Studio Catalogue 2018–2019 School of Architecture KTH Stockholm
Studio 1 Teachers: Rumi Kubokawa, Ori Merom
A Place Called Home A Place Called Home With a long history of migration, Sweden has now a population where one in every sixth inhabitant was born in another country. An unprecedented surge in immigration in 2015 lead to refugee emergencies and the need for shelter intensified the construction of housing. In the lull caused by the change in immigration policy, the city is left to deal with the fluctuation in populations, disrupting the conventional image of the built environment as a stable entity. However, population movement has always been part of human history, and a fundamental part of what constitutes the city. This year the studio will examine the dynamics of conflicts surrounding the home as places and the ramifications of migration on the concept of home, in an attempt to re-think the relationship between body, shelter and its relevance to the city. Studio Methodology The challenge of Architectural education arises from the teachers’ dual role: they are asked to lead, yet play only a supportive role. Students are taught to develop and act on their own vision and creativity. This involves a pact of trust between teachers and students. The pact is about personal development. Success means that students managed to form their own architectural identity, understand their strengths and weaknesses, exploit the former and find ways to overcome the latter. From an abstract point of view this vision can be depicted as a funnel in which individual development forms the vertical axis while the program and teachers produce a spinning momentum. This framework involves four efforts: First, to create custom tailored education that supports the specific development of each student. Second, to establish a holistic teaching program that inspires students to think broadly and in interdisciplinary manner. Third, to amalgamate learning and research into a program that supports the study of applied issues and sustainability in a cost effective manner. Fourth, to form opportunities for students to experiment with a variety of building materials and architectural tools, and work/research in proximity to the industry, while strictly preserving ethical standards.
Rumi Kubokawa RK is an architect and teacher. Has practiced in the UK and taught at The University of East London. Is a collaborator in research on popular movements for housing and occupations in São Paulo.
Project 1Home: Transient Permanence The notion of home has different implications to each of us and is informed by experience, memory and cultural perspective, yet it remains one of the most important elements defining how one inhabits the city and the social relationships formed around the built environment. This project will attempt to re-define what constitutes the home: explore and push the culturally defined boundaries of what we might consider home, challenging the idea of the home as a bordered entity separating private and public; challenging the materially given notion of the home as a fixed place versus a temporal place. Project 2 Habitus: Transient Permanence This project will explore the investigations on the home in relation to given issues related to migration history, fusion of cultures, infiltration /integration of migrants in the city of Stockholm. The initial research will be carried out in groups, leading to an understanding of the conflicting geographies created by patterns of habitation. In the second part you will develop a project that facilitates /complicates or intermediates between the city’s development and it’s migrants existence, with proposals allowing spaces to deliberately collide and coalesce. Project 3-4 Community: Tel Aviv/Darfur South Tel Aviv has become a city within a city: migrants from Africa wandered through north-eastern Africa across the Sinai to escape war and famine, and against all odds established a series of communities within the well established city of Tel Aviv. We shall travel to Tel Aviv with researchers from the area to study this phenomenon and in this context we will produce research that both describes an understanding of the place while formulating relevant questions. We will work at a variety of scales that takes into consideration the complexity of the place, its seemingly contradictory stories and propose architectural projects that aims to expose latent qualities in such intricate territories.
Ori Merom OM is an architect and teacher www.meromarchitects.com www.corsaroarchitetti.it/ www.hey5.xyz
1.
Fig. 1. Caixa, Favela Inside, Adelie Thollot & Marie Maghe, 2015. Fig. 2. Migration, Triptych, Beatriz de una Boveda, Thesis work, 2016.
2.
Studio 2 Teachers: Johan Mårtelius, Marianne Bork Aaro
The Presence of the Past Studio Theme The studio will deal with the long time perspectives as an inherent quality in architecture. Different concepts such as conservation, preservation, restoration, adaption, alteration, reconstruction, addition and more will be explored. Four studio projects will focus on different aspects of handling our built heritage, with examples based in different historical periods. A central aspect will be to view the present in a wide framework, including experiences from the past, overcoming distances in both time and space. The long time perspective, even if focusing on the near and distant past, also includes aspects of cultural sustainability pointing at the future. Methodology Our basis will be the use of close contacts with existing architectural structures as a basis for documentation, interpretation, evaluation and proposing the future – ranging from preservation through reconstruction and contextual additions. The cases studied will also bring contacts with traditions of building crafts and the architectural profession. The discipline of architectural conservation will also be studied and experienced through a number of key examples, including on-going projects. Thus, study visits will form an important part of the methodology.
Project 1 The Long Time Perspective – Ruins and Reconstruction A point of departure will be the connections between the professions of architecture and – classical as well as Nordic – archaeology. A specific, limited site will serve as the key to explore scales from detail to urban, and perspectives from monumental to vernacular. The major project will be the design of a Viking or Nordic Iron age museum, based on tentative reconstructions of authentic buildings. A study tour will be made to Öland. Project 2 City and Monument The roots of the culture of architectural restoration in objects and sites of the Middle Ages will form a basis for exploring concepts of “memory” or “collective memory”. The relationship of architectural profession to craftsmanship will be explored from detail to urban scale. The role of the architectural object, or the urban artefact, will be studied with focus on a few key examples. Changes in the historical process will be explored, and contemporary approaches will be proposed to support and develop the inherent values. A site in the Old Town of Stockholm will be chosen for restoration, extension and contextual reconstruction. Project 3 Classical and Global Heritage The contextual focus will be the rise of the architectural profession in renaissance Europe, but perspectives will be extended to other parts of the world. Architectural order, re-interpreting antiquity, relationships of interior, exterior and garden or landscape will be explored though cases in and around Stockholm, such as the Royal Palaces and gardens. Comparisons with Ottoman, Persian, Arabic, Indian and East Asian examples will be focused on conservation issues. A Swedish countryside mansion will be the site for the major project. Project 4 Restoring Modernity Modernity in a wide sense, comprising the last two centuries or more, will be the focus of this project. With complexity as a key concept, the experiences from 1 – 3 should be summarized or synthesized. Controversies regarding conservation versus alteration of modern heritage will be considered. The aim is to materialize an inclusive perspective on architecture, regarding past experience and global connections as part of the present, without expelling order, discipline, unity, presence in place and time. A study tour to Venice will be included
Marianne Bork Aaro MBA is an architect SAR/MSA, KTH 1978-85, KKH (Architectural Conservation) 1993-94. Private architectural practise together with husband since 1998, Aaro arkitektkontor. Historical work as part of the ”Old Town project” (Gamla Stan-projektet) in Stockholm, an investigation of 50 buildings in the oldest part of the city.
Johan Mårtelius JM is an architect and PhD, since 1993 professor in History of Architecture at KTH, in late 90s Head of School. His experience in restoration issues, besides teaching and supervising PhD students, include since 1995 an active board membership of Cultural Heritage without Borders (CHwB), with restoration projects mainly in the Balkans.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. 7.
Fig. 1. Stora Wäsby Castle, Uppland, survey drawing of front elevation 2015. Fig. 2. Venice - global node of architectural heritage. Fig. 3. Koldinghus, Denmark, ruin restored by Inger and Johannes Exner 1972-92. Fig. 4. Kursumlija Mosque, Maglaj, Bosnia after destruction in 1990s war. Restored by CHwB. Fig. 5. Temple of Nike, Athens, restored through anastylosis. Fig. 6. Five blocks in Gamla Stan, Stockholm, measured plan drawings. Fig. 7. Ruins of Ismantorp fortress, Öland, 3rd century AD.
Studio 3 Teachers: Helen Runting, Karin Matz, Rutger Sjögrim
Megaproject Studio Theme We need to dream big. Megaproject is a studio that encourages a joyous, critical, and progressive stance on architecture. Together, we will spend a year thinking, strategizing, and designing an architectural engagement with the near future. Whilst modernist paper architecture is oft dismissed as mere pipe dreams, architects today find themselves working on projects that rival these utopias in scale. What are the technical systems, critical and feminist theories, and design tools needed to work at this scale in a progressive fashion? Through a program of lectures from practicing architects, a weekly editorial meeting where we talk theory with guests, and three design projects, we will look at structural systems as big as capitalism and as specific as pre-fabricated concrete, exploring the reality and visionary potential of architectural practice in the 21st century. Methodology Our method rests on an openness to multiplicity (in interests, perspectives, and disciplines); and equal amounts of criticality, optimism, collaboration, and rigor. The schedule comprises of a weekly lecture (in tools, the practice, or theory); weekly tutorials with teachers; and a weekly editorial meeting where work and current affairs are discussed in the group. We place emphasis on both the materialization of architecture (its materialities, spatial logics, semiotics, tectonics, affective qualities, and politics) and the mediation of architecture (through text and drawing; as well as in exhibitions, publications, social media, and international architectural biennales).
Helen Runting Helen is an urban planner (B.UPD, University of Melbourne), urban designer (PG. Dip. UD, University of Melbourne; MSc.UPD, KTH), and architectural theorist (PhD, KTH). Her research addresses policymaking, real estate, and aesthetics. She is Chief Editor of the journal PLAN.
Project 1 Archaeology of the Now What can we learn from the built megaprojects of capitalism, socialism, and the late welfare state? In P1, we turn our attention to the existing city, looking at the new area of Hagastaden and the postmodern neighborhood of Södra stationsområdet in Stockholm in order to critically address the concept of “human scale,” with the resulting analysis forming the basis for a small exhibition. P1 will include a workshop on “histories of the present,” and a guest lecture on “mapping the social.” Project 1 will include a workshop on “histories of the present” (Dr Helena Mattsson, KTH) and a guest lecture on “mapping the social” (Tinatin Gurgenidze, Technische Universität Berlin), as well as talks with a number of practicing architects currently designing buildings in Hagastaden. Project 2 Utopia on Loan The megaproject has a long history within architecture, but also a bright future. In P2, students will explore both, looking to the canon of built and unbuilt radical architecture and translating the spatial logics of a range of iconic and lesser known megaprojects into a redevelopment project in today’s Stockholm. P2 includes the option of attending a study trip to the Tbilisi Architecture Biennale in Georgia, and guest lectures on the soviet avant-garde, the project, and utopia. Project 3-4 Enough to Matter At what scale does architecture make a difference? P3-4 is a longer design project that aims to change the face of Stockholm forever. The task is to attack the issue of “hypergentrification” by designing a building or environment on reclaimed land in the center of the city: a megaproject. Students will steer the project individually, with support from teachers, guests, and peers, and will result in a publication and exhibition. The project will include guest lectures on hypergentrification, a collaboration with Cardiff University, and lectures exploring a range of technical, financial, and political systems, from BIM to building regulations.
Karin Matz Karin is an architect (Edinburgh College of Art, the University of Queensland, and KTH (MSc. Arch)). She has designed a series of widely published smaller projects (Karin Matz Arkitekt), and was Project Architect for the Haganova development in Hagastaden (Vera Arkitekter). Karin is adjunct faculty at KTH-A.
Rutger Sjögrim Rutger is an architect (MSc. Arch, KTH). His work focuses on architectural imagery and concept development in design competitions, urban developments, events, exhibitions, and film. Rutger joined the adjunct faculty at KTH-A whilst working at C.F. Møller Architects.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. 7.
Fig 1. Hagastaden (photograph: CC 2017) Fig 2. Interior of Mall of Scandinavia, Solna, Wingårdhs, 2015 Fig 3. Rem Koolhaas with Madelon Vreisendorp, Elia Zenghelis, and Zoe Zenghelis) Exodus, Or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture (1972) Fig 4. Södra stationsområdet, Stockholm (photograph: Karin Matz, 2017) Fig 5. Alice Constance Austin showing a model of her design for Llano del Rio (1915-1917) (photograph: Dolores Hayden, “Alice Constance Austin,”) Fig 6. Modernist housing blocks, Tbilisi, Georgia (photograph: Karin Matz, 2018) Fig 7. Helen Runting, Karin Matz, and Rutger Sjögrim at the Barbican, London, 2018.
Studio 4 Teachers: Mikael Bergquist, Nina Lundvall, James Payne
Territorial Typologies Studio Theme Territorial typologies: a responsive landscape urbanism In the context of a densifying and expanding city, the studio will propose ‘territorial typologies’ in suburban areas around Stockholm. Eschewing current orthodoxy of urban block masterplans we will work with natural landscape, proposing radical dwelling typologies offering new ways of living, deploying contemporary sustainable and efficient building technologies. The 1977 manifesto ‘Berlin - a green archipelago’ by O.M. Ungers proposed ‘Cities within The City’ of coherent but isolated fragments within a metropolis partly reclaimed by nature. A landscape urbanism of dense dwelling apartments with the advantages of the detached house. Certain post-war suburbs around Stockholm already embody these qualities, with their own unique atmosphere and sense of place. We enjoy the architectural coherence and subtle relationships to landscape, embracing the mysteries of nature with a strong sense of community. Teaching Methodology It is important to us to rediscover the radical past as a tool for establishing an architectural culture to move forward. We are interested in precise materiality, atmosphere, structure and character. We encourage making pieces of work that are experiential as a starting point of a design, not just the product. We follow a non-linear design process, working between scales, re-assessing and adjusting. Producing pieces of work of intensity, precision and conceptual clarity whilst encouraging a flexibility of design development. Students work in a variety of media, model making is important as a speculative process and we are also interested in the potential of new digital technologies for design and fabrication from the landscape and urban scale to that of the detail.
Mikael Bergquist MB is an architect, teacher and writer. Runs his office in Stockholm since 1996. Curator and editor of exhibitions and books. Guest critic and lecturer at various architecture schools and at KTH since 2014. Invited to participate in the ’Alternative History’ exhibition at the Architecture Foundation in London this fall. Currently working on a book with artist Mikael Olsson, published by Park Books later this year.
Project 1 Stockholm Suburbs Research The first project will be to collectively produce a studio research book, using archives and on-site surveys to produce an overview of Stockholm territorial typologies, their relationship to landscape and the qualities of the places they form. Focussed on a selection of post-war satellite city communities, with housing typologies by architects such as Backström and Reinius and Ralph Erskine. As researchers and teachers we have developed methodologies for rediscovering architectural precedent, often radical or obscure. Projects will be represented through careful drawing, photography, models and writing. New interpretations to provoke fresh ideas. Project 2 Ways of Living The second project will be an individual design project to propose a way of life, starting with the individual living space or spaces. This will implicitly investigate how individual private life can exist with ideas of collectivity, interior and exterior. Initially designs will not be site-specific, but freely architectural conceptions of form, space and material. In the second part of this project housing typologies will be further developed from these first studies onto specific sites in the South-Western edges of Stockholm. This area retains a very strong presence of natural topography but has a fragmentary and incoherent development of industry, housing, leisure and transport infrastructure. The final project of the semester will conclude as a visionary and atmospheric proposal. Project 3-4 Territorial Typologies & Landscapes The second semester will build on the work of the first semester, but with a more real-world emphasis on structures, materials, landscape design, sustainable technologies, densities and economics. Informed by research into more recent housing that responds to the current crisis of affordability and scarcity, projects will unfold throughout the remainder of the year at a number of different scales to form a coherent whole, developing or reassessing first semester work.
Nina Lundvall NL is an architect and teacher. After winning the RIBA Silver medal in 2002 for her diploma, she worked with Florian Beigel/ARU, Tony Fretton and David Chipperfield Architects before joining Caruso St John, where she is an Associate Director. She currently directs their project for the renovation and extension of Gunnar Asplund’s Stockholm City library.
James Payne JP is an architect, senior lecturer and writer. Since 2008 he has taught architecture design studios at London Metropolitan University (The Cass) and Chalmers in Gothenburg with Nina and KTH as guest tutors in studio 7. His collaborative practice Archipelago works both in the UK and Sweden and was included in the recent ‘New Architects 3’ book.
1.
2.
3.
Fig. 1. Kvarnholmen, student group model, Studio 5, CASS London Met, 2014-2015. Fig. 2. Kvarnholmen courtyard houses, P. Snow, Studio 5, CASS London Met, 2014-2015. Fig. 3. The Glass House , São Paulo, Lina Bo Bardi, 1951. Image: Instituto Lina Bo Bardi. Fig. 4. ‘Städte in der Stadt’: in the 1977 manifesto ‘The City in the City, Berlin’ by O. M. Ungers.
4.
Studio 5 Teachers: Cecilia Lundbäck, Veronica Skeppe, Ulrika Karlsson, Vasily Sitnikov
Architecture of Things Studio Theme Picking, packing, sorting, storing and retrieving are processes that demand more and more architectural space. Studio 5 will this year engage in the design of an architecture of things, spaces that temporarily hold, sort and store stuff. Where things are displaced, gathered, stacked, grown and further distributed. A typical example would be a warehouse, a storage, a library, an archive, a greenhouse, a botanical garden, an exhibition space or retail. Containing things, goods and activities, of different character dependent on different care, climates, scales and logistics. An architecture of things, is today often related to automation that dynamically handles material flows. Automation that continues to spur diverse discussions around work and labour, free time and recreation. During the year Studio 5 will explore and problematize an architecture where humans and machines coexist and work together. The architectural study of spatial storages will be paralleled with a study of images as storages of spatial information and other found data. How architectural representations can simultaneously act as model, image and instruction.
Project 1+ 2 What’s in Stock? Part 1 and Part 2 What’s in Stock? is a question that addresses the program of a warehouse, a storage, a stock. But, in this case, it also concerns the physical interior and structure of a material stock from which something is manufactured, through for example CNC milling. During the fall, studio 5, will engage in studies and design of a mixed programmed automated grocery warehouse linked to processes of searching and ordering online. This will be paralleled with developing design methods involving the physical organization and processing of a stock. What is the relationship between a multiple programmed automated grocery warehouse and its site/location? How does its envelope negotiate relationships between interior, exterior and site? What are the relations between the physical and virtual interface and context. A study trip to Tokyo is scheduled between 15-19 October involving relevant visits, rigorous documentation, and discussions with colleagues from Tokyo and other encounters in and around the Tokyo area.
Teaching Methodology How we work affects what we produce. Studio 5 has a focus on design research through making. Mediating between the abstract and concrete, the physical and the digital, the artificial and the real. These entwined relationships continue to produce sensibilities where our understanding of the division is ambiguous. The studio welcomes different approaches to how architectural history and theory, professional practice, teamwork and culture informs the work. Contrary to a linear approach where technological processes are applied in the interest of optimization, studio 5 adopts a bi-directional approach where technological processes are drivers for design development. Through design, the students’ work will contribute to architectural discourse and its dialog with society, art, popular culture and aesthetics today.
Project 3+4 In and out of the glasshouse If the fall has a focus on work space, an automated grocery warehouse, run by people and machines. The spring will have a focus on relations between cultivation, automation and recreation through the design of a series of greenhouses/glasshouses including the surrounding grounds. A park or a landscape that holds, collects or stores a series of architectural buildings where an intricate relationship and exchange between interior and exterior climate is at stake. We will return to issues around the role of architectural representations including moving images in architecture, engaging robotic filming, where camera movements are described by a set of toolpaths.
Veronica Skeppe VS is an architect and partner of the architectural studio Brrum. She is a Lecturer at KTH School of Architecture, teaching at both bachelor and master level and has previously been a Lecturer of Interior architecture at Konstfack. Ulrika Karlsson UK is an architect and landscape architect, partner of the architectural studio Brrum as well as of Servo Stockholm. She is a Professor at the KTH School of Architecture, and a Professor at Konstfack. She recently curated the exhibition Plots Prints Projections in conjunction with the Biennale Architettura 2018, Venice.
Cecilia Lundbäck CL is an architect and partner of the architectural studio Brrum. She is a lecturer at KTH School of Architecture, teaching at both bachelor and master level. She has previously worked at SandellSandberg arkitekter. She also has a background in furniture design and has been a guest teacher at Konstfack.
Vasily Sitnikov VS is an architect and a PhD student at KTH School of Architecture and part of the European research and innovation program called Innochain. Vasily received his master degree from Staedelschule Architecture Class, Frankfurt am Main and has previously worked for artist and architect Tomás Saraceno, Berlin.
1.
2. 4.
3.
5.
Fig. 1. Super model, H. Hermansson, A.Kihlberg and E. Lundqvist, Studio 5: Cross beat, 2018 Fig. 2. Super model, M. Carvalho, Studio 5: Cross beat, 2018 Fig. 3. Architectural models storage, Tetsuo Kondo Architects, 2016 Fig. 4. Processed stock, A. Harlin, V. Schlaucher StĂĽhl, Studio 5: Cross beat, 2018 Fig. 5. Robotic filming at KTH School of Architecture, Studio 5: Cross beat, 2018
Studio 6 Teachers: Leif Brodersen Teres Selberg
Searching for Ma – Investigations of Space and Time Studio Theme An investigation of design from order to chaos. Studies of symmetry will be followed by complexity and contradictions. Geometrical and irregular form and patterns as generators for architectural space will be analyzed in selected architectural masterpieces - and we will propose design projects for alterations and deconstructions. In the fall, we will make an excursion to Italy. Then we will develop design proposals for a chapel in Stockholm. In the spring semester, we will learn from the Japanese context examining diversity, metabolism and other conceptions of space and time. The third studio project will focus on housing issues – where we will develop new housing typologies with specific qualities. The studio plans a trip to Tokyo in March-April. Based on studies of the relation between filmmaking and architecture, we will design a Film Studio Residence within the urban fabric of the megacity Tokyo. Teaching Methodology This studio investigates different experiences of architecture and conceptions of space in relation to the synthesizing design process. We explore basic architectural concepts such as gravity, emptiness, speed, light, sound, color, tactility, etc. We have developed a methodology wherein students and teachers collaborate in a kind of research-by-design structure. The students define and formulate their own projects from a given topic and self-program their projects to reflect on the problems and possibilities described in the analysis and definition of the context. The aim is to provide tools and methods in order to give the students an independent, innovative, artistic, professional, ethical, and scientific identity. Every project is specific and independent, but also relates to the general theme.
Teres Selberg TS is an Adjunct Teacher at KTH Architecture. She runs her own artistic practice connecting dance and architecture and is a member of the organization Dansbana!, creating public places for dance. 2006 she co-founded Architects without frontiers in Sweden.
Project 1 Symmetries and Form – Reinterpreting Details Through deeper studies of emblematic buildings and their specific beauty and qualities, we will develop an understanding for symmetrical and irregular composition, geometrical or random form as generators for architectural space. We will first document, re-represent and analyze existing architectural masterpieces. In the second part of the project we will develop individual architectural projects by making alterations of the studied buildings. The project definition is optional (deconstruction, studies of mannerism, reinterpretation, paraphrase, additions, alterations etc). Project 2 Chapel for Ceremonies By re-defining interpretations and using the studies from the first project, we will design a ceremonial chapel on a small man-made island at Djurgården in Stockholm. Using different design methodologies we will develop individual proposals for spaces with strong architectural qualities dedicated to forthcoming ceremonies (secular, religious, contemporary interpretations of traditional ceremonies, imagined new rituals etc). Project 3 New Housing Typologies with Specific Qualities In this project, we will compare urban structures in Sweden with the organic urban fabric of Tokyo - in order to develop new strategies. Could we produce high quality housing areas and develop new typologies meeting totally new demands for how we want to live our lives? Studies will be applied in the design of a new housing development project in Aspudden south of Stockholm. Project 4 Film Studio Residence in Tokyo In this project we will study Japanese traditional and contemporary culture and architecture, including important concepts such as ‘Ma’ and ‘Oku’. The brief has its starting point in the understanding of the diverse urban fabric of Tokyo Metropolitan Area as well as in the concept of film-making (directing, editing, and producing) in relation to architecture and contemporary cultural movements. These studies will be applied in the design of a Film Studio Residence in Koenji, Tokyo.
Leif Brodersen LB started teaching at the KTH School of Architecture in 1996. He is an Associate Professor at the school since 2004 and served as Head of School 2005-2012. He is also a founding partner at the Stockholm-based practice 2BK Arkitekter, established 1999.
1.
2.
3.
4. 7.
5.
5.
6.
Fig. 1. Kunio Maekawa House, 1942. Fig. 2. Nishinoyama House by Kazuyo Sejima, 2014. Fig. 3. Brion Cemetery by Carlo Scarpa, 1978. Fig. 4. Fondaco dei Tedeschi restoration by OMA, 2016. Fig. 5. Woodland Chapel by Gunnar Asplund, 1920. FIg. 6. Cloudscapes by Tetsuo Kondo at the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice, 2010. Fig. 7. Garden and House by Ryue Nishizawa, 2011.
6.
Studio 7 Teachers: Peter Lynch
Halls Beyond Halls, Gardens Beyond Gardens Studio Theme Building in wood: Architects are implicated in the problem of climate change and can act beneficially. The most effective response is expanded use of wood construction. In Sweden, demand for architects with knowledge of wood construction is high—and will increase as wood systems replace concrete. Considering the land: How can we, as architects, propose how to replant and reshape the land unless we recognize it as a complementary but different reality than building, no less deserving of our attention? This year we find an adequate way to observe, imagine, design, and draw “land under sky.” Architecture as a craft: “The Unknown Craftsman” by Soetsu Yanagi is our starting point to discuss architecture as craft without a guiding tradition. We will raise questions about originality, form-making, fame, utility, beauty, refinement, precision, and intuition in architecture. Teaching Methodology Cultivating intuition: Confronted with a particular place/need, how do you decide what should be cleared, graded, surfaced, planted, and built—and where? Intuition, by definition, arises before conscious judgment. It draws upon experience that has been personally confirmed, not accepted on another’s authority. How, then, can a teacher help you develop it? 1) By showing you how to conduct an autocritique, methodically applying stricter demands as the project evolves. 2) By encouraging you to develop a personal way of drawing/visualizing. 3) By setting up problems without a clear answer, where no rule or precedent applies and arbitrary choice is inadequate. This year we alternate between projects that lend themselves to analysis and those that do not.
Project 1 Halls Beyond Halls Design a large-span, daylit, timber-based structure, suitable for an exhibition hall. Build a large-scale model and photograph using mirrors to increase the sense of depth. Join models together and photograph as imaginary composite structures, in the manner of Piranesi’s spaces. Working in teams of six, design an exhibition hall for a site in Norrköping, where the “Exhibition of Craft and Industry” took place in 1906. Each hall displays itself--a composite of six different structural systems. Resolve the urban situation. Project 2a Bridge You are invited to design a new timber pedestrian bridge for Alfred Nobel’s estate Björkborn at Karlskoga. Collaboration with Prof. Roberto Crocetti and students in KTH structural engineering. The bridge will be built. Project 2b Occupation Working individually, choose part of the exhibition hall from Project 1 and transform it “post-exhibition.” Insert cinema, indoor recreation area, and residences. Focus on detailed design of interior spaces. Project 3 Gardens Beyond Gardens Choose between two sites: Sylten ridge, Norrköping (east of the previous site) or an abandoned highway ramp in Solna. Working with the land, design a large garden composed of different gardens: arboretum, reconstructed forest, ornamental garden, food-producing garden, playing field. Integrate pavilions, student housing. Project 4 Butängen Draw upon spatial ideas in previous projects to make an urban plan for Butängen, Norrköping. This district, north of the existing train station, will become a high-density area when the Ostlänken rail line is built. Imagine how a district can be organized without automobile traffic. We will apply new tools of urban analysis. Design an 8-story mixed-use building (wood structure) and garden for one block of your proposal.
Peter Lynch PL, guest professor, is a licensed architect in New York State. Graduated 1984 from Cooper Union. Opened Peter Lynch Architect PLLC in New York in 1991. Head of graduate architecture department, Cranbook Academy of Art, 1996-2005. 2010-2013 co-directed Lynch + Song, a Beijing studio. Current research: methods of timber construction using round wood; new tools for urban design. Writings: www.academia.edu.
Fig. 1. Kiso Hwang, Ruin, Student work.
Studio 8 Teachers: Adrià Carbonell, Hélène Frichot, Hannes Frykholm, Sepideh Karami
Infrastructural Love Studio Theme This design studio is dedicated to Infrastructural Love. We will study architectural infrastructures, how they support us, and how they fail us; we will map, intervene in, and propose new and renovated infrastructures at scales from the micro to the macro. More than merely a discrete object in a field, or icon in an urban milieu, architecture maintains the relations between peoples, places and things. Reflect briefly on your everyday world: much of what you do is made possible because of the infrastructures that support you. Infrastructure is in the smart city fibre-optics of telecommunications; it organises the basic utilities of water, electricity, gas; it coordinates massive transport networks; it is the socio-technological glue that ties everything together. We propose that architecture practiced as a critical and creative act of care can help maintain the love in our everyday infrastructures. Teaching Methodology This studio engages in design action and research in an integrated way. Architectural design produces knowledge and instigates change, begging the question: Who benefits, and who does not? The ethos of this studio draws on a critical, feminist and intersectional consciousness, which means we acknowledge the transformative socio-political capacity of architecture, and its hidden power relations. By engaging creative and critical tools of design we respond to the urgent need to decrease our material and spatial consumptions and engage more ethically in socio-political relations with love and care. Students will develop their analyses and design of infrastructure through the use of multi-layered drawings that combine montage, sections, details, plans and axonometric techniques; large scale models; and multi-media, including sound recordings and video, to capture the complexity and territorial impact of infrastructure.
Project 1 Mapping/Interrupting infrastructures We will draw longitudinal sections that follow an infrastructural “journey” 20-100 km long across Stockholm Län, passing through two minor sites, Skanstull and Hornstull, in order to capture a series of infrastructural nodes and territories. We will integrate design and mapping in weekly tasks, producing sections and drawings to study the territorial dimension of infrastructures and what infrastructures can do. Project 2 Support (Infra)Structures Based on the infrastructural sections completed in Project One, we will intervene with a series of “support structures” that facilitate infrastructures where they are at risk of failure. We will focus on support/ repair structures by using “instructional design” methods, and with an emphasis on the details and materials of architectural design. Asking the question of how the work of support is achieved, the design proposal will be the outcome of a repetition of infrastructural journeys interconnected with infrastructural territories. Project 3 Infrastructural Love Using techniques of large scale montage drawings, we will explore the relationship between infrastructure and the spatiality of affect. How does architectural image making reveal the mood, oppressive or liberating, of the infrastructural spaces we daily inhabit? Could the architectural drawings we construct be scaffolds for dormant fantasies about infrastructure? We will investigate an unseen “archipelago” of infrastructure in the city of Stockholm, and produce drawings that describe the multiple agents, places and objects involved in such systems. Project 4 Reinventing Infrastructures: From micro to super-scale Could it be that there are infrastructures we have never imagined before? Could an architectural infrastructure inaugurate new relations between humans and non-humans to better engage the complex of natures and cultures? Our design work will move between micro and macro scales, occupying distributed sites across vast territories, and inviting encounters between human and non-human actors.
Hélène Frichot HF is an architect and philosopher, writer and critic, Professor of Architecture in Critical Studies and Gender Theory, Director of Critical Studies in Architecture. Dr Frichot has over 20 years of experience teaching into the pedagogical environment of the architectural design studio. Adrià Carbonell AC is an architect and urban designer at AIX Arkitekter, lecturer at the KTH School of Architecture, has previously taught at KU Leuven, at Umeå University and at the American University of Sharjah. He is co-founder of the research platform Aside, where he writes about architecture, territory and politics
Sepideh Karami SK is an architect, writer and researcher holding a PhD from KTH School of Architecture. Her thesis focused on the idea of Interruption and Dissident Architecture developed through writing practices. She graduated from Iran University of Science and Technology with an M.A. in Architecture (2002) and from Chalmers University (Sweden.)
Hannes Frykholm HF is an architect and PhD researcher. His doctoral thesis investigates the construction of the city from inside three building interiors. He was trained at the LTH School of Architecture and the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley, following degrees in history and sociology. He is a member of research and design collective FyR Architects.
1.
2.
3.
5.
4.
Fig. 1. Steven Holl, Bridge of Houses, Pamphlet Architecture #7, (William Stout Books, 1981) Fig. 2. Hannes Frykholm and Olga Tengvall, Infrastructural Love, Stockholm, 2016. Fig. 3. James Corner, Taking Measures Across the American Landscape, (Yale Univ. Press,1996) Fig. 4. Olga Tengvall, Moral Institute of Higher Fiction, Diploma, KTH, 2014. Fig. 5. M. Spooner, A Clinic for the Exhausted, PhD School of Architecture, RMIT Melbourne 2011.
Studio 9 Teachers: Pablo Miranda Carranza, Annie-Locke Scherer
Architectural Notations: Configurations Studio Theme The nineteenth century’s obsessive interest in systems, languages and notations lies at the heart of today’s digitalisation: besides the emergence of formal logic and semiotics, fundamental to todays computers and programming languages, chemistry was transformed during this time into a grammar of atoms and molecules, and crystallography, into a systematisation of spatial structures and lattice notations. Architecture experienced also the influences of this structural bias: the plans of Ledoux, Durand’s “Précis des leçons” or Guadet’s theory of elementary composition operated under a similar analytic mindset, in which architectural components were syntactically combined to produce spatial arrangements and organisations. This year the studio will be examining the concept of configuration and its potential to articulate a relation between digital notations and architecture. Claude Berge described configurations as the arrangement of finite elements according to constraints postulated in advance: from the disposition of words and sentences to the arrangement of packages of different sizes in a small drawer. This configurational logic intrinsic to digital notations give rise to the type of architectural problems that Robert Venturi described as “the obligation toward the difficult whole,” that is, the complex negotiations between general figures and individual components, one of the main themes pursued during the course. Teaching Methodology Work at the studio will take the form of laboratory practice, central to modernist architectural pedagogy: formulated in Russian Constructivism, laboratory work described formal investigations undertaken neither as an end in themselves nor for immediate utilitarian purpose, but as eventual contributions to architectural practice. The studio becomes thus a laboratory in which the architectural project is treated as a testbed for aesthetic, theoretical or technical investigations rather than as a goal in itself; program, site, parti, drawings or models are used to evaluate the relevance and potentials of digital design processes, and not in isolation from these. Special emphasis is placed in the production and curation of material, using, among other means, a blog: 09architecturalnotations.wordpress.com
Pablo Miranda Carranza PMC replaced the drafting board for a text editor and compiler more than 18 years ago, and has since programmed architecture rather than drawing it. His work at research institutes, academia and architectural practice, include generative processes, simulation and analysis, interaction design and physical computing, work that was central to informing his recently finished PhD. He is currently a researcher at KTH School of Architecture.
Project 1+2: A Gallery Space in Årsta, Stockholm. 1. Configurations: diagrams and space. The studio will begin with and investigation into generative architecture, which will both serve as an introduction to programming in Python, and as a study on basic problems of spatial configuration. The project will look at the organisation and use regimes linked with the palaces and mansions that hosted the first museums, in search for potential modes of engaging and inhabiting an architecture that is generated rather than designed. 2. Fabric forms. This second stage will continue developing the same design brief, but will consider instead relations between simulations, material systems, and digital fabrication in the use of fabric form-works. It will introduce the use of Grasshopper as a parametric tool, at it moves from the diagrammatic and typological concerns of the first stage into the study of more concrete and constructional aspects of digital architecture. Project 3+4: A Summer Camp at Malmön, Bohuslän. 1. Reconfigurations: site, program and other data. Malmön is the site of one of the first granite quarries in Sweden; a rocky island in Bohuslän, it is also a typical holiday destination in the Swedish west coast. This idilic site will become during the second term a test-ground for the transcription of architectural categories such as site or programme into data and algorithms. The programme of a summer camp will allow to study how, thorough the mediation of digital notations, different uses and activities can reconfigure a site, proposing different forms of occupation. 2. Material transactions: robots at work. As in the previous term, during its second stage the project will address questions of digital fabrication and materiality. This will involve the use of both the CNC milling machine and the robot at the Architecture School, with a focus in the processes of translation of geometries, programs and scripts into the sequences of actions to be executed by machines. A main emphasis will be in understanding the transactions between digital notations, representations and material processes, and the effect of these transactions in reshaping contemporary design processes.
Annie-Locke Scherer ALS is an architect, maker, designer and fabricator. With a background in robotic fabrication and computational design in architecture, she has a special interest in geometry, parametric patterns, and fabrication. Her research at KTH focuses on the integration of computational design with fabric formwork, parametric smocking, and concrete. Outside projects include interactive light sculptures & geometric installations for participatory festivals such as Burning Man and The Borderland.
2.
3. 1.
Fig. 1. Olga Voisnis, Studio 9, Cellular Automata. 2017 Fig. 2. Franco Purini: Classification by sections of spatial situations. 1968 Fig. 3. Peter Eisenman, House III, 1971. Fig. 4. Eric Swahn, Studio 9. Rule-Based Component Aggregation. 2017
4.
Studio 11 Teachers: Malin Åberg Wennerholm, Claes Sörstedt, Christina Pech
Ugly and Brutal Studio Theme The field of study is the built environment’s – usually – less desirable qualities; the ugly and the brutal. By this, we’re not aiming at previously ‘unloved projects’, now re-assessed by a new generation’s connoisseurship, but spaces and built environments that are perceived (by many or few) as truly hideous or brutal. These qualities and concepts influence the way we as architects work, design, perceive and judge our physical environment. Through looking, thinking and studying spaces around us that we (or others) do not like, spaces that we do not want to create, or not want to be in, we hope to understand how these aesthetic criteria work. It is not unknown in the field of architecture to claim one thing (usually an architectural quality) while it turns out be something very different. We all fail in architecture. We fail through lack of knowledge, lack of ambition, lack of time, or lack of talent and so on and so forth, and now we are ready to examine the unoriginal and plain together with you throughout this academic year. This studio is a place where you disappear into and return from, refreshed, more fond and respectful of the architecture of the everyday. Teaching Methodology The organization of the studio will depart from the traditional design studio. Rather than to working on the design of a building – through the usual program, plan, section, facade and model – we’ll research the idea of ugliness, as something more than the inverted concept of beauty. In this work we’ll use different tools and strategies: theoretical and historical research as well as with architectural tools such as representations, photography and photogrammetry. To avoid doing good research, seen only to be quickly forgotten, one of the basic ambitions is to organize the findings for a publication. It is important to know that the work will be examined in several alternative ways and not as regular crits. We see the student as a generator of knowledge and strongly believe that supervision should not just be a one-way transmission where knowledge is passed on, not created. Our pedagogy is based on a balanced dialogue. All students in the studio are necessary to create an excellent learning environment together.
Malin Åberg-Wennerholm MÅW is the program director of School of Architecture and lecturer. Awarded KTH’s president’s pedagogy prize 2015 and gender equality and diversity prize 2016. Her villa won the housing award of Lidingö municipality in 2016. She is very fond of the everyday.
Project 1+2 Truly Ugly, Project 3+4 Totally Brutal More often than not, architects see themselves as being, humanists and a bit like purveyors of a pragmatic utopia. Too often the architecture is not. In the two firs projects we’ll investigate places where the makers of architecture never intended to go but where they involuntarily ended up; the truly ugly. Whereas the ugly might be a result of sloppiness or shortcomings, the brutal can be more deliberate and articulate. Other times the brutal is just an unintentional outcome. Working with the concepts of ugly and of brutal will both be approached in a similar manner. An anecdotal survey of the spatial consequences of the concept. We will try to understand them through a mixture of theoretical and historical research as well as field studies of ugly or brutal structures. Architectural interventions will also be tried out to understand the inherent logic of the structures, in a traditional but very precise architectural representations on an individual level. We have anecdotal The studio hosts knowledge of expert techniques of ways of representation as well as strategies concerning norm-critical pedagogy and a strong belief in teaching methods that teach to transgress and thereby increase enthusiasm for learning. In addition to that the studio hosts expertise in architectural history and research which creates a decent platform for learning.
Claes Sörstedt CS is a lecturer at the School of Architecture in both studio projects and various courses in representation and in addition to that also writer for the architectural magazines as Arkitektur and A10. Recent research has been on architectural remains of the financial crisis of 2008 in the US. He is very fond of new techniques of representation
Christina Pech CP is an architectural historian and researcher, sharing her time between the School of Architecture and ArkDes, the Swedish Center for Architecture and Design where she is currently working with the future permanent exhibition. She is very fond of the many ways in which architecture manifests itself.
Fig. 1. Elina Ã…berg, Studio 11, Spatial Study. 2018.
Studio 12 Teachers: Isabel Dominguez, Rodrigo Muro, Per Franson
Immersive Light Studio Theme Light and architecture are intimately correlated and dependent on each other. Through a strong interdisciplinary approach joining competences of Light and Architecture, Studio 12 will dive deep into perception and human experience of a space. Not only theoretically but practically we will explore and reflect on the role of light and darkness in architecture and their interaction with volumes, planes, materials, textures and colours. The ultimate goal is to train future architects to build up competence on the use of light and darkness as materials in architecture; as well as to communicate verbally and visually in an interdisciplinary design team that contributes to create better and effective (day)light spaces in controlled ways. Participants will gain key insights and tools in project development from abstract knowledge to concrete implementation. Teaching Methodology In Studio 12 theory and practice support each other in parallel. With a strong emphasis on applying theoretical knowledge to experiments and projects, students learn through first-hand experience what is discussed in class. Students will test, verify and revise intellectual comprehension of concepts and ideas through experimentation and step-by-step project development. Observation is at the core of the method, to capture the visible through image and architectural expression. The perception of our built environment is firstly through our vision. However, through immersive experiential activities we will explore and discuss the multisensory aspects of architecture, influenced and altered by individual background and former experience.
Rodrigo Muro RM is a trained architect with masters in Lighting Design and Industrial design. Lecturer and course responsible at KTH for the masters in Architectural Lighting Design since 2011. With international experience as a practicing architect and lighting designer in different countries as Mexico, Spain and Sweden.
Project 1 Daylight Observations & (Re)Interpretations The first part of Studio 12 is an introductory, but deep module where through experience, analysis and reflection the student will be able to grasp important terminology, concepts and qualities. Daylight Observations in Vernacular Architecture and the evaluation of a perceptual daylight model are the starting points of the journey. The activities focus on experiencing the dynamics of daylight and its complexity through a visual and analytical process. Project 2 Immersive Daylight Experience In P2 the exploration of the prolonged twilight as a Nordic daylight phenomenon will be the starting point for shifting the focus towards the variation of intensity and colours of the sky. A movable immersive testing model, drawing and/or photography can be used for documentation of the findings. In the main task of P2 students will design a space that allows contemplation of presence and absence of daylight in an urban context during the Stockholm winter months. Project 3 Spatial Daylight Implementation The main task of P3 consists in a real scenario architectural project for a multidisciplinary museum for the work and legacy of ceramic artist Hertha Hillfon. Working with clay, listening to clay and exhibiting her ceramic art work are at the centre of the program. P3 is based on the acquired capacity of in depth investigation and previously gained theoretical knowledge and design experience during P1 and P2. The project has a clear focus on conceptual spatial design taking into consideration site specific light conditions. Project 4 Detailing And Evaluating Daylight The participants continue their projects from P3 and develop their concepts in scale 1:50 and down to the architectural detail. After extensive reviews of P3 and interdisciplinary tutorials with external experts in sustainable design, climate design and structure, the project development process gains an eco-tectonic focus around daylight design.
Isabel Dominguez ID is trained as an architect and an architectural lighting designer (MA) in Germany and Sweden. Before becoming a lecturer
Per Franson PF is an architect and educator. Currently Head of Education at KTH Architecture and Head of the Architectural Lighting Depart-
and master’s theses course responsible and examiner at the KTH Architectural Lighting Design department in 2013, she has worked as a lighting designer in Barcelona and London.
ment . Per has been teaching in numerous courses on all levels. 15 years of running his own practice Per has great experience of the profession and is keen on bringing practice and education closer together.
2.
1.
4.
3.
6. 7.
5.
1. The cube, Stockholm 2012, Architect: Park Associati. Photo: Anders Bengtsson. 2. Crematorium Baumschulenweg 1994. Architect: Shultes Frank / photo: Miller Taylor. 3.Sculpture by Hertha Hillfon. 4. Zollverein School Essen 2006. Architect: SANAA. Photo: jiri.filipec. 5. Serpentine Pavilion, London 2007. Kjetil Thorsen & Olafur Eliasson Photo: Atharabidi. 6. Conceptual Sketch 2017 - Immersive experience. Isabel Dominguez. 7. Serpentine Pavilion, London 2016. Architect: BIG. Photo: Radu Malasincu.
6.