Seminar Courses 2020 Autumn School of Architecture, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Course codes for seminar courses YR 4: A42SEH YR 5: A52SEH
Seminars Autumn 2020
Thordis Arrhenius .................................... Making History Anders Bergström ..............Stockholm Exhibition 1930 Victor Edman Restoration ..................... Bringing History to Life Catharina Gabrielsson ..............................................Fieldwork Katja Grillner + Meike Schalk ..................Architecture and Gender Elizbeth Bonde Hatz ......................................... Silent Paths Alejandra Navarrete ...................Ecological Communities Pål Röjgård ....Before and Beyond Architecture Vasily Sitnikov ...............Algorithmic Design Basics Erik Stenberg .......Million Program Era Archives 2
Seminar Courses
Making History – Postmodern Architecture under Pressure Thordis Arrhenius After strong protests Snøhettas proposal for restoring AT&T Headquarters by Philip Johnson was stopped. The hashtag SAVEATT brought together the architectural community from Robert Stern and Terry Farrell to Sir Norman Foster in a plea to save an icon building of postmodernism. As a result, in July 2018 AT&T’s former headquarters (built 1984) was designated the status as an individual landmark and protected; the youngest monument on Manhattan. Was the 2018 protection of the foremost post-modern icon on Manhattans a sign of the end of postmodernism or a beginning of a new monu-mental history postmodernism? With postmodernism as our case this seminar course will explore how architecture relate to its recent past. By re-reading central pomo-texts the seminar will focus on the entangled relationship between the architect, the image, and the building. We will explore how narratives of precedence, influence and media generate monumental histories and discourses.
The Archive of the Stockholm Exhibition 1930 Anders Bergström Sweden’s most referred architectural event serves here as a case study for a critical historiography. Ever since the Stockholm Exhibition opened in 1930, its importance has been generally acknowledged as a breakthrough for modernism in Sweden. Although criticized at the time, the exhibition was included in the canon of modern architecture at an early stage. As the exhibition soon turned into a virtual object, however, its reception must now be based on primary material that can be referred to as the “archive”. The seminar highlights this material, consisting of drawings, photographs, documents and printed texts, as well as the limited remains of the exhibition itself. ArkDes Collection: photo Gustaf W:son Cronquist 1930.
Restoration: Bringing History to Life Victor Edman Architectural restoration is a professional field that has evolved mainly over the last two centuries. The seminar addresses historical and theoretical perspectives on this development, with a focus on the Swedish context. The objective is to provide an overview of the history and theory of architectural restoration and to initiate a critical discussion of the subject. The seminar also aims at an understanding of how the historic buildings we meet today have been transformed by later interventions, often intended to make them more ‘historical’. The seminar includes short lectures and discussions of relevant texts. An individual essay is to be presented at the end of the semester. Malmöhus under restoration.
Fieldwork Catharina Gabrielsson Entering the field, expanding the field, getting lost in the field… The significations of “field” and “fieldwork” may differ, depending on the disciplinary outset, but generally indicate explorations outside the boundaries of the office or studio. Fieldwork can be understood as a reality check; engaging closely with “real people, real places”, the realm of the “actually existing”, in order to invigorate or reformulate one’s practice. But it’s also associated with investigations underground; scrutinizing premises and conditions, searching to unearth that which has been hidden or denied. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology and artistic practices, in this course we investigate the implications of fieldwork in and for architecture. As informed by key readings, we’ll train the ability to observe, document and analyse complex urban environments, seen as integral to a critical spatial practice.
Architecture and Gender: Positionings, Intersections, Ethics of care, Specificities Katja Grillner and Meike Schalk This seminar course provides an introduction to architecture and gender, and develops tools for pursuing feminist articulations and interpretations of architecture as discipline and profession. In the course we will study contemporary feminist theory and architectural practices and investigate how architecture and other built structures relate to them. The course is divided into eight seminars structured around four modules. Each module consists of two seminars with introductions, discussions and reflections on presented readings and projects. The modules are thematically organised addressing in order Positionings, Intersections, Ethics of care and Specificities. The seminar is taught together with the continuing education course Architecture and Gender: Kepsen av MYCKET. Foto: Ricard Estay. Courtesy: MYCKET
Introduction (AD236V).
Silent Paths Elizabeth Bonde Hatz The course revolves around the architectural drawing and its crafts, as instrumental for understanding and making architecture. The object of study is the architectural floor, and its unfolding powers on architectural space and matter. Specific floors will be studied, photographed, surveyed and drawn with high precision. A collaboration with ArkDes on the coming exhibition of Sigurd Lewerentz is at the core of the course, resulting in a total survey of the floors outside and inside, of St Mark in Björkhagen, performed in groups. The course offers a unique opportunity to contribute to one of the most important architectural exhibitions of ArkDes on an international level. Opportunity to focus deeper on the archival research will also be given. Course dates are whole days, with lectures/research/survey work. Outside of this, students will manage their own time for finalizing the work.
Ecological Communities: Alternative Landscapes in Sweden Alejandra Navarrete Llopis The surge of ecovillages, ecological communities aiming to reduce humans’ impact on the planet, was a response to the global green movement of the late 1960s and to the modernist project for the landscape and natural environment. Questioning the understanding of nature as a distinctive object to conquer, exploit, and manage, the ecovillage movement has proposed since the 1970s a complex set of relations that connects humans’ wellbeing to the wellbeing of the environment. This seminar focuses on the investigation of the different ecovillages in Sweden, and their aim to propose alternative forms of living and radical environmental projects. Through the documentation of the material, technical, and spatial responses of these ecovillages, students propose a collective Atlas that advances new forms of intervention in contested landscapes. Suderbyn ecovillage founded in 2009, Photo: Aina Maj
Before and Beyond Architecture Pål Röjgård Harryan The notions of space touched by the civilized world is a result of human actions through time. In interaction with natural conditions the spatial experience is an articulation between time and motion which can be traced as conscious and unconscious actions visible in different layers. The role of the architect is to organize and articulate these conditions while composing the spatial setting. The combination of mass and void experienced by our own psychological and psychological state give four spatial phenomena which then can be divided in different categories. These can be sorted out to experience and define spatial information at any site. This seminar series will practice how to sort out different character and make them part of a spatial language. The purpose is to chance the picture of architecture and to increase the awareness of possible tools to develop architectural production. The architectonic act can be seen as a quote to what was and what will become.
Algorithmic Design Basics Vasily Sitnikov With a rapid evolution of computational tools in recent decades, computer-aided design (CAD) tools enabled a decent advancement of the architectural design discipline. The most radical practices today actively engage with algorithmic modelling and custom coding, and significantly contribute to a broadening of conceptions in spatial and functional qualities of architecture. The present seminar course will look into algorithmic architectural design using graphic algorithm editing software. Using Grasshopper for Rhinoceros 3D-modelling software (https://www.grasshopper3d.com/), the course will introduce the basic principles of algorithmic architectural design workflow.
Million Program Era Archives 2: Civil Engineer Kurt Månsson Erik Stenberg Contemporary architectural archives from the Million Program Era (1965-1974) are contested spaces. They have been subjected to the same conflicts, revisions, and neglect as the era (and its complicated reputation) itself. By starting from archival source material from the Million Program Era, this seminar will follow one personal history through the Post-War period and try to present new perspectives, reflections, and interpretations to better understand the Million Program Era. The second archive to be studied is that of Civil Engineer Kurt Månsson (1923-2002), who seems to have been behind some of the most important developments of industrialized housing during the PostWar period. He graduated from KTH as a civil engineer in 1951, he became head of the technical division of SBEF in 1956, CEO of Ohlsson & Skarne in 1961, began at John Mattson Byggnads AB in 1967. Kurt Månsson wrote prolifically and was meticulous in collecting his work, through which we will attempt to re-evaluate the Million Program Era.
Inauguration of the Peterlee Factory, 16 April 1965
Courses: A42SEH, A52SEH