER VAN TOORN IN CONVERSATION WITH MARKUS MIESSEN

RvT: The good news is that politics is on eve-

INTERVIEW

ARCHITECTURE AS POLITICAL PRACTICE

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rybody lips, the bad news is that politics is about everything and nothing nowadays. Ten years ago a New York fashion line was born named Theory. Buzzwords of the cultural elite – like the return to the sixties – become the next luxurious Theory Icon project. Facing the crisis of Neoliberalism, Politics has become the next project of intellectual entertainment. Many contemporary artists, curators, philosophers, sociologist, journalists, critics and architects tap into politics, knowing that they can no longer celebrate their work on its own autistic terms. How do you read this current trend of politics as fashion in architecture? MM: Suddenly, architects tend to think that they are facing the urgencies of the world. What scares me a bit is when these proclamations are based on the realisation that, without stating them, their faces might no longer furnish the cover of magazines and journals. Recently, even the most formally driven protagonists have declared an interest in politics. Most architects who build are complete nerds in the most positive sense of the word. They know very well how to do certain things but are very bad at doing others. The Renaissance idea of the polymath is long gone and, unfortunately, is no longer on the agenda of most educational institutions, which

www.studiomiessen.com

has resulted in a situation where there are some amazing people who can do perfect drawings and wire-frame models, but when they begin to talk about politics, social frameworks or policy proposal, it reminds me of sitting in a pub with your best mate listening to a 70-year old at the bar, debating foreign politics. RvT: Do you mean that with the disappearance of the homo-universalis out of the equation of the role of architecture – in fact all theories of critical architecture as defined by Michael Hays and Peter Eisenman for instance – with their preoccupation for architecture itself, as act of cultural resistance, is futile?

MM Cultural resistance – hmm. If you resist, the most important thing is that you know what you are resisting against. There are not many seriously political architecture projects that I can think of. Some of Team 10’s projects are amazing in this regard, also the underlying notion of Buckminster Fuller, or, more recently Tomas Saraceno. If you think of Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, it has a vision that goes beyond the, mostly central European, idea of ‘this architecture project is to build a parliament’. Rather, it builds on the vision of community and forum without being colonial, patronizing or romantic about notions of inclusion versus exclusion. What I am slightly scared about is that many practitioners within the field

Roemer van Toorn is head of the PhD program Rewriting the (European) city and head of the history & theory program at the Berlage Institute Postgraduate Laboratory of Architecture Rotterdam. He is a critic, educator, and photographer in the fields of architecture, urbanism and culture. Currently he is working on a PhD text, photo and documentary publication entitled Fresh Conservatism and beyond. Not only will it research the contemporary spatial implications at large of our Second Modernity (Reflexive Modernity), but it will also discuss two kinds of political mentalities of architecture practices who operate from within and not without our Second modernity. In the end the book tries to formulate a progressive aesthetic complex from the perspective of a “radical democracy” within our actuality. Currently he is the co-editor of the yearbook of Dutch Architecture published by Nai Publishers. And he is a member of the advisory board of the Dutch magazine Archis. He studied architecture at the Technical University Delft (honourable mention). After his graduation he was the co-author of the encyclopaedic manifest on contemporary architecture The invisible in architecture (London, 1994). Besides lecturing and teaching in the Netherlands and abroad, he writes for (inter)national publications in the field of film, art and architecture.

tend to fall into the default romantic, leftist mode of politics as soon as they consider ‘the political’. This is not to say that I would rather not have them base their political ideas left of centre, not at all, but rather that project-making of an ‘alternative spatial practice’ kind should aim to go beyond small, well-informed audiences from the same cultural milieu, but try to address larger publics without becoming populist. This sounds great, or maybe not so great, but of course, I also haven’t come up with the project that can prove this yet. RvT: Do you agree with Robert Somol and

Sarah Whiting that instead of fighting reification with the indexical, the dialectic and

INTERVIEW

hot representation, an alternative genealogy of what they call the Projective – linked to the diagrammatic, the atmospheric and performance should be developed? This assertion is more concerned with the visionary as opposed to the commentary, the innovative to the reactionary, addressing emerging issues such as contemporary mass culture instead of the classical language of architecture such as the one of Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. MM: I would like to try to make a really terrible generalization here: I would argue that, roughly speaking, one can divide the entire field of architecture and urbanism into two kinds of practitioners. Those, who I would call the ‘peer architect’, the individual or collective practice whose main concern is to produce work that will challenge the field of architecture and produce discourse within this field. And secondly those, who I would call the ‘external architect’, those, who are interested of course in architecture and its physical becoming, but are more interested in the eﬀect that these interventions have vis-àvis other fields of knowledge, and in particular, what kind of space/time relationships their work generates in terms of users. I have to admit I am much more interested in the latter. Moreover, I would argue that critical attitude always has to be projective, i.e. has to have a constructive attitude 054 | CONDITIONS 0109

with optimism at its core. Without optimism, we can give up straight away. This is something that I tremendously admire about my great colleague and friend Hans Ulrich Obrist. He always attempts to turn any situation into something that is essentially based on optimism at its core. Consequently, any decision-making becomes projective and productive in an energetic way, rather than bitter and simply critical. Critique is not enough. Also, I am not sure if I would call it critique per se. We are in talking about diﬀerent ways of doing things. That is also why I mentioned the idea of the nerd as opposed to the idea of the polymath. In order to take this conversation forward, we need to be pro-active, we need to put our views, ideas and actual proposals forward, and – most importantly – put our balls on the table. This sounds really testosterone driven, but if things are only ever discussed in terms of discourse or theoretical frameworks, they are of course very diﬃcult to test. The default defencemode of an architect is therefore always: ‘well, at least I am doing something’, i.e. I am not ‘just’ thinking. I think the binary opposition doesn’t help at all, what we need is a middle ground. This is what I am trying to explore through some of my projects. RvT What we see – and the Projective is just one of the keywords trying to frame this new

approach – is that a younger generation now coming into power – raised in welfare after the Sixties – no longer believes in any critique of ideology. In fact they want to move beyond the critique of ideology. Instead it is all about an approach that can eﬀectively engage in the transformation of reality, that is – as Alejandro Zaero Polo says “to work politically – and simultaneously update the core of the discipline.” Alejandro’s observation is that we have to open up the definition of architecture to the market forces, its technical advances and operate as a critical agent. Alejandro looks for a political discourse of architecture producing eﬀects “…that may actually destabilize power regimes rather than functioning as mere representation of politics, be it of the status quo or its resisting parties”. How do you read this sudden interest in politics, a resistance practiced through the discipline (materiality) of architecture itself? MM: To comment on the issue of ideology, I

find it diﬃcult to think along the registers of ideology, because I am a very curious guy, who gets easily excited. This, by default, means that I can take a particular (learned) theory, practice or experienced phenomenon only serious up to the point that I encounter the next, more interesting, smarter or more surprising reality.

And I tend to assume that there is something more interesting waiting behind the corner. This is not to say that I do not take my own work serious, but, on the contrary, to say that I take it so serious that I have to know that I should not take myself too serious. This is, at least from my understanding, the exact opposite of ideology. As to your question about a sudden interest in politics, most architects use very hermetic language, which makes it diﬃcult for me to figure out whether they are really onto something or not. Of course it sounds interesting to “destabilise power regimes”, but at the end of the day I doubt that this can be achieved with the help of an I-beam and a sheet of glass. What many architects forget is that space is a rather complex matter and that it rules are rarely governed by architecture itself. In case they are, physical barriers tend to be the most simple one to overcome. I would be interested in a constructive dialogue about political space, which in my point of view needs to allow for conflicts to be played out: spatially, socially, economically, and politically. I believe that the most interesting spatial interventions, constructed by the public rather than architects, occur, where polar opposites clash in a conflictual way. If you look at gated communities, or other extreme forms of space, they are – on the one hand – terrible, because

they spatialize what our economy and welfare state has represented for a while, but at the same time the urban conflict it generates usually leads to surprising spatial and social results: it creates a momentum. Now, if one would be able to establish a spatial regime, which was as polarised without being harsh in terms of social realities, I think we would be witnessing an amazing project. Teddy Cruz’ work in many ways can be read along those lines, as he is one of the few people I know today, who manage to bridge the gap between an interesting constructive discourse on the one hand, and building and constructing reality on the other. To answer your question about resistance practice through architecture itself, I still believe that in order to challenge existing frameworks, the application needs to be more complex and go beyond the physicality and scale of architecture. RvT: According to me the problem is not to make political architecture, but to make architecture politically. This notion – how to make architecture politically – is not at the heart of Alejandro’s concern. He never talked, or developed a theory how the architecture discipline eﬀects people; on an imaginary/theatrical, psychological or in fact public manner. He stops short at the level of the (super)func-

tional description of the architectural object itself, simplifying and avoiding the complex, unsure and difficult issue how architecture as disciplinary knowledge in fact produces specific sensations, narratives and new notions of the collective and of the private. You have had an ongoing conversation with Chantal Mouffe over the last year, investigating the potential of a move into a definition of architectural practice as a form of radical democracy, and how dissensus works in operation on the level of architecture (city and building) . What is her definition of the political and how do you translate that into your practice? MM: Chantal has written extensively on the struggle of politics and the radical heart of democratic life, trying to understand why in the kind of society we are living today, which she calls a post-political society, there is an increasing disaffection with democratic institutions. Her main thesis, if I may say so, is that the dimension of the political is something that is linked to the dimension of conflict that exists in human societies: an ever-present possibility of antagonism. The reason why I have been very interested in this exchange was to understand how this agonistic struggle could be imagined and tested in spatial settings, frameworks, which would allow to envisage

INTERVIEW

a struggle between different interpretations of shared principles, a conflictual consensus, as Chantal says, a “consensus on the principles, disagreement about their interpretation”. Democratic processes should aim to supply an arena in which differences can be confronted. Agonism as a constructive form of political conflict might offer an opportunity for constructive expression of disagreements. From my point of view, this becomes most interesting on an institutional scale, a microcosm that essentially could reflect society at large. The post-political society that Chantal refers to is one, in which we are constantly being told that the partisan model of politics has been overcome, that there is no more Left and Right: there is this kind of consensus at the centre, in which there is really no possibility for an alternative. This is precisely why there is a serious need for the creation of agonistic publics and public spaces. When I say public space, I do not refer to landscape architecture, but to the ‘becoming spatial’ of political forms of exchange. One could argue that any form of participation is already a form of conflict. In order to participate in an environment or a given situation, one needs to understand the forces of conflict that act upon that environment. How can one move away from romanticised notions of participation into more proactive, conflictual models of engagement? And 056 | CONDITIONS 0109

architecture is always political, as it is the result of a complex structure of decision-making processes, both public and private in nature. Therefore, architecture also always produces new social realities, as space structures relationships between people, be it in a positive or negative way. RvT Is the old definition of the discipline outdated, and the classical object outdated? MM: I don’t think it has to do with whether

something is outdated or not, because this would assume that we are talking about trends or particular issues that are either en vogue or not. Of course there is this recent phenomenon of ‘the political’ – everyone should be allowed to make up their mind about it. What is slightly irritating is if people claim it simply because it seems to be an “of the moment’ thing. I would suggest that we don’t think about issues or ways of practicing as outdated or en vogue, but rather, and this might sound almost hippyesque, that everyone should just be doing what they are most happy doing, what they are interested in and what they think they are best at. In regards to building, I am interested in designing spaces for social, educational and critical exchange of knowledge, such as small institutions, libraries or exhibition spaces. In order to facilitate

these spatial concerns, involvement in content is crucial. I don’t think that designing containers without considering what it holds will enable us to question, challenge or develop any existing modes of operation. RvT In an earlier conversation, you also talked about alternative forms of entry. Can you please elaborate on this? MM: What I refer to does not necessarily relate to forms of opposition but alternative regimes of entry. How does one manage to gain access into fields of knowledge and practices that one is usually not invited to take part in; I don’t think that negating will get you anywhere. It’s like opposition: very often it is a way for cynics illustrating their impotence. Maybe I am a romantic driven by relentless optimism, but I genuinely believe that change is possible. And in case this does not happen through a client, the client needs to be invented or selfgenerated. Constructive criticism through offering alternatives is always more fruitful than simply being reactive. There are think tanks and other collectives and groups that have of course been working on outsiders’ expertise for a long time – strategic consulting and so forth. One thing that I find quite problematic about conventional consulting though is that it takes almost for granted that things have to

change, i.e. if you look at McKinsey, Deloitte, Accenture or PricewaterhouseCoopers, these guys come into a company, city, or even country (like in the case of Bahrain) and tell them how to change things. There is this unspoken rule that if they do not alter existing realities, frameworks and customs, they are not worth the money. It is terrible, because often, even if something turns out to be structurally sound, they change things to illustrate that they represent a worthy investment. I like to think of it more as someone, who in the British parliamentary system would be called a crossbench politician, someone with no ties to the political parties at play. AMO of course have tried that for a while now, sometimes with remarkable success, like in the Europe project, sometimes with less success, not because they haven’t done good work, but because it still takes sometime for others to understand the value of the architect’s strategic expertise as an outsider that can challenge and critically add to existing institutional, economic, social or governmental frameworks. RvT You are also working on a project in the context of a fellowship at Harvard. MM: Yes, Joseph Grima, Director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, and I are currently working on a project and

proposal that sets out to investigate to ‘learn from’ rather than purely ‘acting against’. Energy shortages and climate change are bringing vast infrastructural projects of an unprecedented scale into reality. At the same time, private armies such as Blackwater have become increasingly influential actors on the international stage, with quasi-permanent outposts in almost every continent: fortified enclaves and de facto ‘geopolitical islands’ are proliferating on every scale from entire regions, such as the West Bank and Gaza, to single buildings, such as the new American Embassy in Baghdad. The project will start by developing an index of contemporary spatial strategies collected not only from contemporary architectural practice and theory, but also from military science, corporate policy, logistical infrastructure, the tourism industry and communications networks. Strategies resulting from the indexing of a substantial number of case studies will be distilled into a diagrammatic list of ‘spatial formulae’, the equivalent of the genetic segments of contemporary geopolitics. The objective of this index is twofold: first, it is intended to allow for objective analysis of individual strategies, disconnected from their origins, without the risk of moral prejudice induced by their current applications. Secondly, it will constitute a kit of parts that can potentially be recombined to create previously unexplored ‘spa-

tial devices’, which would ideally manifest in a table of elements of sorts, through which new alloys can be formed. The ultimate objective of this list is to test possible applications and recombinations of these strategies in real-world scenarios. A checklist of ‘test situations’ will be created to learn from existing conditions and operations through critical reflection, analysis and the development of a set of projective tools. By testing the index of strategies against a list of contemporary geopolitical flashpoints, a series of hypothetical – and potentially fertile – design strategies will be developed. RvT: What becomes clearer than ever to me

is that reality demands a theory; a new vision beyond the one of neo-liberalism. The excellent news is that the United States is increasingly exposed and weakened on the financial markets. The current economic crisis acts as capitalism’s moment of truth: it suddenly unveils the ordinary fetishezed real structure of society. The bad news is that both the Left and the Right in our 21st century have no theory left. Reality as found is now all that counts, and functions as the perfect alibi to get away with murder. This addiction to extreme realism, both on the Left (disenchanted) and Right (acting big), demands a new theory according to me. Excavating and curating the real, while advocating relational aesthetics

INTERVIEW

and antagonistic platforms is essential – as you have shown in your work, but is that enough? Shouldn’t you also make your “hidden” ideology – why you choose certain topics and for whom you fight, create certain and not other freedoms – more explicit? Antagonism is essential, but don’t you think that your principles of consensus should be clearly stated too? MM: Speculative theories are the basis to develop projective matter. Most interesting projects start with a hypothesis that needs or wants to be tested. Sometime this can be achieved in a spatial or physical way, other times this can be developed through a series of curatorial testbeds first. What we attempt to do with the Dubai Winter School is to inquire how certain local frameworks and structures work. The last Winter School problematized the issue of the labour camps. But rather than simply blacklisting the practices that are at play, we tried to understand how some of the mechanisms function, how decisions are being made and how those realities can be altered in the future. My oﬃce also started talking to local developers and architects that are involved in the construction of the camps. We are now at a point where we might be able to intervene by proposing spatial alternatives, but things simply take time and lots of eﬀort. At a similar scale, we are investigating the potentials 058 | CONDITIONS 0109

through a Vietnamese NGO to get involved in a large-scale social housing scheme in Hanoi. At this moment in time, we are doing consulting on the project, but there is now a possibility to take this to the next level. These projects, at their core, are also educational projects in many ways. You are coming into the project from the outside and first of all have to unlearn your collaborators certain status quo practices, which they take for granted. RvT: Nowadays more and more designers are

fearful of placing a particular antagonism or alternative above another for fear of choosing a faulty cause as already happened with Modernism, Communism and Maoism. They embrace pluralism and the endless relations that an intelligent system can generate. The danger is that their search for difference or the stimulation of the unpredictable is elevated to an absolute law, and the possibility of difference is fetishised. Many children of the Hippies generation produce nothing but an advanced form of entertainment, precisely because they in no way express their support for or opposition to anything, except a desire to be self-organizing and interactive. As we both know the feast of endless differences no longer guarantees liberation. Present-day capitalism has bid farewell to totalizing regulation. Digital capitalism has even turned Deleuzian. The carnivalesque character of everyday life now even guarantees high profits through the permanent revolution of its own order. In what sense could a political practice in architecture be different from the current condition I just described?

MM: I am very fond of Chantal’s proposal to think both ‘with and against Schmitt’, referring to the political theorist and German jurist Carl Schmitt. This is a good example for how to operate: to no longer discuss and foster endless diﬀerences but to also move forward in a constructive manner. I think optimism and a constructive ambition is generally the way to go. You are absolutely right, to simply fetishize the possibility of diﬀerence, to crave for conflict and antagonism for the sake of it, does neither produce meaningful debate nor praxis. I really believe that architecture, as outlines by Volume a while ago, needs to go beyond itself. To be more precise, this could entail that instead of just trying to react against, we actually try to find the weak point of the system under debate, and try to work on them, not in the sense of a Modernist problem solving or social engineering exercise, but by altering and tweaking some of its variables. There is a certain naivety at play when some people talk about opposing capitalism. This also holds true for capitalism within architecture. To just say developers are the bad guys, is not only defensive, but neither propels discourse nor practice. I would be interested, for example, on working with a largescale developer in order to rethink housing for the elderly, a project that we have been working on for a while now through a think tank

at the Serpentine Gallery. One of the more general problems we are facing today is that most practitioners are no longer willing to take risks. This comes a long with a fear of making decisions, which – together – is a lethal cocktail. Capitalism of course is the one system that manages to identify, embrace and embody – vis-à-vis its own tactics – any other system and/or opposing force and critique rapidly. This is one of the reasons why our own positions, i.e. yours and mine, are very endangered. We could probably quite easily come up with more or less smart frameworks for alternative programmes, but one must be aware that they get eaten up very quickly by someone else, and I would strongly recommend to make sure that one is in touch with that ‘someone else’ rather than letting those forces hijack ones idea and misinterpret, develop and sell them themselves. If they buy into something smart it is simply better than if they buy into something stupid. RvT: For many the theory of Mouﬀe and Ranciere motivates an art and architecture of pure activism. According to me such an approach runs the risk celebrating activism only, without motivating or stating any alternative political direction. Disagreement (conflict) is no longer a tool but becomes an end in itself, with the risk of becoming anecdotic and sentimental. Questioning positions is not enough according to me. How do you see this? Shouldn’t

we also address certain urgencies, come up with alternative solutions? Break the museum as temple, destroy the gated community, and reinvent the public sphere, work on new forms of welfare, as we will research at the Berlage Institute after neoliberals’ bankruptcy. MM: I think the question of urgency is always a misleading one, because it assumes that certain things have value and others do not. I find it quite diﬃcult to draw the line here. I guess the only hopefully meaningful thing that I can say about this is that, personally, I am very interested in a particular discussion about urban and social frameworks in relation to architectural scale space, how that can aﬀect the design process and the way in which institutions might function. One of the reasons why many things in this world exist as they are is because of its spatial context. This holds true even for institutional procedures, habits and practices. From my point of view, a smart architecture does not deliver a sexy rendering, but a complex operational and curatorial procedure. I agree with you that questioning positions is not enough. One of the major

problems of built architecture is that it is always delayed. The timeframe between initial becoming and realisation of a project is so immense that many changes can and will happen in the meantime. Going back to the example of Dubai, proposing something now, might mean that in two years from now the political and financial framework has changed entirely. However, this shouldn’t be a reason to give up, but rather to pursue ones objectives in the most productive and optimistic manner. We hope to be able to deliver something that can be interrogated and discussed as to its failure or success very soon.

References Robert Somol & Sarah Whiting. “Notes around the doppler Eﬀect and other Moods of Modernism”, Perspecta 33, The Yale Architectural Journal, 2002. In search of a new Neufert, this time based on dynamic and not static data. See interview Markus Miessen with Chantal Mouﬀe: ‘Articulated Power Relations’, in: Miessen, M. (ed), The Violence of Participation, Berlin and New York: Sternberg Press, 2007 See also www.berlage-institute.nl

DIPLOMA INTRODUCING DIPLOMAPROCESSOR.ORG

bad architects group is an international orientated architecture office operating from innsbruck, austria, co-founded by Ursula Faix and Paul Burgstaller. the office is collaborating with bad-architects.network, an emerging internet-based network of young architects, co-founded in may 2004. next to designing projects for intelligent clients, bad architects group is devoted to developing new tools for exploring the phenomena

of the urban condition in the digital age and has exhibited and published several projects. we see each commission as challenge of finding the most intelligent solution for our client. the result is based on a profound research phase, followed by a design phase exploring and experimenting formal aspects and solutions in constant exchange with our client. since 2007 bad architects group is a permanent lecturer for urban design at the university for business and technology (UBT) in Prishtina, Kosovo. www.bad-architects.gp

URSULA FAIX AND PAUL BURGSTALLER

Due to the Austrian University Act each diploma thesis has to be accessible for the public and therefore hard copies are stored in the university libraries. These are also represented by an online datasheet on the university library system, which contain information such as the title, the name of the author, the topic keyword, the number of pages, the location, the diploma supervisor, the year of publication, etc.

“I Diploma” is an examination of the database of all architecture diplomas at the University of Innsbruck Faculty of Architecture, beginning with the department’s foundation in 1969. The scope was generated by a single search run of the university database, using the library search engine. With the addition of simple analysis and graphic illustrations, this banal but comprehensive database can show the development of the architectural discourse over the past 40 years at the Faculty of Architecture. In this manner its accompanying correlations have become evident and allowed a substantiated discussion on the future concept of the university.

RESEARCH

”For computers the equivalent of ‘society’ is ‘database’” 060 | CONDITIONS 0109

KEYWORDS

One of the most striking graphics derived from the diploma database, is a diagram showing the evolution of thesis topics over time. This is generated by the topic keywords attributed to each diploma. Since a meta-search is not possible, the keywords have a crucial meaning because they are, besides the title of the diploma, the only link to the content of the diploma and try to represent the topic as precisely as possible. The diagram has shown that only the top-

Images of all diploma models – merging and blending of 40 years of formal evolution

ics of “housing” and “urban planning” have been continuously present. Urban planning was the most important topic over the whole period, with an overall share of 10% peaking in 1983 with 23%. Housing peaked as a topic at the beginning of the Nineties with a 30% share of all diplomas, but lost out in favor of buildings like theaters, museums, hotels or convention centers at the end of the Nineties. This coincided with the “Bilbao eﬀect” with “signature buildings” like the Guggenheim Museum of Frank O. Gehry or the Jewish museum of Daniel Liebeskind. This was a time when the power of city plan-

ning was transferred to single buildings or at least it was believed that a form of “city acupuncture” was the cure for the urban situation. Moreover, at that time the job description of the architect was the one of a singular genius rather than of a person with social competence.

-; in; Der; Innsbruck; und; für; am; des; im; Die; mit; einer; eines; Museum; von; auf; an; Bozen; Hotel; Tirol; das; Entwurf; eine; Hall; ein; Wohnanlage; Wohnen; /; Stadt; den; Kunst; Architektur; Bauen; neue; Zentrum; Bebauung; Erweiterung; Kindergarten; bei; Brixen.

Further information can be gained if the most used words are filtered and ordered into three categories: location, program and type of intervention. The analysis of the database results in four main locations: Innsbruck, Bozen , Tirol and Hall. These are

TITLES

In addition to the topic keyword, the title of a diploma is one of the most important indicators for the actual content of a thesis. A generated Hash-Map shows the most used words in the thesis titles. They are, in decreasing order:

RESEARCH

The Evolution of diploma thesis topics at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Innsbruck from 1969-2006.

highly regional locations within a radius of about 150km from the university. Furthermore, four main programs: museum, hotels, housing, kindergarten and four main types of interventions: Entwurf (project), Kunst (art), Architektur (architecture) and Bau (building) can be found. Therefore, the statistically most common diploma thesis’s at the Faculty of Architecture in Innsbruck are a PROJECT for a MUSEUM in INNSBRUCK, followed by an ART HOTEL in BOZEN and HOUSING ARCHITECTURE in TIROL. This indicates that regional culture and tourism seem form a core interest at the University in Innsbruck, in contrast to the often proclaimed “internationality” of the faculty. The fifth most used word in a thesis title is “und”(and) for example: „Universität und Busbahnhof in Brixen“(University and bus terminal in Brixen) revealing that a projects is usually an examination of diﬀerent programs, crossfertilizing each other. I

has a 72% share in Austria or South Tyrol revealing again the more or less regional radius of project development. However, more recent diploma thesis locations show that students in Austria are also thinking about social housing projects in Sao Paolo, high-rise buildings in Dubai, schools in Afghanistan or kindergartens in Cape Town. Therefore the “occupied” spots around the globe will increase and the diagrammatic topography of the diploma thesis landscape will become widespread and diverse.

SIDE STORIES

Moreover the graphic reveals that the diversity of topics, now 43 altogether, was not increasing

until 1990. Yet only a few topics, including the topic industrial buildings, were less represented after 1990 than before. Other components of the diploma datasheet analysis reveal that women wrote 27% of all diplomas, but show no big diﬀerence in diploma topics between female or male candidates, with the exception that women had not planned any military buildings. Schools as diploma topic are persistent except for the years 1978 and 1987. Finally the number of pages was quite high at the end of the Seventies and decreasing in the Eighties and Nineties to an average of 50 pages, before increasing again at the turn of the millennium, peaking with an average of 120 pages in 2005, maybe due to theory-grounded professors. Altogether until 2006, 102.012 pages have been produced; this equals 75.85 S,M,L,XL or 5.68 linear meters S,M,L,XL on the shelf.

DIPLOMA FLIP The hardcopy of each diploma is the only complete testimony containing the full text, images and plans of the project. But, with these, it was possible to represent each diploma with an image; usually of the model or a 3D-rendering. The collection of all the images enabled the blending of 40 years of formal evolution into a flip book. This revealed that during the Eighties and Nineties Innsbruck was rather isolated from the formal development in Europe, under the direction of its much adored local hero and professor, Josef Lackner. With the recruitment of non-Tyrolean or even foreign professors like Volker Giencke, Stefano de Martino or Kjetil

TOPOGRAPHY

Finally, the location indicated in each diploma datasheet has a big relevance since this allows the contextualization of each diploma and therefore a ranking of the most “occupied” (popular) locations. At the University of Innsbruck Faculty of Architecture the location of topics

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University profiles (screenshot) Topics, University of Innsbruck

University profiles (screenshot) Topics, University of Graz

The connection of Author and Title (screenshot)

Thorsen, the formal vocabulary at the faculty widened with connection to the new professors’ networks.

DIPLOMAPROCESSOR The research “I Diploma” began revealing the evolution of many aspects of architectural discourse at the University of Innsbruck Faculty of Architecture. However, it lacked three important features: actuality, dynamics and automated applicability. With the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Faculty in May 2009 there was a chance to develop the research within a design studio at the Faculty of Architecture, making it dynamic and automatically applicable by programming an open source computer software tailored for the research. This allowed the movement, interaction, viewing and correlation of the data.

For the initial research the “I Diploma” dataset was only static, generated by a single search run on a given day. The first release of the “diplomaprocessor” software

connects into the continuously updated online the university library search engine providing access to actualized data. By automatically turning the architecture diploma datasets into a medium, such as graphics or animations, the software allows an updated discourse of architecture diplomas. Since 90% of the university libraries in Europe are using the same logistic software, this hack-batch is also compatible with other universities, making the research applicable for most university libraries. “diplomaprocessor.org – research on architectural discourse” was launched in February 2009 as a platform to serve as a host for the application of the open-source software “diplomaprocessor”. The program’s first application will be for the exhibition “We Diploma” at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Innsbruck in May 2009, developed together with a design studio, student team at the University of Innsbruck.

THE INTELLIGENCE OF DIPLOMAS Rudi Cilibrasi and Paul M. B. Vitanyi who developed the Normalized Google Distance stated that “Words and phrases acquire meaning from the way they are used in society, from their relative semantics to other words and phrases. For computers the equivalent of `society’ is `database’..”.The Normalized Google Distance (NGD) measures the semantic interrelatedness of words and phrases extracted automatically from the world-wide-web correlating it with Google page counts. Since the world-wide-web is the largest database on earth and context information is entered by millions of independent users it provides automatic semantics of useful quality and furthermore the NGD has high potential to be used for the development of artificial intelligence.

Inspired by their pioneering work, the research “I Diploma” and the further development with the software “diplomaprocessor” have been born out of the same fasci-

RESEARCH

The code of diplomaprocessor

nation that, with the aid of a search engine and simple software, it is possible to extract meaning automatically out of a seemingly inert mass of data. Since the relevance of the results augments with the size of the database, great potential lies in the growing number of architectural diploma datasheets and therefore the compatibility of the software “diplomaprocessor” with other university library systems is vital. For example, regarding the diploma topic keywords, the evolution of the discourse in all participating European architecture faculties could be compared, tracing a trajectory of architectural debate or generating a university profiler. Furthermore, by examining a large amount of location indices in the diploma thesis datasheets, the contextualization of all (European) diplomas is possible, allowing the generation of a diploma topography across Europe. The connection of both data strings would even generate a contextualized discourse. Which are the most popular diploma locations? Where are 0464 | CONDITIONS 0109

the blind spots of thinking in Europe and beyond? Is Dubai more important in European discourse than at universities of the Middle East? Does the discourse profile diﬀer from central European countries? Finally, the “Bologna process“, a European-wide eﬀort to establish a common market for universities, at European universities is stimulating exchange programs between universities, since it makes the universities more compatible as far as the curriculum is concerned. Therefore it maybe viable for the universities to show their discourse and contextualization profiles, allowing the students to choose a university with a matching profile. Moreover, the current release of “diplomaprocessor” software has the potential to be further developed, not just connect into the university library, but also into datasets of architectural associations, project libraries, competition platforms, state funding organizations, etc. This will allow the overlay of the architecture diploma datasets with other datasets. These could include the number of

architectural oﬃces, topics of competitions, political and economical developments, the balancing act between thinking and doing, the influence of exchange programs or the amount of financial support for architects, to name but a few, revealing deeper insights and culminating in correlations of the evolution of the architectural debate.

People Curators of “We love DIPLOMA” and tutors of diplomaprocessor R1.0: Paul Burgstaller, Georg Grasser Student team diplomaprocessor R1.0: Akbay Fatih, Ayzit Fatma, Bingül Cetin, Feurstein Ricarda, Gerner Nadine, Gfall Martina, Herzog Christian, Hess Cédric, Höllrigl Anna, Kick Julia, Kiebacher Johanna, Larcher Dominik, Lechner Patrizia, Mousel Ralph, Salas Anabel, Schmit Tom, Schwitzer Florian, Tanriöver Türkan, Weninger Johannes (Faculty for Architecture), Covi Patrick (Faculty of Civil Engineering), Mayramhof Gregor (Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics) www.diplomaprocessor.org research on architectural discourse

At home with the Eames Aluminium Chair. The original classic in a variety of contemporary colours, designed to fit perfectly in your home.

RESEARCH

Vilhelm H. Christensen is a Norwegian architect, graduated from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) and Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Los Angeles, 2008. He is currently working at Powerhouse Company in Rotterdam.

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MANIFESTO nOﬃce – MIESSEN PFLUGFELDER NILSSON

1.0 Operative Framework

In the past, architectural manifestos tended to agitate for either new aesthetic expressions or diﬀerent moralistic ideologies. These manifestos largely stayed within a normative language of architecture, stating – as in the case of Le Corbusier for example – that windows must be horizontal and can no longer be vertical. In an era in which architectural production is increasingly entangled with external issues, such autonomous and self-referential, ideological and inflexible agendas are no longer suitable when formulating new modes of spatial production. Instead, what is required is a structural conceptualisation of the productive framework for conceiving architecture beyond architecture. It does not prescribe any aesthetic preferences, contain any ideological concerns and is not necessarily only restricted to the profession of architecture. What is required is an operative framework.

nOffice and its three partners Markus Miessen, Ralf Pflugfelder and Magnus Nilsson are an architectural practice based in Berlin and London, and situated itself on the crossroads of critical architecture, urban intervention and the art world. www.noffice.eu

MANIFESTO

2.0 Unstable Methods of Production

The economic, social and political conditions in which contemporary architecture operates are becoming increasingly unstable and subject to dramatic and unforeseeable changes. The shortsightedness of politics and finance generates an unstable climate. As a new political party comes to power, new agendas are put in place, cancelling previous intentions. Longterm approaches are ignored in favour of instant satisfaction to the general public. Similarly, new or diﬀerent financial models may over-night render a project politically or financially unviable. Within such unstable climate, indeterminacy needs to be integrated within the very design process. In other words, the production of architecture must be destabilized, too. As such, parameters must be continuously adjustable, pushing the solidification of physical design to the very end of any anticipated process. 3.0 Architecture as Hypothesis

The propulsion of evermore-fantastic forms has reached a dead-end. The future of architecture lies not in more ego-fuelled formalistic endeavours, but rather in how it is conceived.

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This is not a resort to previous eras – such as 60s and 70s Minimalism and Post-Minimalism – when the notion of process was entirely overshadowing the end-result, nor is it a return to Koolhaas’ idea of a ‘New Sobriety’ with its uncritical revival of an austere and purist Modernism, which was published in 1981 in the midst of Post-Modern excess. We are propagating an open-ended, process-based design method that does not lose the end-result out of sight. In other words, it is a method that sees no dichotomy between process and form: an operational method not hampered by an internal ideology, but a light and optimistic methodology that is not weighted by external historic and moralistic loads – an equal interest in the content of cultural production and in testing those concerns physically. Within this framework, concept becomes the generative component rendering traditional formal elaborations largely unnecessary.

MANIFESTO

4.0 Middle Ground Left Blank

The conceptual approach only determines micro- and macro-relations whilst leaving the middle ground for the most part omitted as an architectural concern. The micro-scale constitutes relations in the same way as, for example, Nicolas Bourriaud defines relational art whereas macro relations are the entire urban spectrum. Consequently, the middle ground constituting traditional architectural elaboration and formal concerns fall away, leaving a blank undefined middle ground. Thus, architecture is thought of as a relational praxis both at the social and the urban scales. All micro- and macro-relations are conceived as small building blocks constituting the larger whole. Each element can be altered or eliminated throughout the design process without compromising the final result. 5.0 Scripts

The Script is a protocol determining the interaction between the various micro and macro relations as well as making relevant past experiences (archaeological knowledge) operative to the project. The script is akin to the working methods of a playwright or a film director. It can take on several appearances. For example: In a few precise words Harold Pinter creates the frame-work in which the play takes place, whereas Peter Greenaway uses elaborate drawings to describe setting and relations. As such, the script also begins indirectly to suggest potentially possible atmospheres. Like the notion of micro- and macro-relations, the script foresees no inherent final form. It is a lightweight methodology easily adjustable in order to respond to changing external conditions. Analogous to flocking behaviour of certain animals, a set of simple parameters determines the interrelations between each animal whilst allowing for an ever-changing outward shape. 6.0 Gestures

As the content of the operative concept, urban conditions and programmatic requirements determined on the macro-scale merge and gel, the ‘gesture’ is shaped.

The tendency in architecture to formally shape a physical structure in order to address certain urban conditions has run its course. Such methodology is usually the result of a myriad of piecemeal design adjustments, which are informed by subjective preconceived ideas. Instead, a polyrhythmic operative framework determined by micro and macro relations and governed by scripts oﬀers an economy of means in which the gesture in itself needs to do more with less. Let the gesture multi-task. The resulting gesture must simultaneously possess straightforwardness in terms of its physical characteristics as well as generate an operative framework accommodating oftentimes contradicting and changing urban conditions. The gesture then becomes a communicative device beyond form allowing the outsider to understand architecture. 7.0 Archive as Evolution

Typically, architectural and urban history is a succession of reactions and counter-reactions where each generation is re-enacting their infantile Oedipal complexes by negating the knowledge accumulated by the previous generation. Instead of this unproductive situation, history must be regarded as an archive of past knowledge and experiences. Past, current internal and external knowledge forms the archive. Externally, the entire history of architecture is open to be critically and opportunistically recycled. Likewise, previously accumulated knowledge of micro- and macro-relations form an internal memory whereby each project is part of a genealogy, forming – like DNA – parallel, continuous and intertwining strands of operative knowledge. Thus, each project becomes part of an archive of diﬀerent species. This operationally self-reflexive praxis is organised and categorised by the meta-scripts.

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The obsession of reinventing the wheel should finally come to an end. Yet, every project is unique and cannot simply be reproduced or recycled. 8.0 The Violence of Participation

On a micro-scale – through various home improvement programmes on TV – laypeople now believe themselves to be architects, generating a populist default consensus taste alien to most architects. On a macro-scale, consensus has eaten up the core of the State, meaning that everything will be dealt with in terms of pragmatics while participation (the buzzword of the 90s) has become a rogue tool for political legitimization.

The post-political society that Chantal Mouﬀe refers to is one, in which we are constantly being told that the partisan model of politics has been overcome. There is no more Left and Right – there is a consensus at the centre, in which there is no possibility for an alternative. This is precisely why there is a serious need for the creation of agonistic publics as well as its urban counterpart, that of public space. When we say public space, we do not refer to landscape architecture, but to the becoming spatial of political forms of exchange: an agonistic forum. A reverse reading of New Labour’s social romanticism is urgently needed, one which starts from the hypothesis that not everything can be decided by everyone. Such reading instead assumes responsibility of the individual in participatory practices rather than giving up responsibility through democratic shareholding. Someone needs to be in charge, albeit it without mandate. 9.0 Polymathic Dilettantes post-financial-crisis

The most defining feature of architectural praxis is not the finished building, but rather the ability to simultaneously juggle micro and macro scales in an unstable climate. Thus, in an era where the Renaissance notion of the architect as a polymath has become obsolete, the operative manifesto paradoxically reinstates the architect as practitioner beyond what is typically understood to be the field of architectural praxis. Through cyclical specialisation, the future spatial practitioner will be an outsider who, instead of trying to set up or sustain denominators of consensus, enters alien fields of knowledge by deliberately instigating conflicts as a micro-political form of engagement: a crossbench-practitioner independent of pre-requisites and existing protocols. Even if the notion of the Renaissance man has been rendered passé, the varied nature of projects, opportunities and collaborations that arise through Edward Said’s notion of ‘the ideal intellectual who works from the margin’ allows for an architecture understood as a space that is constructed between political realities, social networks and physical structures. The demand to go beyond a certain field of knowledge inevitably makes the architectural practitioner a polymath by necessity – not of learned knowledge, but trained and nebulous instinct. 10.0 Exit

As much as we favour the position of the ‘surgeon’ in Walter Benjamin’s famous duality, we do not think that the role of the ‘magician’ can entirely be neglected. Thus, we like to think that a healthy naivety and a fascination with the world can produce curious subjects – a paradoxical escapism of the real. www.nOﬃce.eu

40,6

6. Norway 6. Norway 36,4 36,4 . . Denmark not Denmark among top not30among top 30 1,8%

2. Austria

2. Austria 1,7%

1,7%

3. Japan

3. Japan 1,6% 1,6%

Switzerland Switzerland 1,6% 8. Sweden

8. Sweden1,2%

Norway Norway 1,2% . . 13. Denmark 13. Denmark 0,9% 1. Austria

1. Austria $142,80

2. France

2. France $112,80

3. Netherlands3. Netherlands $109,60 4. Denmark 4. Denmark $105,40 5. USA . 7. Norway . 10. Sweden

5. USA $105,00 . 7. Norway $92,10 . 10. Sweden $63,50

1. Switzerland1. Switzerland 2,123 2. Japan

2. Japan 1,946

3. France

3. France 1,286

4. Russia

4. Russia 1,223

5. Ukraine

5. Ukraine 1,133

1,6% 1,6% 1,2% 1,2% 0,9%

$112,80 $109,60

$105,40 $105,00

$92,10 $63,50 2,123 1,946 1,286 1,223

1,133

6. Denmark 6. Denmark 1,130 1,130 . . 19. Sweden 19. Sweden 631 631 . . Norway not among Norway top not20among top 20 Sources: Sources: http://www.nationmaster.com http://www.nationmaster.com Drivers of Change,Drivers ARUP of Change, ARUP The Economist, Pocket The Economist, World of Figures, Pocket2009 World Edition of Figures, 2009 Edition

Environmental performance index, 2008 based on a range of factors

$142,80 Waste water treatment expenditure anually. $US per person

USA

1,6%

Most rail passangers, km per person a year, 2006

USA

Expenditure pollution control, % of GDP

1. Netherlands1. Netherlands 1,8%

2. Angola

2. Angola 39,5

39,5

3. Sierra Leone 3. Sierra Leone 40,0

40,0

4. Mauritania 4. Mauritania 44,2

44,2

5. Burkina Faso 5. Burkina 44,3 Faso

44,3

Mali

Largest amount of carbon dioxide emitted per person, tonnes 2004

5. Costa Rica 5. Costa Rica 40,6

41,5

39,1

2. UAE

Mali

44,3

1. Kuwait 40,4

40,4

2. UAE

37,8

3. Trinidad & Tobago 3. Trinidad24,7 & Tobago

24,7

4. USA

20,6

5. Canada

5. Canada 20,0

20,0

6. Norway 6. Norway 19,1 . . 19. Denmark 19. Denmark 9.8 . . 44. Sweden 44. Sweden 5,9

19,1 9.8 5,9

1. United Arab1.Emirates United Arab 15,99Emirates 15,99 Ecological footprint per Capita, hectars per person

4. Tajikistan 4. Tajikistan 41,5

43,8

39,1

2. USA

12,22

3. Kuwait

3. Kuwait 10,31

10,31

4. Denmark 4. Denmark 9,88

9,88

5. New Zealand 5. New Zealand 9,54

9,54

10. Sweden 10. Sweden 7,53 . . 18. Norway 18. Norway6,13

7,53 6,13

1. Denmark 1. Denmark 560

560

Waste produced each year, kilos per person

3. Kyrgyzstan 3. Kyrgyzstan 43,8

44,3

1. Niger

2. Netherlands2. Netherlands 530

530

3. UK

480

4. USA

460

5. Belgium . 12. Norway . Sweden

5. Belgium450 450 . 12. Norway330 330 . Sweden not among top not20among top 20

1. Luxembourg 1. Luxembourg 647 Highest car ownership, number of cars per 1.000 population

2. France 44,3

1. Niger

1. Kuwait Largest amount of carbon dioxide emitted per person, tonnes 2004

2. France

48,2

Ecological footprint per Capita, hectars per person

1. Sweden48,2

84,0

Waste produced each year, kilos per person

1. Sweden

90,5

Highest car ownership, number of cars per 1.000 population

5. Costa Rica 5. Costa Rica 90,5 . . 25. Denmark 25. Denmark 84,0

91,4

Environmental performance index, 2008 based on a range of factors

4. Finland 91,4

Clean energy, as % of total energy use, 2005

4. Finland

Expenditure pollution control, % of GDP

Sweden

Waste water treatment expenditure anually. $US per person

Sweden

93,1

Most rail passangers, km per person a year, 2006

2. Norway 93,1

Environmental performance index, 2008 based on a range of factors

2. Norway

95,5

Clean energy, as % of total energy use, 2005

1. Switzerland1. Switzerland 95,5

2. Iceland

2. Iceland 632

647 632

3. New Zealand 3. New Zealand 607

607

4. Italy

595

5. Canada 5. Canada 561 . . 17. Sweden 17. Sweden 460 . . 22. Norway 22. Norway439 . . 32. Denmark 32. Denmark 354

561

4. Italy

460 439 354

PLANNING

FOR SUSTAINABILITY

One of the key challenges in the building sector is how to interpret sustainability at all levels. However we still need to have a common understanding of sustainability and how to deal with this in practical terms.

HENRIK SØRENSEN

Henrik Sørensen is Director

ARTICLE 5

of Business Development at Esbensen Consulting Engineers. The company is located in Denmark and collaborates with leading architectural companies and clients internationally on planning, design and advanced engineering analysis and simulation supporting an integrated design approach. Henrik has a M.Sc. in Energy Engineering and an executive MBA in Innovation Management and has more than 15 years experience within energy conscious building design and sustainability in the built environment. www.esbensen.dk

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The report Our Common Future (also

called the Brundtland Report) introduced sustainability as the real target to pursue in our development. This was new in 1987. Until then ecology, environmental consciousness, bio diversity, water balance, energy balance, resource balance etc. were used as targets to pursue – CO2 and global warming was actually not even an issue at that time. The Brundland Report provided the first definition of sustainability: “each generation should try to fulfil their needs in a

way, that do no limit the coming generations to fulfil their needs”. At first glance this seems to be very true and very operational. E.g. this could mean that we do not exploit scarce resources, which the next generations will depend upon, e.g. fossil fuels. However one could also argue that we need to intensify our current technological development, using scarce energy resources to make sure that science is ready with the new solutions for the next generations: solar energy, hydrogen as energy carrier etc. – both approaches could be argued

“

EACH GENERATION SHOULD TRY TO FULFIL THEIR NEEDS IN A WAY, THAT DO NO LIMIT THE COMING GENERATIONS TO FULFIL THEIR NEEDS”

being sustainable within the Brundtlanddefinition. Sustainability in the built environment

Hardly any city planning, master planning or building design brief are launched these years without a requirement for sustainability. And all competition briefs seem to struggle with the same questions: What should we ask for? How do we ensure that we ask for the right things? How should we measure etc. Hardly any standard has come up to help politicians, investors, de-

ARTICLE 5

velopers, building clients and architects and engineers to be able to talk about the same things and ensure that we mean the same when we talk about sustainability. Labelling schemes could be one route to follow to ensure this. Many initiatives exist such as LEED, BREEAM, Cradleto-Cradle etc. and can be very helpful when talking about one building or group of buildings, because they provide an easy way of setting the targets and controlling that the design fulfil the requirements. However even with the modifications and adjustments used to adapt to local climate and design conditions, these rating schemes are not sufficient when talking about city and master planning. They also all fail to help the investors to prioritize and evaluate (in economical terms) the most efficient way to obtain a sustainable development. Questions such as “where do we get the best contribution to a sustainable development per invested Euro” remains unanswered. It is my personal experience that many clients, developers and investors actually have a sincere concern and the will to invest the right way, but as architects, engineers and environmental consultants we too often fail to provide a coherent and interdisciplinary answer. This means that we provide a set of different views each based on our profession and expertise (which can be all good but sometimes also in conflict) and most importantly – we miss the opportunity to create the story about why our advice provides the most sustainable route for development in a given situation. This inevitably leads to uncertainty among the decision makers – they experience mixed signals. And if they cannot themselves argue why a specific investment is done is such and such way and why this is better than other obvious investments – they will not do it, simply because it will leave questions unanswered from citizens electing the politicians, the board controlling the investing company and shareholders judging the sound strategy of the board. We have thousands of different solu-

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tions to bring into the build environment from architecture, from the engineering, biology, science etc. – but only if we in the coming years manage to bring this into an integrated approach and invest our time and eﬀort in interdisciplinary understanding, much of our single-profession expertise will never come into action and we will continue to make decisions on a random and short term basis. Planning according to principles instead of specific solutions

One of the mistakes we are making at present is maybe that we try to plan for specific solutions and not according to principles. In city planning we by definition try to imagine the future and the future needs, but instantly we use our current paradigms and project these on the future and try to provide conditions in agreement with these.

Traffic planning is an example. Our current paradigm tells us that car traffic by definition is polluting, noisy, causes health problems, is using exploitation of scarce resources and should be limited in city centers. With current technology and way of designing cars most people will tend to agree on this and we set out various criteria in city planning on how traffic could be limited. However individual transport in a vehicle on wheels is not by definition unsustainable – it can easily be done in a sustainable way (e.g. using renewable fuels and car designs adapted to the city conditions). In the future electrical cars may even be a necessity in the cities providing a vital storage of electricity produced from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, to charge and discharge to even out fluctuations in the production. Also completely new technologies, which we have never thought of, will come up and will change our understanding and priorities on sustainability. The last argument should however not be used to lull the planners into false security. The challenge is both to plan for the short term situation, which inevitably will have to cope with the current traffic problems, but also ensure that the long term

aspects on traffic and mobility is secured in the city plan. Energy use in buildings is another example. When we discuss these issues we often say that buildings have an energy demand – but that is not the case. It is our human need for comfort (air, light and the right temperature) that cause the demand for energy services. Actually our buildings do not care at all – but we care and want to have a certain level of thermal and visual comfort. Depending on how smart we are doing when we design our master plans and buildings, more or less of this comfort have to be provided from our building services and in the more detailed design we then can optimise how much energy is needed to run the building services in the individual rooms, the buildings and the city. Integrated energy design

Designing buildings from an integrated energy design approach is a field where architectural and engineering design has a huge potential for interdisciplinary collaboration. At Esbensen we have for many years worked in very close dialogue from the earliest design stages together with the architect to obtain the required comfort as much as possible through a careful integrated design approach. This means that we try to provide the required visual and thermal comfort through architectural design solutions working with the basic principles of nature: natural daylighting for optimum lighting conditions, solar radiation to harvest solar heating passively in exposed constructions acting as thermal mass, designing atria to be used as part of the ventilation strategy benefiting from natural buoyancy (chimney eﬀect) to ventilate the building. Only after exploring all the opportunities possible through the architectural design, the more traditional building services are introduced into the building to cover the remaining periods of use, where lighting, heating, ventilation and cooling may be needed.

This approach in the architectural design at master plan or building level ensures that all the passive features and opportunities made possible through care-

ful architectural design are utilised before the technical engineering solutions are introduced. This has another benefit: the passive features of the architectural design typically do not change in the life-time of the buildings, whereas all technical solutions and technologies typically only have a life time of max. 20 years. Say a typical building erected today has a lifetime of 80 years, 4 generations of technical equipment will be used in such a building – but the daylight distribution, the natural air flow, the heat accumulation etc. will not change – this is a consequence of the architectural design solutions and will only change if a major renovation of the building is carried out. So what are the passive features? Some examples: microclimate with shading and utilisation of the prevailing windw around the building to reduce heat load, windows located in the upper part of the facade on each floor to ensure deep penetration of daylight into the core of the building. Exposed thermal mass to even out temperature fluctuations. High floor to ceiling heights, to separate used air from fresh air and increasing the potential for use of natural ventilation, atria to facilitate natural exhaust of used air in the buildings, solar shading with balanced properties allow daylight and shading from overheating from the sun, orientation of roofs to provide the potential for harvesting solar energy etc. These are all general principles which are available in all design situations at all times – and that is the idea of principle based designs. Looking at old industrial buildings, where many have moved from being facilities for industrial production into high-end oﬃce facilities, they feature many of these passive features which makes them robust and flexible for many diﬀerent types of use: Windows located high in the facade (artificial lighting was very expensive at the time of construction), high floor to ceiling heights (mechanical ventilation was not invented), exposed thermal mass, typically very systematic and modular constructions which allow for ge-

neric modifications. New technology such as insulation, better windows, solar energy systems etc. can decrease even further the energy consumption of these buildings – but the most important characteristics and attractiveness and long lasting qualities of these buildings were created through the architectural design and engineering solutions based on these fundamental principles. So what could be the next step?

At Esbensen we think that the evolution within sustainable planning and building design will bring us back to recognising the basic passive features made possible in good architectural design, dealing with the real energy design requirements which are the human needs for visual and thermal comfort. Thinking the long term qualities and principles instead of specific technical solutions.

If we want to catalyse this approach on principle based design and integrated energy design, we need to break down the traditional barriers between architects and engineers. We need to help our politicians, investors and clients to understand and be able to tell the story of sustainability themselves. When developing design briefs, we need to work interdisciplinary and focus on targets and not solutions: what is the comfort we need? What is the story we would like to tell about this city or project? When working to create specific solutions we need first to understand what is possible through the passive features created through the architectural design, and then to work together on integrating the technical solutions. An finally and maybe most important: we need to recognise that sustainability is only to a limited extend a question of skill and specific knowledge – it is much more a question of will, of collaboration and the courage from all stakeholders in the build environment to think in a more long term perspective, and to allow everybody to quantify the value proposition given in a sustainable design approach. Maybe that is the essence of planning a sustainable future – allowing everybody to win?

THE EU COMMISSION HAS COMMITTED TO DERIVING 20% OF ITS TOTAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION FROM RENEWABLE SOURCES BY 2020. THE GUARANTEES OF ORIGIN (GOO) SYSTEM HAS CREATED A NEW TRADABLE GOOD WITHIN THE EU: RENEWABLE ENERGY.

JOÃO VIEIRA COSTA

RESEARCH

João Vieira Costa is an architect from Porto – Portugal. Since 2004 he has been working in Denmark, Holland and Norway. In 2008 started his own practice, ONOFFICE combined with a teaching position at AHO – Architecture School of Architecture and Design – Oslo. ONOFFICE is currently undertaking various collaboration projects in Portugal, Norway, UAE, Turkey and US. www.noffice.no

TURBINE CITY 078 | CONDITIONS 0109

Norway carries the geographic and economical potential to surpass its own goals and become a major exporter of GoO energy. It already possesses everything it needs: the longest, windiest coastline in Europe, expertise in oﬀshore installations, immense investment capital from the state oil industry, and a battery of hydropower plants to partner wind power.

This potential is no secret; Norway has already begun speculation on an ambitious 8000MW, $44 billion venture. Yet oﬀshore wind farms are meeting strong public resistance, mainly due to misinformation and ungrounded skepticism. What Norway needs to propel wind power is a flagship wind farm to promote and celebrate its newest investment.

The wind turbine, the fastest developing renewable technology, has reached a scale that can accommodate an architecture within; A mast with a diameter of 10 meters is no longer a mere pole, it is a tower. Events like European Wind Day have proven that public acceptance grows with firsthand contact and understanding of the

technology. By combining tourism with turbines, the discussion is taken out of town halls and is instead contexualized within the majestic ocean-scape of wind farms.

Continues on page 82

RESEARCH

2020 Adjusted Energy Production Goals

Norway’s current renewable energy yield is only 5%, well behind our neighbors!

Based on existing renewable energy, GDP, and flat rate increase

With a modest goal of meeting the average 20%, Norway must quadruple its production.

39% 28% 5%

The EU Comission has committed to deriving 20% of the EU’s final energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020.

49% 38% 20% 25%

18% 34% 15%

17% 3%

18%

31%

20%

15%

13% 34% 13% 17%

17%

14%

23%

6% 20%

15%

13%

6% 23% 4%

10%

42% 23%

30% 16%

16%

18%

03 Hydropower

Saturation

+ Hydropower is Wind power’s best friend: when the wind blows, the dams are stopped to accumulate water, and the when the wind stops, the dams are released to compensate the energy.

Netherlands 246 MW

7 MW

8 MW

Furthermore, offshore wind turbines are magestic and scenic: a huge potential for tourism.

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

BODØ

Tourism depends on population, and Stavanger is the fourth largest city of Norway with a population of 117,315.

! ! !

... and have a continuous cycle of support?

! !

? ?

19 ...but it could use this economic momentum to rebrand itself in time for the “sustainable revolution,” to create a landmark among the ranks of the architectural symbols of the world...

KRISTIANSAND

“The Turbine City” integrates a hotel, spa, and museum with an offshore wind farm. Only 1 MW from one of these 8 MW turbines is enough to power the entire facility. By bringing tourists, sailors, offshore oil-workers, and cruiseships to Turbineby, people are able to experience the advantages and the spectacle of turbines firsthand, thereby increasing awareness and support. 21

TURBINBY

...without clashing with the historical image of the city.

1:10000

SWEDEN

BERGEN

Agra

N O R WAY

S TAVA N G E R

OSLO

Rome

Sydney

Turbineby

STOCKHOLM

STAVANGER

TURBINBY STAVANGER

The public is more likely to understand the benefits and support wind energy if they are able to experience it firsthand.

TRONDHEIM

FAROES

Tourism also relies on connectivity, and Stavanger’s airport is a major transportation hub with direct flights to major cities both within Norway and the rest of Europe.

OSLO

“On June 15, 2008, as part of European Wind Day, Over 100 Wind Farms opened to the public with the intent to educate, allowing people to view the installations closely. The public strongly endorsed wind energy through enthusiastic participation in all events, in every nation”

And without the public’s support, the government is unable to implement wind technology.

What Norway needs now is a flagship wind farm, to announce, celebrate, and promote the country’s newest investment.

To address the concerns of the public...

The cost of this 220 billion Norwegian kroner venture can be financed by a mere 6 months of Norwegian oil output.

Harmless!

? ? ?

Norway’s Energy Council has already begun speculating on an ambitious chain of wind parks totalling up to 8000 MW of capacity.

Not visible from the city!

Illness?

It’s safe!

Tourism thrives with an offering of varied acitivities. Stavanger is known as the oil capital of Norway... Stavanger is already known for its many natural attractions.

TROMSØ

TRONDHEIM

BERGEN

Coastlineblocker?

Many are still unknowledgable, misinformed, or skeptical about the benefits of wind technology.

10 Small ecofootprint!

Portugal 1793 km

Noisy?

Offshore Expertise

5 MW

Spain 4964 km

Bird killer?

With so much potential, why is Norway so far behind?

Relatively quiet!

3 MW

Germany 2389 km France 4964 km

Italy 7600 km Greece 13676 km

Dangerous?

Norway already possesses vast expertise of offshore installations from its experience in offshore drilling.

Why not combine TOURISM with TURBINES?

The increasing scale of turbines finally allows for habitable space within the turbine!

2 MW

UK 12429 km

Hydropower Partnership

Denmark 409 MW

100 KW

Denmark 7314 km

Least Saturation

UK 590 MW

50 KW

05 Longest Coastline

Sweden 133 MW

12 KW

Sweden 3218 km

Wind Speed (m/s) 5 to 6.7 6.7 to 8.5 8.5 to 9.6 9.6 to 10.3 10.3 to 11.41

Highest Wind Speed

Norway 3 MW

Stavanger lies perfectly at the point where the Norwegian coastline kisses the high-strength winds.

Norway has Europe’s longest coastline, 25,148 km.

Norway 25148 km

04 Offshore Expertise

Norway produces 50% of Europe’s hydropower.

Yet Norway’s coast remains largely unsaturated.

Norway’s weather, geography, resources, and technology are best suited for wind power:

Where does this potential lie?

24%

Coastline

Norway lies in one of the windiest regions of Europe.

Not only is Norway obliged to meet these goals, but it carries the potential to create a surplus of Europe’s newest tradable good: renewable energy.

ABERDEEN GOTHENBURG

RIGA

DENMARK

NEWCASTLE

Stavanger

L AT V I A

BILLUND ESBJERG

COPENHAGEN

UNITED KINGDOM

AMSTERDAM THE NETERLANDS

LONDON

BERLIN HANNOVER

WARSAW

BRUSSELS CZECH REPUBLIC

GERMANY

ZÜRICH

Moscow

PRAGUE

FRANKFURT PARIS

FRANCE

POLAND

NYC

D.C.

Paris

London

Giza

Beijing

SALZBURG AUSTRIA

INNSBRUCK

GRAZ LJUBLJANA

S PA I N

NICE

C R O AT I A

DUBROVNIK

Stavanger

ALICANTE

MÁLAGA

MURCIA

TURBINBY

Possible typologies

Kuala Lampur

NYC

TURBINHOTELL

1:5000

+0 1:1000

28 +6 1:1000

+9 1:1000

POOL

SPA MASSAGE

LOBBY SHOPPING DINING EXHIBITION

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49 turbines at 8 MW each generate 392 MW of power, enough to supply 120,000 homes with renewable energy! 30 +21 1:1000 TOTAL 150 ROOMS

RESEARCH

The Turbine City, off the coast of Stavanger, integrates a hotel, spa, and museum with an offshore wind farm. Only 1 MW from one of these 8 MW turbines is enough to power the entire facility. By bringing tourists, sailors, offshore oil-workers, and cruiseships to Turbineby, people are able to experience the advantages and the spectacle of turbines firsthand, thereby increasing awareness and support. Stavanger lies precisely at the point where the Norwegian coastline kisses the high-strength winds. The 4th largest city in Norway, Stavanger is a well-connected tourist destination. Although known as the oil capital of Norway, it could use this economic momentum to rebrand itself in time for the “sustainable revolution,” to create a landmark among the ranks of the architectural symbols of the world, without clashing with the historical image of the city.

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THE DIAGRAM AS A STRATEGIC TOOL

Why is the diagram still around, almost a hundred years after it first took prominence in the architectural discipline? Is it the ability to simplify and transform complex issues into banal “self evident” solutions? Is it the diagram’s capacity to incorporate knowledge into the design process, or its oeuvre of objectivity and scientific truth?

concerns how the diagram on one hand is seen as a graphical device for incorporating these forms of non-architectural information into the design process, but also how it, on a more conceptual level, is understood as a way of bringing a dimension of unpredictability and openness into the design. And finally, I will comment on how the diagram has come to represent a general concept for an idea of form – or architectural sensibility in the words of Stan Allen - which emphasizes the idea of continuous change and exchange both as a general quality of architecture and in its relationship to a reality outside of the architectural object . Reality notation

LENE BASMA SIEBERT

ARTICLE 6

Lene Basma Siebert has Masters Degrees in Architecture (NTH, 1995) and Urbanism (AHO, 2007). She has worked with urbanism both as a private consultant and in a State Agency, and has practice experience from all levels of urban planning, ranging from small zoning plans and conceptual studies to larger, more complex strategies for development of urban areas. For the time being she is a PhD candidate at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Institute for Landscape and Urbanism, writing a thesis about the conceptualization and utilization of diagrams in contemporary architectural practice.

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The diagram is and has been used in a number of ways throughout the years, and to be able to fully utilize this sometime deceptive tool, it is important to have insight in some primary aspects of its development and potential. Based on the contemporary discussion on the diagram, the following article gives a backdrop for discussing the potential of the diagram as a tool for producing and thinking about architecture. I want to explore three aspects of this discourse, three ways of thinking about diagrams in relation to architectural practice that seem especially relevant when discussing the progressive potential of architecture and urbanism. These three aspects consider the diagram both as a graphic strategy characterized by reduction and abstracted simplicity , and as a more theoretical concept, a potential conceptual model for describing a particular understanding of the workings of the world and architecture. The first aspect that primarily concerns the diagram’s graphical capacities, takes up on Alejandro Zaero-Polo’s notion of the diagram as an instrument for the notation of reality (Lavin, 2005) - a tool for producing graphic mappings of a contemporary context - looking especially at what kind of information that is considered important and possible to map. The second issue

Producing interpretations of the contemporary situation and maneuvering in the present, require - among other things knowledge about and interest in processes in and around the actual building process. Generally, graphic thinking and graphical ways of coming to knowledge about the world, the project context and the design task at hand, is and has always been an important part of what Schön (1983) describes as the architects’ way of reflectionin-practice. Ever since the diagram first gained prominence in the architectural discipline around the 1920s and 1930s, its capability as an instrument for graphical conversion of non-architectural information – of bringing reality into the design process as it were – has been an important asset of the diagram, and one that has secured its relevance over the years, making it a sometimes more and sometime less pronounced part of architectural practice. Also on a more general note, the diagram signals a particular alignment of architectural thought and practice where the outside world as well as more general social and cultural changes are given a particular emphasis. Relating to the contemporary situation then, Confurius has pointed out how the proponents of the diagram consider it “… a long overdue return from the significance of form to reality…” (Confurius, 2000: 4).

From function and facts to force and process

Compared to a more traditional representation of relationships restricted to different functions, like i.e. in a bubble diagram, or facts like i.e. column charts showing changes in population growth and income in urbanism however, the contemporary discourse reflects a shift in the kind of information the diagrams are thought capable of representing, a shift that appears especially interesting when discussing the idea of architectural practice as something that involves a conscious reaction to, and knowledge about contemporary conditions. Tracing this movement back to Team X’s rebellion against CIAM, Scimemi identifies it as a shift in “… the fulcrum of design from a problem of identifying a program of uses to that of representing a diagram of the forces” (Scimemi, 2000: 16). The contemporary connection made between diagrams and forces of course stems from readings of Deleuze and Guattari, owing perhaps in particular to Deleuzes book about Foucault (Deleuze, 1987). Here the diagram is presented as a map of the internal power relations within which constitutional logics – in the form of abstract machines - operates at a certain point in time. The abstract machine effectuates, brings forces into relations and produces particular reality constellations. The diagram explains the material and the discursive formations and their relations that are responsible for producing the particularities characterizing a situation. One example of this influence where the link to Foucault also could be made to encompass a wish for uncovering hidden logics, structures and mechanisms - in this case those guiding the process of environmental production - is the diagrams and investigations done by MVRDV in publications like Metacity-Datatown (MVRDV, 1999). But whether it is the structure and goal of the investigation that can be said to be diagrammatic rather than the visual result, like in the case of MVRDV , or you look at general info-grams where existing official data has been transcribed into rhe-

torically powerful visualizations of political, economical and social trends like in AMO ATLAS, WORLDWIDE from 2002, or diagrams that take on the shape of more conventional diagrams used to sort information, untangle complex situations and show relationships between diﬀerent parts or aspects in and around a project - there is clearly a part of the diagram discourse that aims to draw architecture close to all other forces that are continuously shaping and reshaping the environment. Trying to place architecture in a “…discursive-material field of cultural-political plasticity” (Somol, 1998: 24), as it were. This shift from function to force with the diagram functioning as a map of forces of diﬀerent social, cultural and material contexts that surrounds a project, implicates an emphasis on the greater context in which the architectural project is thought to be operating as well as a focus on processes, the operating mechanics surrounding architectural practice. Through this focus on forces, the constitutional and operational logics shaping the environment, the diagram is presented as an instrument for grounding architectural practice in (new) readings of the changed contemporary conditions for environment production. From force to form

The application of diagrams in the contemporary discourse and practice however takes its application beyond an initial process of analysis and information gathering with a goal of exploring the conditions for architecture and architectural practice in a postindustrial society. The diagram is also promoted as a generative, explorative tool in the concept formation process. The emphasis is on discovery and innovation - “… a heuristic of invention rather than a hermeneutics of interpretation” (Somol, 1998: 25, see also Kwinter, 1998), making this an interesting trail to follow when discussing architecture’s potential for evolution. Experiments and innovation

In this line of the discussion, the diagrams inherit potential for abstraction and sim-

ARTICLE 6

plification are presented as something that can be taken advantage of in an investigative process; a tool to explore new connections between a society in change and architecture. The process of abstraction that takes place when producing a diagram is thought to have a liberating possibility: “… their dimensionality freeing the reader from both the controlling linearity of narrative description and the confining perspective of photographic or painted images” (Cosgrove, 1999: 2). In other words, the abstraction is thought to give an opportunity of seeing or presenting diﬀerent and new connections and relationships. Writing about OMA, Deen and Garritzmann comment how aspects of the project’s context through diagramming are “… brought to a point of schematization where originally known relationships dissolve and the separate component (data, phenomena, ideas and also forms) can be freely examined in terms of new mutual relationships” (Deen & Garritzmann, 1998: 91). In a process of utilizing, skewing and repositioning the possibilities already present in the actual situation, the diagram is presented as an instrument for dissolving earlier meanings and realities, and in their place, produce unexpected configurations and improbable continuities (Nilsson, 2002: 108); to pave the way for innovations. The diagram then is not only part of an analysis preceding and contextualizing the actual design task, but plays an active role in a translation and application of non-architectonic information all the way into the physical objects, like for instance in OMA’s project for a new library in Seattle, where knowledge and considerations concerning changes in the library’s position in society - brought into graphical form as column charts - play a prominent role in working with the design of the building. Openness and unpredictability

This way of viewing the diagram, as a graphic strategy that through its abstracted nature can support multiple interpretations, becoming “… a description of potential re-

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lationships between elements, not only an abstract model of the way things behave in the world, but a map of possible worlds” (Allen, 1998: 16), has also made the diagram a potentially strategic device. Examples of this kind of application of diagrams are i.e. AHO/LPO’s project for Bjørvika (Byggekunst 4-2001), MAX 1’s project for Leidsche Rijn, Holland (Daugaard, 2000: 76) or OMA’s project for Melun Senart, France (Koolhaas, 1995: 978). In these projects, the potential the diagram has for abstraction and simplification is used to challenge the notion of conventional land use plans, focusing more on strategic inter-

“

ONE QUESTION IS OF COURSE IF THE POSSIBILITIES OF ABSTRACTION INHERIT IN THE DIAGRAM REALLY CAN BE USED TO COME CLOSER TO REALITY, OR PRODUCES OPENNESS, OR IF IT, ON THE CONTRARY SHORTENS AND SIMPLIFIES STORIES AND HIDES DIFFERENCES AND COMPLEXITY. ventions and presenting more flexible forms of tactics and principles for the development of urban areas. This line of reasoning is also present in relation to single buildings, where basic conceptual diagrams are seen to represent an open set of rules that allow for the accident, the unanticipated to take place. The diagram is viewed as expressing a set of possibilities, not a fixed pattern, making it

possible to stage openness and multiplicity, which again takes us to a particular way of thinking about architecture, where form is understood as: ”… an instigator of performances and responses, a frame that suggests rather than fixes…” (Hays, 1999: 5). A different concept of form?

In writing about the modernist diagram, Pai (2002) points to how the application of the bubble diagram and other diagrams of standardized solutions and optimized processes, represented a wish to adjust architecture to the new economical and industrial conditions and move from function, from the actual configurations of use, to form, replacing the use of historical types and ideals about composition as a point of departure for designing. In many ways, the modernist diagrams represented analytical devices for producing optimized architectural machines, machines for living, for work etc., reflecting the dominant tayloristic and positivistic ideal of the times. Today, in a diﬀerent cultural climate, dominated by postmodernism’s critique and the undermining of concepts like objectivity and central truths, the renewed emphasis on positioning and relating works of architecture to real world development and changes through diagrams and diagramming, has been given a diﬀerent accent. As mentioned above, in describing diagrammatic architecture today, the emphasis is on conveying the openness of the diagram, accentuating the simplified and graphic as instrumental in supporting multiple interpretations. The emphasis is on loose fits between program and form where architecture should behave like a diagram, like “…a directed field within which multiple activities unfold, channeled but not constrained by the architectural envelope” (Allen, 1998: 18). Beyond the actual utilization of diagrams for analysis and exploration, the diagram has become a concept describing an understanding of architecture that foregrounds the staging of uncertainties rather than the designing of a fixed formal object; a way of thinking about architecture that focuses on its processual or transactional

(Allen, 1998) character; emphasizing an architecture behaving like a diagram, open for change and interpretation in the encounter with different users and programs. Based on Deleuze and Guattaris concept of the abstract machine - a mechanism that produces or bring about the effects (Ballantyne, 2007: 28) in a universe of constant becoming - the diagram come to represent a way of thinking about architecture that is directed towards creating conditions, and not designing a particular object. Architecture is perceived as a system that should remain open. Related for instance to the user experience, this means focusing on how a work of architecture at all times “… connect into a different assemblage, and produce a different experience for the visitor. The architecturemachine is viewed as differently constituted in each case, because each of these visitors bring a different set of concepts into play to make the machine that produces the affects (which is to say the experience, which is to say architecture)” (Ballantyne, 2007: 77). To create diagrammatic architecture then, is compared to instigating a field that is as open as possible (for comparison see i.e. Koolhaas, 1995: 958ff ) and may house many different activities, some of them perhaps not even thought of yet. In the words of Stan Allen: To create diagrammatic architecture is about establishing “…, a directed field within which multiple activities unfold, channeled but not constrained by the architectural envelope” (Allen, 1998: 18). Diagrammatic potential

The interest for the diagram coincides with an increased focus on the “real” , on grounding architectural practice in (new) readings of contemporary conditions for producing architecture. This makes diﬀerent aspects and applications of diagrams interesting when discussing strategies that would enable architects to maneuver better in the present, but also when considering the quest for what Rem Koolhaas at one point has called reinventing “… a plausible relationship between the formal and the social…”(Foster, 2001). In this short excursion through a part of the contemporary diagram discourse, I have

tried to show how, by adapting the diagram’s focus on relationships and systems, the result is an idea of architecture that both in general and specific terms emphasizes architecture’s relationship with a reality outside of the object. However, what is sought in investigating and establishing a link between general cultural, societal developments and actual works of architecture, are not universal, optimized solutions and objective facts, but hidden potentials and anomalies, the non-predictable, the sublime and the irrational; where the diagram is given a relationship to form that emphasizes surprise and instability, as “formen-abyme” (Somol, 1998) or an abstract machine (Allen, 1998); Placing architecture and architectural practice in a direct dialogue with a reality made up of mobile constellations; a reality in a continuous process of change. This does not, however, mean that the diagram is, or cannot be subject to criticism. One question is of course if the possibilities of abstraction inherit in the diagram really can be used to come closer to reality, or produces openness, or if it, on the contrary shortens and simplifies stories and hides differences and complexity. Is it for instance true that the possibility of including different forms of data into the representation gives more complete representations, or do they on the contrary legitimate a particular reading of the existing, in order for the projects to be sold as objective, self-fulfilling prophesies, as a form of ”value-free nihilism” (Aureli, 2005: 5)? Secondly architecture is a very real business, involving the production of real world objects. This means that discussions on the relevance of architecture never can be reduced to a theoretical level or isolated to a thought or representational exercise performed within the walls of a university, journal or architectural office. Many other issues have to be taken into consideration, like material circumstances - land ownership, financing etc – but also questions of cultural meaning and social relevance. With that said, my goal here has not been to provide completely new facts or revolutionary insights concerning the diagram,

but rather, by trying to structure and untangle parts of the discourse that I consider especially relevant when discussing the progressive potential of architecture and urbanism, to provide a basis for further, perhaps more precise discussions on the potential of the diagram in contemporary architectural practice.

References „Diagram Work“. Any, nr. 23, 1998. „Diagrammanie“. Daidalos, nr. 74, 2000. „Diagrams“. OASE, nr. 48, 1998. “100 000 Boliger: Arkitekturtriennalen 2000”. Byggekunst, nr. 4, 2001. Allen, S. 1998. ”Diagrams matter,” in ANY no 23. pp. 16-19. Aspen, J. 2003. Byplanlegging som representasjon. Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo. Aureli, P-V. 2005.“After diagrams,” in Log 6, pp. 5-9. Ballantyne, A. 2007. Deleuze & Guattari for Architects. London: Routledge. Confurius. G.“Editorial,” in Daidalos no 74, pp. 4-5. Cosgrove, D. 1999. “Introduction: mapping meaning” in Mappings D. Cosgrove (ed), pp. 1-23. Reaktion Books: London. Daugaard, M. 2000. “Et pragmatisk blikk på forstaden - med diagrammet som diagnoseinstrument”, i Byplan, no 2, pp. 70- 80. Deen, W & U. Garritzman. 1998. “Diagramming the contemporary,” in Oase no 48, pp. 83-92 Deleuze, G. 1988. Foucault. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foster, H. 1996. The Return of the Real. Cambridge (Mass.) MIT Press. Foster, H. 2001. “Bigness“, [online], London Review of Books, no. 23, 29. November 2001. Aquired from: < http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/ n23/print/fost01_.html > [12.12.2006] Fraser, I & R. Hemni. 1994. “Diagrams,” in Envisioning Architecture. An Analysis of Drawing, p. 99-112. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Hays, K. M. 1999. “Point of Influence and Lines of Development”, in Stan Allen Points+Lines. pp. 1-9. Princeton Architectural Press: New York. Koolhaas, R. 1995. S, M, L, XL. New York: The Monacelli Press. Kwinter, S. 1998. ”The Genealogy of models: The Hammer and the Song”, in ANY no 23, pp 57- 62. Lavin, S. 2005. Crib Sheets. Notes on the Contemporary Architectural Conversation. New York: The Monacelli Press. MVRDV, 1999. Metacity/Datatown. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Pai, H. 2002. The Portfolio and the Diagram. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press Nilsson, F. 2002. Konstruerandet av verkligheter : Gilles Deleuze, tänkande och arkitektur. Göteborg : Chalmers arkitektur, Chalmers tekniska högskola. Schön, D. A. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner. Basic Books, United States of America. Scimemi, M. 2000. “The Unwritten History of the other Modernism” in Daidalos 74, pp. 14-21 Somol, R. E. 1998. “The diagrams of matter, ” in ANY no 23, p. 23-27. In the book The Return of the Real (MIT Press, 1996), Hal Foster points to the same development in the art world, a wish for art and theory “… to be grounded in actual bodies and social sites” (Back Cover).

INTERVIEW WITH LARS RAMBERG 15/2 – 09 DOUBT AS A STRATEGY

INTERVIEW

TOR INGE HJEMDAL

Lars Ramberg is an international artist, born in Norway, today working and residing in Berlin. He was educated at the National Academy of fine art in Oslo. Through his work with installations, photo manipulation and performance he tries to express his ideas on freedom and social life. He mainly operates in the public space by using existing social and historical material as a platform. He has been part of a number of different exhibitions all over the world in addition to biennales in both Venice and Sao Paolo. Among recent work, the Zweifel installation, the Liberté and the newly won competition for the ventilation towers in Bjørvika, Oslo can be mentioned. www.larsramberg.de

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According to the artist Lars Ramberg, the understanding of doubt is very diﬀerent in Germany than in Scandinavia and especially in Norway. If you in Norway say that you are a little bit in doubt, you are saying that you have already moved over to the negative side, you have made up your mind and moved away from the motivation to do something. While in German it means that you are in the process and you haven’t made up your mind yet, you are in a state where you are able to make new decisions. “Zweifel” as it’s called in German is directly translated “to think twice” and is more like a 3 dimensional room which gets bigger the more you are in doubt and the more you explore your doubt. This room is required for all types of creative, philosophical, emotional or religious processes. Lars argues that doubt is a fundamental part of Germany and the German people. Descartes wrote “Der metodische Zweifel” which was giving philosophy the tools how to formulate a thesis, but also an anti-thesis creating space for doubt in between. Goethe also wrote that “the more you know, the more you are in doubt”, and in Germany doubt is an indication of an elevated society with the knowledge and complexity making it unable to become

demagogical. With the fundamentalism spreading today there is less and less space left for doubt. “The truth” is being pushed on us more than before, and it is visible in art, architecture and in all forums. Doubt is an important quality and an essential part of democracy. As long as you are in doubt you cannot become totalitarian. When you stop being in doubt everything runs on its own, and you stop reflecting. The consciousness about doubt in Germany becomes clear, to Lars, looking at Peter Eisenmann and Frank Stella’s memorial in Berlin. The memorial indicates that there has been too much focus on the Jews as victims and not on the tragedy as a tragedy. And in the memorial on Potsdamer Platz, they have been able to create space for reflections and a physical space for doubt (This being opposite of what the Jewish museum of the Daniel Libeskind where empathy is in focus and everything is prepared). The problem with these kinds of monuments is that they oﬀer only one possible way of reading history, they conclude (Instead of opening up for a continuously rereading of history, the way that it really is). Lars thinks that this is also the case for a lot of architecture. When the Germans wanted their united history back after the two world wars and the fall of the Berlin wall, they wanted to tear down Palast der Republik and rebuild Kaiser Wilhelm’s Stadtschloss as a symbol of a united Germany. Lars argued instead to preserve the building as a space for reflections on: “are the east Germans like the west Germans? The west like the east or are we simply Germans?” Lars renamed Palast der Republik into Palast der Zweifel and wrote ZWEIFEL with big shiny metal letters on top of the building. The installation is symbolizing the completion of the Palast and as a spatial manifestation for doubt and reflection. How is doubt reflected in architecture, are we talking about dynamics and flexibility? LR: Yes, and cognition. Architects is talk-

ing about that the building is finished, but I think the opposite when I do a piece, I am not thinking “now I am done”, but rather “now it starts”. Very few architects are concerned

“

DOUBT IS TIME, IT IS THE SPACETIME AXIS. THIS IS WHY I THINK INCLUDING DOUBT TURNS IT INTO A 3-DIMENSIONAL SPACE, IT IS THE Z. THIS IS WHY DOUBT AND ARCHITECTURE IS CONNECTED. TO ME A LOT OF THE ARCHITECTURE TODAY IS VERY 2 DIMENSIONAL AND MISSING THE Z.

with this. Their main focus is to win the competition and get the building built. While I think that there should be elements of entropy, changes over time which continues after the building is completed. Architects are in general not interested in this.

Is this trend accelerating, that architects are just concerned with the completion of the building and then move on to the next project? LR: Yes, I think it is because of the speed, there are so many things to deliver. I think we are in a new phase of modernism, where we are only delivering good looking design, where fashion is playing an important role, only it’s called futuristic. But calling it part of the future is in best case the latest news in fashion. Does this have anything to do with doubt? LR: Yes, because then you become aware of your limitations. You enter a room where you do not know anymore, you are forced to acknowledge that you do

not know where you are in the future, in 30 years. This does something to you. At least it eﬀects my work, because when I work I have to do something that is more than flashy and looks like something else than what you can find in the last issue of Flashart. I am hoping that I am starting a process and not finishing one. A piece of art is like a ship that is completed and setting sail, going through storms, being rebuilt etc. I see very little openness amongst architects in the same way. They do not play with the parameters that the building will be finished in 60 years, one room being built every year, that every generation gets to add a room and that they should be allowed to decide what it should look like. The type of architecture that, in best case, leaves the architect as a director not in control of details and the looks, I have yet to see. I have not seen buildings as processes, only buildings that in best case are changeable. It is not hard to make buildings where the actual building process is part of the architecture, but nobody dares to do it because of the client and the entrepreneurs who demands completed buildings within deadlines. But it would have been fantastic to build a building which wasn’t supposed to be finished. Just imagine building a tower with a deadline in 200 years…. Do you see the structuralist-pixel concepts that have been developed the later years as an illustration of this? Most of the time there are room for alterations, additions etc to these concepts… LR: Maybe the pixel concepts are heading in that direction. As an example it is not possible to add to the Norwegian Opera, it is not open for a process, it is finished. It is a huge success and in many ways I think it is a great building. But the interesting thing is that it initiates / imitates a piece of ice drifting away from Greenland. But taking this seriously you should have been considering the fact that ice drifts, changes its shape, flips when it melts and the bottom becomes the top a real process. If you took this seriously you should have made an opera built as a ship, where it could float around and move, not just in shape, but also geographically. The discourse of

INTERVIEW

reason why they are part of the EU. Denmark is just a continuation of SchleswigHolstein and really half German in many ways, while Norway has based their identity on a post-union-identity, something I understand. Norway has liberated themselves from the union of Sweden, then Denmark and then Sweden again. Norway is opposing everything that has got to do with the European cultural heritage. But they would very much like the Europeans to visit and like them, but they don’t want to be a part of it. They would like for the Europeans to be impressed, but they do not want to join and solve the challenges in Europe. Dealing with these issues Sweden and Denmark are more complex.

a piece of ice is missing, and the opera is reduced to an illustration of a piece of ice. But it is not in any way a piece of ice, it doesn’t freeze, melt, shrink, grow, flip etc. It is very static. Are you able to find the doubt in Scandinavia? LR: I feel that Scandinavia has the ambitions of showing the rest of the world that they are part of what’s going on, in a way this is a phenomenon for a country with newly acquired money. And I think it is great that they are spending money on architecture, but it is kind of strange that this is happening now and not 30-40 years ago. But again it is great that money is spent on architecture realizing that it has a value on its own. Previously in Norway it has been looked upon as showoff to spend money on architecture and design. After the Second World War the focus has been quantity over quality. So the change is good, but I cannot see that the debates have come any further than “nice and ugly”. But the discussions concerning values are absent, what architecture represents politically and in humanistic perspective. While in Germany architecture is political for one simple reason: All the great ideologies have built a lot and it is impossible to stand in front of Tempelhof and think that this has nothing to do with politics. Is architecture in Scandinavia detached from its conditions, such as politics? LR: Yes, the architecture is more based on fashion and not in dialogue with its conditions. Architecture relates to money and economics when building, but is politics and architecture two parallel things or is it dialogue or an influence between the two? LR: Good question. When Norway is spending money in the new part of Oslo, Bjørvika, it is because it is prestige and that they want to show that you are new.

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There are a lot of people “looking to Scandinavia” when it comes to architecture. Is this because we are good with the latest within fashion architecture? LR: We are the first ones to get mobile phones. And within a week everybody has one. When dotted jeans are in everybody has got it within a week. The Norwegians are very fast with trends and because it’s a small country they are able to adapt very quickly. But this is very reactionary and an attempt to show off, to win the competition with Stockholm and Copenhagen, to win the region. This is again based on fashion. Do not misunderstand; I think it is healthy that the capital of Norway shows that it is a capital. And that a capital has a part of the city dedicated to culture is just weird that it hasn’t happened a long, long time ago. So again it is healthy, but the problem is that it everything is being built at the same time. The danger is that it becomes a new Potsdamer Platz where it looked nice for exactly 1 year and after 10 years it all looks a bit alike. And after another 20-30 years when you want to add some buildings it is full, no more spaces left to build. You could say that you wanted to develop Bjørvika and that the span from building the first building to the last should be 50 years because you wanted one building from each epoch.

Time is an important aspect of doubt … LR: Absolutely, doubt is time, it is the space-time axis. This is why I think including doubt turns it into a 3 dimensional space, it is the z. This is why doubt and architecture is connected. To me a lot of the architecture today is very 2 dimensional and missing the z. You are saying that doubt as a strategy or attitude is missing in Scandinavia when it comes to architecture. LR: I wouldn’t say that it doesn’t exist, but what I am saying is that Scandinavia is on some levels missing pluralistic thinking. And I think pluralism is closely related to doubt. We tend to be very mainstream, especially in Norway, something is either totally out or totally in. This is not the case in Berlin where some people do their hair standing up and others color it

pink. It is room for several fashions at the same time. I feel that this is reflected in architecture as well, the ability to see the complexity and pluralism without having to decide what is nice and what is ugly, but what has got substance and not. I am really missing this debate in Scandinavia, especially Norway. What kinds of issues are deciding our identity, identity is also changing. What is our identity when the oil runs out? What is our self-confidence based on? Nobody is talking about this, it seems like people are dreading the future. Where do you think this uniformity comes from? LR: I think it is all about trying to show that you are modern. Norwegians are so concerned about being modern that they on a good day turn out to be a good/bad copy. Norwegians are worried about getting confirmations, for others to say that

they are great, that they are not good at being themselves despite of what others might think. Norwegians are not brave enough to be something else. They are very mainstream and concerned about others liking them which is typical for a young nation. Norway does not have much culture and this is why they haven’t learnt that doubt is a sign of a developed nation. Doubt is what the Germans are basing their self confidence on. Do you feel that this is general for Scandinavia or does it apply only to Norway? LR: I think this is more present in Norway than Denmark and Sweden. Sweden has a closer relationship and communication with the rest of Europe. Denmark, Germany and France have always had a stronger aristocracy; they consider themselves Europeans in a diﬀerent way. This is the

Despite the absence of doubt in architecture in Norway, the fact that we are only continuing fashion, and just responding to the changing fashions, we are ahead without contributing with any existential values in the discourse?

“

NORWEGIANS ARE SO CONCERNED ABOUT BEING MODERN THAT THEY ON A GOOD DAY TURN OUT TO BE A GOOD/BAD COPY.

INTERVIEW

LR: I think that this is one of the reasons. I believe that Norway has a need to show that they have liberated themselves from Sweden and Denmark and when they now have extra money and possibilities they have the urge and need to show that, and why not? I do not see anything wrong with that. But the Norwegians have ignored their old building traditions and have built pragmatic and inexpensive housing the past 5-6 decades which is without qualities. I think this has something to do with the education system, architecture has never been looked upon as important, maybe the last decade things have changed. When you are building a house it is much more important that there are bedrooms for the kids, big kitchen for mom and a nice garage for dad, than how it looks. It also needs to be cheap and spacious and quickly built. Houses and homes drawn by architects have been looked at as fashionable and show off. Norway is very anti-elitist, the opposite from Denmark and Sweden were they are not afraid to think in an elitist way. Norway has a sociodemocratic anti elitist esthetics. Because Norway is putting a lot of effort and money into architecture, this will hopefully change. In Norway everybody wants to build and own their own house and not buy an old one to rebuild, add and change. There has been, what I call a pragmatic non-architecture which goes back to the 19th century up until today. Sweden and Denmark have different culture for this, it is not as important to build your own house and there is a different culture for renting housing. There you can rent your whole life, which today is a very foreign thought in Norway.

What would be a strategy, opposed to fashion to ensure evolution? LR: I do not have a good answer to that. I think we have to cultivate the debate and give the discussions a value, the discussions concerning architecture, the doubt and the questions about the foundations

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CONDITIONS

of architecture. I think we have to start in the other end and let architecture and design be a result of these discussions not the beginning. Most of the discussions today are initiated with shapes and looks and I think this is the reason why we are not able to abandon modernism and the idea of architecture as shape. I think if we need to make the discourse of architecture more available for the public, but also the educational institutions. I believe an architectural debate without the need for consensus and having to defend and explain what is good and not, would be very healthy, not draw conclusions all the time. What I mean is that we should have a discussion which is continuous, being about what Norway is, what Oslo is, what Bergen is? Should Bergen for example be developed into a folkloric fishing village, a postcard look alike? Should Oslo become a big city and be the missing piece of Lego, the missing piece which fits to the pieces of Lego in Europe? What if you start thinking about Oslo and its identity in relationship to Europe? We are then talking about an “anchored” or rooted discourse. You are not making architecture for the sake of architecture, but architecture which is deeply rooted in society … LR: Precisely, this I experience in a very profound way in Berlin. The architecture is “attached” to its history because there is no way around it. It is not because they are so intellectual or have decided to be, they just don’t have a choice, they are, no matter what they do, confronted with it. They have to anchor their architecture. While in Norway we copy fashion and do not have a rooted discourse … LR: There is nothing wrong with being modern, but when fashion is not anchored and fashion changes from being flared trousers to being jeans with dots on them, if the fashion is anchored you are able to stand there and say: “I am wearing my flared trousers because where I come from we use flared trousers because…”. It has to

be rooted in relation to who we are and who we are becoming. Identity is changing and moving, but slower than fashion. If you compare it with the history of the turtle and the rabbit, and you say that the architectural discourse is the turtle and the rabbit the fashion. It is very likely that the turtle will beat the rabbit, because the rabbit will bounce all over the place and does not have a direction or strategy. I think Norway have the potential of anchoring if they want to. Norway has a lot of tradition, indigenous people, without becoming a cliché-viking fetish. Norway has natural resources, it is part of the arctic. This could be part of Norway’s identity, but this they abandon to become more like the others. Maybe it is a quality to be different and maybe these qualities should be emphasized. This should be done through a profound debate without being concerned about falling behind. Then Norway might be able to create their own turtle and have some faith in themselves. This is what Germany and France have done all along while others have been watching them. But it is important to guide the value discussion as Norway is very young culturally. Norway has a lot of money, but is intellectually and culturally very poor. When you see the resources Norway control they should now start investing in consciousness and not superficial design.

EDITORIAL N° 2 We knew that the topic was immense without finding it intimidating; the topic was and still is, too exciting not to be explored. All the contributors, with various backgrounds, have responded in very diﬀerent ways making this into a diverse and wideranging issue, perfect as the launch issue of CONDITIONS magazine.

you have a direction. Without a strategy you will be drifting with the possibility to end up anywhere depending on where the current takes you. Articles

It is interesting how non-architects think and perceive our surroundings and architecture.

The diﬀerent articles relate to the topic “strategy for evolution” in very diverse ways. As Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair points out, evolution takes time and evolution cannot be seen as a strategy, but as natural environmental adaptations. What separates the Darwinistic evolution theory Leif is referring to and the humans of today, is that we are able to consider the conditions and make conscious choices and not just adapt to them. Fernando Donis argues that the economical situation of today asks for a long term social and political agenda and to see new combinations and possibilities that opens up because of the economical changes.

This section is a reminder that architects most of the time does not shape the conditions and do not interpret them in the same way as most people. Seeing the project through the eyes of Regis Cabral and Terho Tikkanen makes you reconsider your image of the Turning Torso.

Even if we are free to choose and in this way may aﬀect the conditions. Matthew Butcher and Megan O’shea are advocating that architecture should not get self referational, but open up and make it receptacle for multiple interpretations where conditions could be read into the architecture.

Working conditions

Research

How to look at and how to act upon the different conditions all depends on your profession, but also what you want to accomplish. Winy Maas as an architect wants to make meaningful architecture in addition to solving an overall challenge. While Bernt Stilluf Karlsen as a real estate developer, is part of the same processes, but with different goals. He is applying a different strategy and therefore considering the same conditions in a very different way.

The research is introducing various attitudes to relate to and understand evolution. Vilhelm Kristensen’s cinema research is by interpreting the history trying to predict the future of the cinema. Instead of continuing in the same track as before the research on the summerhouses in Denmark introduces punctuation and thus rethinking the summerhouse urbanism. The research project “Turbine City” is a multiplicity of strategies where the combination of program united with the energy production in a constructive way creates something unique and unexpected.

Working out issue number one we have tried to define an environment where CONDITIONS operate within. Each issue will naturally mix the topic and conditions in general. The diﬀerent sections reflect this in very diﬀerent ways. Case study

While talking about the working conditions they are both an introduction to the theme “strategy for evolution”. By having a strategy

Artwork

Kalle Grude’s structure is adapting to the specific site conditions Grude’s ad-hockproblem-solving strategy might resemble many of the “strategies” of city planning today. Manifesto

In the spirit of the avant garde the manifesto of nOﬃce oﬀers a methodology and a program how to operate. Interviews

Lars Ramberg believes in the public space as a dialogue based space for a continuous evolutionary process. Where a fundamental doubt and the ability to second guess makes it possible to reach new conclusions. Dead or Alive

The announcement of a winner of an architectural competition always hits the news with flashy renderings and happy faces. But the project is depending on the conditions being just right to be built.

Being able to consider evolution from different angles makes it possible to apply the appropriate strategy and maneuver in an ambiguous and unpredictable landscape. Evolution as a topic will be part of the magazine and bridge the individual topics and resurface as a theme from time to time. This is a reason why this was chosen as topic for the launch issue.

To erect a winning project of a competition you are depending on the fragile conditions being just right for the project to have an afterlife. The conditions will constantly change, this is

the nature of the conditions and it will modify, shape, reshape and even kill the project before it gets to the next phase.

VESTBANEN, OSLO

ASPLUND LIBRARY, STOCKHOLM

DEAD ALIVE 1 .Vestbanen, Oslo Kommune

2. Competition 2003, OMA / Space Group

3. Sjur M. Moe for Statsbygg

OMA and Space Group was announced the winner of the prequalified/invited competition in 2003. The competition included a library, museum, hotel and conference center, cinema complex, commercial areas, office space and housing, a total of 130.000 sqm. The project was put on ice permanently in 2008 after Oslo Kommune first buying and then selling the lot back to Statsbygg. The conditions for the project became unclear, and during the process existing ones faded away and new ones surfaced making the project a moving target. As the illustrations show the project was reshaped several times.

Conservation:

Because of the history of the area being a railway station the conservation authorities were very persistent in their objections towards the project. Sightlines in Norway are of high importance and keeping the sightline along the tracks of the old railway station was a main argument. In addition they insisted on leaving a lot of free space in between the new project and the existing already conserved buildings. At one point there were also talks about preserving the airspace above the tracks, meaning that the projects had to be split in two. Politicians:

The political landscape was very unstable and central politicians with a clear attitude towards the project changed positions several times making them especially diﬃcult to relate to. The public / media:

4. MIR / Statsbygg

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The voices in the media were split, some positive and some negative. The older generation in the daily press as well as the architectural press did not approve of the project. The discussions were reduced to ugly vs. nice partly because the facades were drawn in an abstract raster like pattern. This was by the public un-

derstood as the final intended expression and not an abstraction to be reworked.

An architectural signature campaign against the project was initiated. And several voices argued that being a foreign architect in Norway didn’t help. The media aﬀected the process and was an important player and is, as we know a powerful actor in today’s development not to be underestimated. Economy / practicalities:

In the pre competition discussions the initiators never imagined that a result of the competition would be a collection of the core program into one building. This made it harder to divide and build in phases, a common strategy in projects of a certain scale, and also the future handling of diﬀerent owners and maintenance of the building.

Vestbanen is not a complicated site to build on. That is not the reason why the project never got built., the lack of will and guts from central actors is.

Heike Hanada with the project Delphinium was announced the winner of the second phase competition for the Stockholm Public Library International Architectural Competition in 2008. The client is the City of Stockholm.

Current situation?

We have been working on the preliminary design phase until end of October 2008. Together with our team (Matthias Schuler of Transsolar Stuttgart / Klima Engeneering, Peter Andrä of LAPConsults /Berlin / Structure and Martin Friedli of EmmerPfenniger Basel / Facade) we finished this phase successfully and to the full satisfaction of the client - the City of Stockholm. At the moment the city is double checking the financial conditions of the project. Due to the economic situation of the city and an unexpected political change we are asked to wait for the final decision until summer.

ed in the way how they report about the project. For example Ingemar Asplund, who is the son of Gunnar Asplund and who is supporting the project very strongly, was trying to publish an article in one of the biggest newspapers of Stockholm. However until today this article has not been published. Politicians:

Of course the politicians have to hold back until the decision has been taken. However until now there has been no doubt that the project is going to be realized. The question is only how and to which extent.

Why:

A project with about 70 Mill Euro building costs is a huge project for the client. Therefore it is more than usual that the city has to reconsider the financial situation especially because the state of Sweden is not involved in this project (for example in Germany the state would definitely support such a project to a great extent). Conservation authorities:

The conservation authority of Stockholm was always very cooperative The public / media:

The newspapers of Stockholm seem a bit one sid-

Being foreign architects:

There was a signature campaign by a local Swedish architects collecting signatures against the whole process of the competition. This campaign was more against the idea of an extension of the Asplund library in general than against the winning design proposal. In fact there aren´t any objective reasons - in my opinion - against the extension. Of course there are a lot of Swedish architects who are against the project because of personal reasons and sometimes minor details. However at the same time I receive strong support from a lot of Swedish colleagues, as well.

NEXT AKNOWLEDGMENTS

NEXT ISSUE No 0209

João Bendito Fiúza da Rocha, Kathrine Nyhus, Sondre Solheim, Quentin Le Guen-Geffroy, Pawel Druciarek, Christina Silfverhielm, Siv, Beth Wiberg, Anna Sommarström, Inger Marit Skorstad, Tyra, Hedda, Øystein Grønning, Winni Aslaksen, Anders Gulbrandsen, Odin Hjemdal, Maria do Céu e Abilio Sá Lima, João, João Amaro, Leon Rost, Jeroen Zuidgeest, Jan Knikker.

EDITORS JOANA DA ROCHA SÁ LIMA is an architect, editor and partner in Conditions magazine. She studied in Portugal, Italy and Germany and received her diploma in 2004. Since then, she has worked at Sauerbruch Hutton architects in Berlin, NL architects in Amsterdam, OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam and A-lab architects in Oslo. She has been a guest critic for several universities. ANDERS MELSOM is an architect, editor and partner in Conditions magazine. He received his diploma at Bergen School of Architecture in 2000. He has since then worked in several offices, among them West 8 in Rotterdam, A-lab and Lund Hagem in Oslo. In 2004 he was one of the co-founders of bad-architects.network, an international project-based network of architects. Anders has contributed with projects for the exhibition “Shrinking Cities-Interventions” in Leipzig 2005, and for “Culture of Risk”, the architecture triennale in Oslo 2007. Anders Melsom has been a guest critic/teacher on several courses in the Oslo School of Architecture and the Bergen School of Architecture. Anders has through the years received several grants and scholarships.

INTERPRETATION & COPY CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

ISSUE*2: INTERPRETATION & COPY

Consciously or unconsciously we are relentlessly relating to our surroundings, physical and virtual. New contributions communicate with the present; our actions and attitudes are reflections or reaction either as interpretations or as copies. Why is the question of copy more appropriate now than ever within architecture? Are similar global conditions channeling us to matching answers? Is the challenge the pace were architecture is reduced to fashion and the problem within the field of architecture itself? Is there anything else today besides copying and interpretation? Is copy a bad thing and how do you then avoid it? Is Scandinavia any better or worse than others and why? We are now opening for contributions for the second issue of Conditions. Deadline for submitting material is week 33. The abstracts we need as soon as possible. Join us making ISSUE*2: INTERPRETATION & COPY and send your ideas and abstracts to: submission@conditionsmagazine.com

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TOR INGE HJEMDAL is an architect, editor and partner in Conditions magazine. He studied at the architectural school Trondheim (NTNU), Norway where he received his diploma in 2000. He also studied at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), College of Architecture in Chicago, USA. At IIT he received scholarships for his academic excellence. Tor Inge has through the years received several grants and scholarships. He has been a teacher at graduate level at the architectural school in Trondheim (NTNU) and in Oslo (AHO). Tor Inge has been working in several Oslo based offices as a project manager. In 2004 he also started his theoretical post graduate Masters in Urbanism at the architectural school in Oslo.