Empowerment of Aesthetics

by Stig L Andersson

C ATA L O G U E F O R T H E D A N I S H PAV I L I O N AT T H E 1 4 T H I N T E R N AT I O N A L A R C H I T E C T U R E E X H I B I T I O N LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2014

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EMPOWERMENT OF AESTHETICS The official Danish contribution to the 14th International Architecture Exhibition la Biennale di Venezia

THE LEGACY OF THE 20TH

COMMISSIONER Kent Martinussen, CEO, Danish Architecture Centre

CURATOR Stig L. Andersson, professor, creative director and founding partner SLA

“The twentieth century will be chiefly rememb as an era of political conflicts or technical inve human society dared to think of the welfare o practical objective.”

THE EXHIBITION IS SUPPORTED BY

Arnold J. Toynbee, British historian (1889-1975)

The director of the 14th International Architec asked the national exhibitions to adhere to th

THANK YOU TO OSRAM, SpektraLED, New Mat, alluVial International, Egen Vinding & Datter, Bark House, Sibelco Denmark, Niels Bohr Arkivet, Museum Jorn, Mariebjerg Kirkegaard, The Hirschsprung Collection, Thorvaldsens Museum, KØS, Carsten Hoff, iGuzzini, Lokalhistorisk Arkiv i Gentofte, G.N. Brandts Haves Venner.

THE CATALOGUE IS SUPPORTED BY

By inventing The Nordic Welfare State Denma a crucial role in planning and, almost obsessiv physical setting for a 20th century modern, urb an abundance of classic modern icons in the f were created, a position held by Denmark inte

Today the massive impact of globalisation ha conditions, which initially fostered an authent and welfare culture in Denmark. That integrat for granted!

NATIONALBANKENS JUBILÆUMSFOND

COORDINATION IN VENICE Architect Troels Bruun, M+B Studio

THE EXHIBITION EMPOWERMENT OF ASTHETICS IS PART OF THE DANISH SCENARIO PROJECT DK2050 DEBATING DENMARK’S FUTURE

We have asked the internationally acclaimed D Stig L. Andersson to deploy his architectural t in order to explore the Danish architecture cu and its global aspirations for the 21st century.

In DK2050 both rationality and aesthetics are crucial powers, when creating images of our future cities and society. DK2050 is operated by the Danish Architecture Centre.

You can read more about DK2050 at www.dac.dk/dk2050 Kent Martinussen CEO, Danish Architecture Centre Commissioner of the Danish Pavilion

THE PARTNERSHIP BEHIND DK2050

Ten cities are part of the project: Aalborg, Aarhus, Ringkøbing-Skjern, Sønderborg, Fredericia, Middelfart, Odense, Kalundborg, Høje-Taastrup and Copenhagen.

Three regions are part of the project: Region of Southern Denmark, Region of Northern Denmark and The Capital Region of Denmark.

PARTNERS

ANALYSIS PARTNERS

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THE LEGACY OF THE 20TH CENTURY?

»The twentieth century will be chiefly remem­ bered by future generations not as an era of ­political conflicts or technical inventions, but as an age in which human society dared to think of the welfare of the whole human race as a prac­ tical objective.« TH Arnold J. Toynbee, British historian (1889-1975)

THE LEGACY OF THE 20 CENTURY? The director of the 14th International Architecture Biennale Rem Koolhaas has asked the national “The twentieth century will be chiefly remembered by future generations not exhibitions to adhere to the legacy of the pre­ as an era of political conflicts or technical inventions, but as an age in which vious century. human society dared to think of the welfare of the whole human race as a practical By inventing The Nordic Welfare State Den­ objective.” mark assigned a crucial role in plan­ Arnold J. Toynbee,architecture British historian (1889-1975) ning and, almost obsessively, designing in detail th The director of the 14for International Architecture modern, Biennale Rem Koolhaas has the physical setting a 20th century asked the national exhibitions to adhere to the legacy of the previous century. urban, democratic lifestyle. Thus, an abundan­ ce of classic modern icons in the field of design By inventing The Nordic Welfare State Denmark assigned architecture and architecture were created, a position held by a crucial role in planning and, almost obsessively, designing in detail the Denmark internationally for decades. physical setting for a 20th century modern, urban, democratic lifestyle. Thus, abundance Today the ofmassive impact of globalisation an classic modern icons in the field of design and architecture has transformed the very conditions, were created, a position held by Denmark which internationally for decades. initially fostered an authentic integration Today the massive impact of globalisation of architecture and welfare culture in has Den­transformed the very conditions, initiallycan fostered an authentic mark. Thatwhich integration no longer be takenintegration of architecture and welfare culture in Denmark.

That integration can no longer be taken for granted! for granted!

We have asked the internationally acclaimed Danish landscape architect Stig L Andersson to We have asked the internationally acclaimed Danish landscape architect deploy his architectural theories and artistic Stig L. Andersson to deploy his architectural theories and artistic practice practice order to Danish archi­ in order toinexplore theexplore Danish the architecture culture of the previous century tecture culture of the previous and its and its global aspirations for thecentury 21st century. global aspirations for the 21st century.

Kent KentMartinussen Martinussen CEO, Danish Architecture Centre CEO, DanishofArchitecture Centre Commissioner the Danish Pavilion

Commissioner of the Danish pavilion

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by Stig L Andersson

C ATA L O G U E F O R T H E D A N I S H PAV I L I O N AT T H E 1 4 T H I N T E R N AT I O N A L A R C H I T E C T U R E E X H I B I T I O N LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2014

P ublished by FORLAGET WUNDERBUCH

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Empowerment of Aesthetics

To solve this, I returned to the basis of my thinking and my practise – a prac­tise born out of working with nature, art and architecture for the last 20 years, and a thinking born out of my foundation in art history, science, landscape architecture, Japanese culture and quantum physics.

What quantum physics has taught me, is that the world in its essence adheres to the concept of complementarity: Everything has two sides. We cannot see them both at once. But the understanding of both is necessary if we are to fully understand the given phenomenon. I realized that that is exactly the challenge for the otherwise very ambitious DK2050-scenario pro­ ject of the Danish Government: That it only looks at one side of architecture: The rational, the scientific, the quantifiable. And that it has forgotten or repressed the exact complementary to the rational: The aesthetic.

By the aesthetic I do not mean the beautiful or the visually pleasing; it is not about how things look. In my term, aesthetics is the entire sensory apparatus of humans: All our senses and all our feelings; that what makes us feel, sense, wonder, discover, think, reflect, imagine and lead us towards new recognitions and new dialogues with each other. At once the most

Welcome.

This is the catalogue for the exhibition Empowerment of Aesthetics in the Danish pavilion at the 14th International ­Architecture Exhibition in Venice 2014.

Empowerment of Aesthetics evolved out of the dilemma of demands that was set for the exhibition in the Danish pavilion. When I accepted the position as curator for the Danish pavilion, I was asked to include two seemingly opposite themes in my exhibition: The first was the single theme put forward by Rem Koolhaas, the curator of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition, to the national pavilions called Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014; the history of national architecture for the last 100 years.

The second theme I was asked to include, was the Danish Government’s ambitious national project called DK2050, a project involving 10 cities, 3 local governments, 3 mini­ stries and several private foundations and companies, aimed at calculating and thinking up scenarios for how we can build a better development for Denmark from now until 2050.

So: The Modernity of the last 100 years. And Denmark in the year 2050.

In one concept. It seemed we would have to make a schizophrenic exhibition.

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re-learn how to create a stronger and more complete architecture that can help shape a better world in the future: By embracing the concept of complementarity in all its forms. Re-learning from modernity, so to speak.

The aim of this exhibition is not to recreate a romantic vision of the world; it is not a backward looking argument that decries the rationality and the science of modernity. On the contrary; as stated in the concept of complementarity, I believe that the rational is exactly as important and essential as aesthetics. The problem is that today we look exclusively at rational arguments when making decisions. It is this balance that is 足 unsustainable. The one is not more important than the other; only to足 gether can we get the full understanding of the world.

This exhibition is an enthusiastic exploration of all that architecture was and all that it can be. An absorbing tale of the power of architecture when it opens up and embraces the complementarity of the world: The rational as well as the aesthetic. It is this power of aesthetics that I show in the large room of the pavilion: A sample of senses, feelings and wonders organized in the order of nature: The abiotic, non-living matter like wind, water, light, temperature and sand that together with the living matter, the biotic, forms everything.

But first we start with the very fundamentals of modernity, which in

i足ndividual and the most universally human thing there is.

And I realized that the problem with the DK2050 scenarios also was the problem for the Modernity and for the modern world at large: That we have repressed the importance of aesthetics and instead solely rely on rationality as that which shall guide us forward. This approach has failed us for the last hundreds of years. And it will continue to fail us unless we start taking seriously the essential complementary to the rational: The aesthetic.

When I realized this, I started search足 ing for periods of time in history when the aesthetic aspect was not repressed, but rather seen as a valuable and essential power to create a better world for all. These small pockets of periods do exist, although we have largely written their meaning, their importance and their knowledge out of our modern history. It is these that I have drawn to light and exhibited in the one part of this exhibition called Fundamentals.

I believe that it is actually in these small fractures in history that an alternative form of modernity can be found.

That it is in the repressed aesthetics of history that the key to understanding another, dynamic modernity lies.

One that not only tells us important but forgotten things about ourselves; but which also can be used as a new guidance for the future. I believe that it is from these aesthetic fundamentals of history that we as architects can

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a kind of inert system where hierarchy and stillness reigned.

With its return to the ancient logicalmathematical rules as the only true measurement for art and science, the Renaissance put an end to the Medie­ val form of reasoning that had primarily been based on intuitive and empirical feelings and sensations.

With the Renaissance, the Europeans turned towards the rational, the evidence-based, as that which would lead them into a new and better world. The vague, the suspected, the emotional and the aesthetic as ways to reach new insight were repressed. And would only be found again for a short period hundreds of years later.

my view has its root in the European Renaissance and, in the case of Denmark, especially in the early 19th century and onwards.

The Renaissance It was during the European Renaissance that art and architecture broke away from previous traditions and their ties to power. Art and architecture became independent in their own rights, and artists and architects could for the first time in European history study form and composition without having to concern themselves with anything other than the object studied. The foundation for a new and auto­nomous language, a concep­tual framework for describing art and archi­tecture, was conceived. The basis for abstraction in art and architecture was formulated: Modernity.

Although the Renaissance did set artists and architects free from the church and the state, it did not free them from references. Instead of immersing themselves in the new ­ way that life was lived and learned, the artists turned instead towards the antique and the Greek ideal of beauty; towards the Platonic vision and Euclidean learning. On this basis, the one-point perspective brought art and architecture into its own space. All objects, both plants and rocks, became shaped by the architect and used as building materials. The objects were put into the one-point perspective and spatially organized by the ­architect in

The Golden Age In Denmark it was the Golden Age (1800-1850) that would discover the balance between the two complementary perspectives: The rational and the aesthetic. The Danish Golden Age refused to be limited by the Renaissance’s conventions of the rational and the logical as the only form of truth. It was a time that wove subjects and topics together which had not previously been compatible: Scien­tific knowledge with artistic impression; art with politics, poetry with mathematics, ­nature with architecture.

Aesthetics and rationality are actually two radically different paths to knowledge and recognition. One way, the aesthetic, is empirical knowledge and experience through sensory

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C­ openhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which shaped the develop­ ment of modern atomic physics.

Around 1914, however, a radical new idea had started to form in Bohr.

Bohr describes his idea in a letter to his friend and colleague, the German scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955), after a skiing trip in Norway in February-March 1927, where Bohr for the first time formulates his idea. This idea was the complementarity perspective.

Bohr’s complementarity perspective states that if two aspects of a phenomenon are both necessary for a complete description of this pheno­ menon, even though the two aspects logically exclude one another, they are complementary. Each aspect is equally valid on its own. But both must be part of the total description of the pheno­ menon. Bohr used the example of light to describe his perspective: Light can be described as both a particle and a wave. But both descriptions are correct in themselves. But they also mutually exclude one another – you cannot see light as wave and as a particle simul­ taneously.

Einstein never accepted Bohr’s perspective, even though the two friends continued their conversations about the nature of complementarity for the rest of their lives. Einstein could not accept the philosophical uncertainty that lies inherent in Bohr’s complementarity perspective: That there can never only be one side of a story; that there can never only be one truth.

e­ xperiences. The other way is common sense, the deductive practice in which conclusions are logically obtained on the basis of pre-established and wellknown terms. The Golden Age saw the two views as interwoven – as two inseparable complementary dimensions, both of which were necessary for a complete understanding of the world.

It was this complementarity which the great men of the Golden Age embraced in their work, often reaching across several professional bounda­ ries, bringing together elements from many different disciplines. The Danish discoverer of electro magnetism, H.C. Ørsted (1777-1851) for example, was both a physicist, a poet, a chemist, a linguist and a philosopher. His and his contemporaries’ method consisted of putting things together that previously had nothing to do with each other – like electricity and magnetism – and from them create completely new knowledge.

But the protagonists of the Golden Age did not know that what they had discovered was complementarity. The concept was first formulated a century later by a Danish nuclear physicist while skiing.

Niels Bohr The Danish nuclear scientist Niels Bohr (1885-1962) is world famous for his pioneering Bohr Model of the atom, which founded the understanding of the atomic structure and for which Bohr received the Nobel Prize in 1922, and for his devising of the special

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before the understanding of complementarity is truly advanced again.

In the spring of 1951, the Danish artist Asger Jorn (1914-73), from his home in the Danish town Silkeborg, writes a short letter to Niels Bohr.

With the letter Jorn encloses the first draft of his book The Order of Nature (Naturens Orden), which 11 years ­later will become Jorn’s main treatise on the understanding of art and the naive worldview of modern science.

In the letter Jorn asks Bohr for advice. Jorn would like to know if he is correct in applying Bohr’s complementarity perspective outside of the micro world of physics – in the macro world.

Bohr’s perspective, writes Jorn, aligns with what Jorn himself has experienced through his work in art. In Jorn’s view, however, Bohr’s perspective on a two-way complementarity lacks a third dimension: The aesthe­tic. Hence, according to Jorn, it is not enough to talk about dual complementarity; complementary must be a three-way split: Triolectics. It is this perspective which later has become known as Jorn’s Silkeborg Interpretation.

Niels Bohr never answers Jorn. Perhaps because he could not decipher Jorn’s erratic handwriting. But perhaps also because Jorn’s artistic and aesthetic perspective really was too alien for the aging scientist, for whom the idea of​​ complementarity in the macro world must have been unimaginable.

But if Bohr (and Jorn) had only glanced out their windows, they could

But if Einstein had looked outside the narrow world of quantum mecha­ nics, he would have seen that in fact there was nothing new in Bohr’s perspective. Complementarity runs like an underground river through history – across ages and across continents: From the Danish Golden Age with its romantic view of the world; via Japanese culture that for a thousand years has known about the impossibility of seeing everything clearly at once; all the way back to Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) who in his encyclopaedia ­Naturalis Historia gathered the entire world’s knowledge, from botany, zoology and astronomy to art history, psychology and gardening, in one perspective.

The new in Bohr’s thinking was that he was the first to identify and name the complementarity perspective, and the first to prove its validity in the micro world. In my perspective that is amazing: With one stroke, Bohr’s perspective changed the history of ­ Europe, challenged the classical philo­ sophies, and effectively questioned the Renaissance’s paradigm of reason.

Asger Jorn Niels Bohr spent the rest of his life on the philosophical questions of the complementarity perspective. In talks, in correspondences, in public discussions and in articles we see Bohr constantly in conversation with other scientists trying to further develop the concept of complementarity. But it will take a letter from an unexpected source

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You simply cannot apply the one perspective, the one method on the other.

But the built and the grown are also mutually interdependent: Brandt knows that it is only by ensuring that both entities are given equal value, equal validity that architecture can appear in all its force as a complete description. In his work, Brandt for the first time combines the two complementary entities of architecture. Not by subjugating the built environment to the grown; but by using the built and the grown as equal entities – each in their own right – in his designs.

It is fascinating to see Brandt (who obviously at that time knew nothing of Niels Bohr’s complementarity perspective) working with exactly the same issues in his garden and in his theory, that Bohr is dealing with in the world of quantum physics: The clear vs. the (intentionally) unclear, the importance of the individual perspective, the need for the complete description of a phenomenon (rather than just the one part of the complementarity duality), etc.

I see Brandt’s discovery as one of the most revolutionary and most fundamental revelations that has been made about architecture in the last 100 years: Without knowing it, Brandt had proven that architecture too in its essence is complementary. Architecture is not just the built environment: The built environment constitutes only half of the complete essence of architecture. The other half, the grown matter, must be seen as equally important,

have seen in practice that the complementarity perspective indeed was applicable in the macro world. This had already been proven by the Danish gardener and landscape architect G.N. Brandt.

G.N. Brandt G.N. Brandt (1878-1945) proves the complementarity perspective in t­heory, with his book from 1917, Water and Rockery Plants (Vand- og Stenhøjs­ planter), as well as in practice, with his Own Garden (laid out from 1914 onwards). Through his work as a gardener and a scholar of nature, Brandt unknow­ ingly discovers that architecture (just like light, with its wave/ particle duality) in its essence consists of two complimentary entities: The Built Environment (buildings, structures, con­­structions) and The Grown Environment (plants, trees, nature). These two ­entities are at the same time mutually exclusive and mutually interdependent.

The built and the grown are mutually exclusive because they are two radically different ways of looking at and working with architecture: It is the structures of constructions opposite the systems of nature; the hierarchical subdivisions of buildings opposite the non-hierarchical order of the garden; the dead building materials of bricks and mortar opposite the living matter of plants and trees; the finality of a fi ­ nished house opposite the ever-changing process of a landscape.

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a given phenomenon to achieve the complete understanding. But he was wrong when he insisted that this only applies to the micro world. As Jorn and Brandt has shown, the complementarity perspective is universal and thus also applies in the macro world.

Jorn was right in this aspect of his criti­ cism of Bohr. But Jorn was wrong in his idea about triolectics, when he tried to define the aesthetic as something outside complementarity. Aesthetics is not outside rationality – it is its complementary opposite.

Rather than invent new triple complementarities, we should instead redefine the dual complementarity pairs. In my view, the most basic complementarity is the aesthetic and the rational. Only by including both perspectives, the aesthetic, the sensuous and the sensed, as well as the rational, the sensible and the scientific, can we arrive at the full under­standing of all phenomena.

equally essential. Architecture is both the built and the grown. Only by acknowledging this can we achieve the full understanding of architecture.

The Venice Interpretation It is against this background of historical fundamentals that the Danish ­pavilion, as well as my own architectural practice over the past 20 years, rests. As with all things in the world, my use of these historical fundamentals is complementary: Some things I agree with, other things I disagree with. Here, my sampled considera­ tions, my theoretical reflections as well as my practical methods are ­gathered in a comprehensive perspective on architecture. This perspective I call The Venice Interpretation.

The Venice Interpretation is a personal reflection on the possibility of architecture, the essence of modernity, and the possible future we can create for ourselves if we remember and recognize the fundamental complementarity of our world. The Venice Interpretation is not the truth. But a perspective. My perspective.

The Venice Interpretation can be summarized in five equal perspectives:

The perspective on the empowerment of aesthetics For too long the rational has dominated our world and the way we make decisions. This is not a criticism or a rejection of the rational, which, as we have seen, is one of the two essential aspects of my complementarity perspective.

The problem is that we have forgotten the other important aspect that is complementary to it: The aesthetic.

As in the Golden Age, we need a ­reinstatement of the force and the value of aesthetics as the path to recog­nition,

The perspective on complementarity The principle of complementarity is essential, and applies both to the micro world and to macro world. Bohr was right when he spoke of the necessity of seeing both aspects, both sides, of

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ing that the built and the grown environment are complementary with same and equal value – that they ­simultaneously require each their own order, while they both are neces­sary for the other’s full understanding – can architecture redeem its full, amazing and quantum leaping nature.

to knowledge to action. We must rediscover our belief in the power of aesthetics as equally important as the rational when we determine how we want our world to be in the future.

Only the two together, the rational and the aesthetic, can provide us with a complete understanding of the world to base our decisions on.

The perspective on unity and division The essential difference between the grown and the built environment is most evident in the relationship between unity and entirety.

The built environment is about entireties. These entireties are then subdivided into smaller units and ranked and placed in a structure based on a certain hierarchy. An example could be a house whose entirety is sub­ divided into rooms, which are then hierarchically structured according to their importance (since the main hall is seen as more important than, say, the closet, then the main hall’s design is more central and important and defining to the overall design of the house than the closet). The aim is to create the perfect built structure; the perfect man-made order.

The grown environment, however, does not look at entireties, but at unities; not at subdivisions, but divisions; not at structures, but at systems; not at hierarchy, but at the non-hierarchical; not at perfection, but at imperfection. An example could be a garden whose overall unity is divided into a system of smaller units that all have equal importance and that

The perspective on the built and the grown environment As Brandt showed in his work, architecture consists of a dual complementarity between the built environment as opposed to the grown environment; of the dead, abiotic matter as opposed to the living, the biotic matter; the buildings, the structures and the constructions as opposed to organic systems, plants and trees.

The built and the grown environments are complementary: They are two fundamentally different ways of working with architecture. Ever since Euclid’s treatise Elements from 300 BC, traditional architects have treated the grown environment the same way as they did the built environment: The architects believed that they could just transfer the order of the built environment onto the grown. And that nature would be tamed.

But the architects were wrong. The built and the grown environments are not the same and therefore cannot be treated in the same way. The grown environment has its own order: The order of nature. Only by understand-

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Conversation. I use conversation to constantly approach new recognition.

This method (like the methods of Bohr, Jorn and Brandt) involves mixing and entering into dialogue with a great variety of different professional disciplines and alternate worlds and alternative perspectives. Architecture cannot and must not stand alone. Architecture cannot only be in a conversation with itself. It must be in dialogue, in constant conversation with the world.

all in their essence are equivalent to the ­nature of the overall unity.

So while we in the built environment may well talk about the most important room in a house, this makes no sense in the grown environ­ment that is organized according to the order of nature. Which is more important to nature: The cicadas or the lemon trees? The scent or the sound?

The question is meaningless because it misunderstands the order of nature and the order of the grown.

To be continued This is my view. This is my perspective. On the following pages you will find a documentation of the exhibition ­ Empowerment of Aesthetics that represents Denmark at the 14th Inter­ national Architecture Exhibition in Venice 2014.

In it, I present my argument for the value and the power of aesthe­ tics in architecture; a verification that this aesthetic power is only achieved through nature; and a claim that it is only by conjoining the two complementary elements, the built and the grown, that we can achieve the full understanding of architecture and its potential to create a better world.

The perspective on method Only when one understands these four fundamental perspectives can one ­aspire for the design of a new architecture with an aesthetic force with which one can aim to restore the balance between the grown environment and the built environment. So, how does one do that? My method, developed over the last 20 years, is especially­founded on three key principles: Sampling. I take matter from what I have seen, what I have experienced, what I have sensed. As well as from what I have read, what I have studied, what I have learned. And then I sample it all (like the artists and the scientists of the Golden Age) into a new unity, a new understanding, a new narrative, in a system based on the order of nature.

Personal matter. I always use the personal perspective as a starting ­ point. It is only the personal vision, the personal view of the world that is interesting. The objective is irrelevant.

Welcome to Empowerment of Aesthetics.

Stig L Andersson Curator of the Danish pavilion Venice, June 2014

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The Pavilion TheDanish Danish Pavilion

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Curator’s statement not about how this world will look or scientifically add up. But how we want it to feel. To sense.

What you will find here is Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein; white light and dark woods; Asger Jorn and G.N. Brandt; earth and sand and pines; the fundamentals of the unique dynamic Danish modernity; and my personal suggestion for what sensuous and ae­sthetic atmospheres we must form the basis of our future on.

I invite you to come and explore the empowerment of aesthetics with me.

And I hope that you will remember that all you see, hear, feel and touch has its basis in helium and hydrogen, the fundamental complementary of our world, and 14 billion years of wonder.

As children we played with the transistor radio. We tuned in to the signals between radio stations and listened to the noise. Years later I realized that it was the energy of Big Bang we had tuned in to. On the radio we heard it as sound waves. With another device we could have seen the same energy as particles of light. The concept of complementarity experienced in a small summerhouse in the countryside of Denmark.

Big Bang created the conditions for the formation of the two simplest ele­ ments in the universe: Helium and hydrogen. From this simple starting point almost 14 billion years away we get this biennale and this exhibition; we get you and I; our bodies, our thoughts and our feelings; the cicadas, the chicories, the cerebellum; all there has been, all there is, and all there ever will be. I find this fascinating.

This exhibition in the Danish pavilion is called Empowerment of Aesthetics.

It is an attempt to explore the complementarity between this fascinating aesthetic approach to the world and the purely rational and scientific approach, which for too long has dominated our world. Thus, this exhibition is an attempt to reinstate aesthetics as a fundamental equal to the rational when we plan our future world. It is

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A complementary approach it is not possible to talk about, evaluate or judge amenities by the same criteria as we do utility.

In the one room I have gathered a collection of historical evidence, a per­sonal research project, of this approach as it occurred throughout Danish modernity – from the Golden Age and onwards – until it was finally discredited and left for good with the breakthrough of the modern welfare state.

In the other room I present you with my own hands-on experiment with how we can use this historical knowledge today. Here I introduce a selection of materials, components and spatialities that approach the aesthetic atmospheres that I believe our future world should be founded on. And which our decisions today and tomorrow should be based on.

In this passage you find: The Danish Constitution. The Danish Environmental Act. The Danish Planning Law. The Danish Building Law. The Danish Renewable Energy Act. The Danish Energy Law. The Danish Nature Protection Act. The Danish Housing Law. One thousand pages of pure rationality based on logical evaluations and scientific reasoning. It is upon this framework of laws and revisions of laws that our politicians are expected to make their decisions on how to create a better world.

Quite frankly, I find this idea absurd. No wonder that our politicians constantly make decisions which have to be re-made! Not necessarily because their decisions are wrong. But because the decisions – despite the overwhelming factual information and scientific data available – are made on an incomplete basis. Because they are made only with regards to the rational, the measurable and technocratic vocabulary.

What we need is to re-find the complementary approach with which to make our decisions more sustainable.

An approach that creates a balance to the sole domination of rationality. An approach that can open up yet again the missing dimension of aesthetics as an important aspect when we make our decisions. For that we need a language that is founded on amenities. Because

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Fundamentals environ­ment must be seen as complementary to the built environment to achieve the full understanding of archi­tecture.

In this room I have gathered the most important artefacts of the Danish modernity. These artefacts not only tell the story of this very special branch of the absorbing Danish modernity; they have also been fundamental for me and my architectural practice for the last 20 years. I invite you to come explore the fundamentals of the Danish modernity with me.

According to Rem Koolhaas, the direc­ tor of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition, the year 1914 serves as the starting point for the narrative of modernity’s victory march through the last century. I believe that the fundamentals of modernity must be found much earlier: In the European Renaissance and, in the case of Denmark, especially in the 19th century and onwards.

Contrary to popular belief, I do not believe that modernity was a complete break from the past. Nothing in our history ever is. In reality, history is an ever-changing sequence of ideas, periods and styles that blossom, fade, die, and blossom again. A neverending series of requiems.

The fundamentals of the Danish modernity must thus be found in se­ve­ral sources: In the Golden Age of the early 19th century when scientists, poets, artists and architects to­gether discovered that the aesthetic and the rational are equal values; in the early 20th century when the nuclear scientist Niels Bohr discovered the complementarity perspective; in the works of the artist Asger Jorn who wrote and painted the insights of Bohr and his colleagues; and in the thoughts of the gardener and landscape architect G. N. Brandt who discovered that the grown

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9 Tales 9 Absorbing Absorbing Tales

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One morning I found some letters discussing the new order of nature. Very interesting

All these books and all these letters are about the complementarity perspective.

In April 1927 Niels Bohr writes a letter to his friend Albert Einstein. In the letter Bohr asks Einstein to comment on his perspective on complementarity that Bohr has only just started formulating this spring after a skiing trip to Norway: That in order to get the full description of the phenomenon light, one has to look at it both as a particle and as a wave. We call this The Copen­hagen Interpre­ tation of the Theory of Relativity. With his letter Bohr rejects the hitherto accepted dogma that things had to be either-or; rather they are both-and. Bohr believes that light is both particle and wave. Einstein never accep­ted this perspective.

(Bohr’s perspective, however, had already been accepted knowledge in Japanese culture for several hundred years before Bohr made his discovery. Visible in the Japan­ese garden.)

In 1951 the artist Asger Jorn writes a letter to Niels Bohr. In the letter Jorn asks Bohr whether Bohr’s complementary perspective is also applicable to the macroworld, i.e. outside quantum physics.

(This perspective, however, had already been shown by the landscape architect G.N. Brandt several years before: Theore­tically in his book Water and Rockery Plants in 1917; and practically in his Own Garden from 1914 onwards.)

In 2011 I materialize the Bose–Einstein condensate in a Cloud in Copenhagen. Here you see water in its three states: Crystal, fog and liquid. But also in a fourth state: A tangled mist where all atoms behave alike and become

a unity. It is coincidences, transitions. The principle of indefinite uncertainty. Nobody knows. We all guess.

In 1962 Jorn writes about his critique of Bohr’s complementary perspective in his book The Order of Nature. In the book, Jorn ­argues that the embedded fallacy of modern science prevents Bohr from seeing a third complementary perspective: The aesthe­ tic. We call this The Silkeborg Interpretation of the Copenhagen Interpretation of the Theory of Relativity.

In 1850, in the absolute twilight of the Danish Golden Age, the scientist H.C. Ørsted publishes his book The Spirit in Nature (Aanden i Naturen). In the book Ørsted constantly alternates between the irrational and the rational, between the poetic and the scienti­ fic. Ørsted values the learned, the perceived, the visual, that which we can se with our own eyes, as essential in verifying the validity of his experiments.

In 2014 I write a letter to the Danish philosopher David Favrholdt (1931-2012) in the form of a grid. Here I describe Asger Jorn’s theory of a special Nordic philosophy which is so powerful that it will override everything else in the Western world. In the letter I ask Favrholdt whether I am right in assuming that empowerment of aesthetics is this new Nordic philosophy. We call this The Venice Interpretation of the Silkeborg Interpretation of the Copenhagen Interpretation of the Theory of Relativity.

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J.Th. Lundbye in The Yellow Mud Garden with Roots

A tree consists of three parts: Its foliage, its trunk, and its roots. All three parts are important for the aesthetic feeling of nature. But of these three I find the roots most intri­guing, most secret. Telling us about the life, the growth, the narrative of the tree itself.

Each tree has two types of roots: The stabilizing roots are those that, according to the landscape architect G.N. Brandt, provide us with the strongest aesthetic feeling of nature. These are the roots we can see; that show us how the tree has grown; that show us the narrative of the tree’s individual life.

And then there are the nourishing roots, the ones that nourish the tree, that allow the tree to breathe deep down in the earth (branches are roots too: Stretching into the sun, breathing photosynthesis).

When the painters and the scientists of the Danish Golden Age went out into the forest, they gathered and painted samples of things that awoke the poetic and sensuous feeling of nature in them. This was the twisted roots, the weathered trunks and the gnarled bran­ ches: They awoke the scientist’s and the artist’s recognition of themselves, of how they understood the world and how they sensed it.

Nowhere is the bridged complementarity of the Golden Age between the rational and the aesthetic clearer than in the roots.

Take a look at the painter J.Th. Lundbye’s (1818-1848) sketch of the twisted tree roots.

See how Lundbye’s pencil has been twisted and dragged around the paper to capture the movement that over many many years has formed and shaped the roots into being.

Later, Lundbye will sample this sketch into another painting and use the sketch in

a combination of other samples from other places as the foundation for that painting’s entire composition. A painted sample of the world that tells the story of the grown environment, of the order of nature, and of the climate and the weather that has created this expression that we value and appreciate as aesthetic.

In Roots (2014) I have used trees with the most crooked roots, the most expressive trunks, and the most individual story, to sample into this new complex where scientists and business executives will thrive. The idea is as old as Lundbye. We have learned from the Golden Age by understanding the story of the trees, by understanding the processes of nature. This age-old knowledge we sample into the nature design. But the expression is contemporary – with a strong and mutually enhancing complementarity between the solid, geometrical building, and the grown, living nature.

Earth, water and roots are connected. The matter, in which the roots grow, is the matter of which our civilization is made. Of clay, of mud, of earth. Formed into tools that make our life comfortable, rich and evoke our senses.

Maybe they both tell the same story: The tree with its crooked roots and its hundredyear-old life shaped by the wind, the rain and the soil? And the woman who takes a handful of mud, in which the tree has grown, and forms it into pottery. The story of nature. The story of life.

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Gnarled branches reach out for the weather and scratch the Welkin – What a wonderful sound

In his book A Danish Meteorology (Skildring af Veirligets Tilstand i Danmark) from 1826, the botanist and scientist J.F. Schouw divides the clouds into different categories according to how they look. He brings the clouds down into a system, down into his books, to be utilized to create a feeling of nature.

In his art work Sky – Building (Himmel – Bygning) for Thisted High School in 1978, the artist Kasper Heiberg (1928-1984) uses curved profiles like branches to try to frame the sky and pull it down into the schoolyard with clouds and light.

In the architect M.G. Bindesbøll’s sketchbook we find profiles of the barrel-vaulted roof of Thorvaldsens Museum that do the same.

They, along with the dissolved overall plan composition, are what make Thorvaldsens ­Museum belong more to the plant world than the architectural world. It was the German architect and archaeologist Franz Christian Gau who taught Bindesbøll to let go of previous styles of architecture, and instead rely on his own expression, his own sensing and interpretation of the world in his design. The result is a sampling of all that Bindesbøll has seen; the Parthenon, Pompeii, the snake grass of Møns Klint, etc.

In his book Depiction of Nature (En letfattelig Naturskildring) from 1832, J.F. Schouw describes the connectedness of all things: Birds, animals and plants that all awake the aesthetic. With an implicit hint to H.C. Ørsted, Schouw describes the order and the spirit of nature through both individual ­experiences as well as scientific studies.

J.Th. Lundbye paints a sample of the world: A cloud in a tree top. That is, I believe,

Lundbye’s best work; a sketch of how the tree reaches out to catch the cloud, how the cloud tries to evade, and how tree and cloud are intertwined; how the grown, the crooked, reaches out towards the sky, the world; and the cloud, which is fluffy, on its way out and into another state of being, and which is the livelihood of said tree.

Fantastic! Cloud and bark.

It is the same striving for the feeling of nature, for fluffiness, for water and clouds in all their sensory might, that can be found in the project Five Urban Spaces (2005). Here each urban space is defined by its own content. The changes between the spaces are not physical; instead the changes between the spaces are sensed intuitively as mood changes, as atmospheres – as the natural order of each individual space.

It is grouping and classification. The reaching for the clouds; and the striving to pull the sky down to the earth. Rationality and dreams in one. Complementarity.

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H.C. Ørsted writes, late afternoon the 21st of July 1820, a short four-page thesis on the alternate struggle

This is about the genesis of the world.

You take an extremely big space. You take helium, you take hydrogen; two elements that cannot react with each other.

Then 14 billion years pass. And you go from paper and pen to computer; from horsedrawn carriages and footwear to supersonic airplanes; and from sticks and rifles to the atomic bomb. What this theorem tells us, is that if we take two elements that have nothing to do with each other, put them in a big space and wait long enough, something amazing and unfathomable will happen!

On the 21th July 1820, the scientist H.C. Ørsted conducts electric current together with a compass and notices the compass needle deflect. Suddenly two phenomena, which previously were believed to have nothing whatsoever to do with each other (electricity and magnetism), are now combined in the single concept of electromagnetism. H.C. Ørsted publicizes his finding in a four-page poetic text without a single mathematical formula. And thus formulates the foundation on which the entire quantum mechanic will develop. The foundation of modernity.

In 1957 (on my day of birth) Asger Jorn and French artist and theorist Guy Debord sample different newspaper clippings, maga­ zine articles and book covers together in what will become a small book. They use elements that have nothing to do with each other, but which together form a new narrative about their present: Fin de ­Copenhague.

Debord is Jorn’s assistant. Jorn climbs a ladder and throws paint over their remixed texts, pictures, collages. Two years

later Jorn and Debord resume their colla­ boration with the book Mémoires. This time Jorn is Debord’s assistant. A form of changing cooperation also known in the Danish Golden Age where the artists constantly borrowed and used from each other’s work.

It is the power of collaboration and its ability to create social values, to share and comprehend, a way of understanding the world through relations.

In the project New Order of Nature (2010 onwards) I also put different things together, which have nothing to do with each other.

With a site plan that is only indicative and that lets it be up to people themselves to use the space as they please, based on the findings and the living conditions of the site.

From this evolves a completely new form of nature, a new society. A simple starting point, evolving with the order of nature.

A new form of nature that shows the immense power of nature, both utility-wise and aesthe­tically.

The creation of a world. The new starting condition for urban planning and modern life.

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The Meeting with M.G. Bindesbøll gave unexpected answer to the puzzle

In his article The Coming Garden (Den kommende Have) from 1931 landscape architect G.N. Brandt argues that nature is a counterweight to the modern city. Thus, modern cities must consist of two complementary properties: The built environment (abiotic matter, buildings, constructions, infrastruc­ ture) and the grown environment (biotic matter, the living atmosphere, the urban nature, the sensuous experiences and the bodily cognitions). Only by including both of these properties at once can we understand our city in its unity.

In G.N. Brandt’s Own garden (1914 and onwards) we can see this complementarity perspective. Looking at the site plan, we see a composition where the house is no longer merely a house in a garden. Instead we see a kind of new nature in which there also is a built construction. This is a radically new way of using nature and building: The building no longer defines how the garden composition should be; the house is an integral part of the garden as an equal part of the spatial composition. The hierarchy of archi­ tecture is dissolved and a new model for planning and architecture is devised.

The five individual garden rooms are also equal and non-hierarchical. This division is a classical order, a classical clarity – just like the plan for M.G. Bindesbøll’s Thorvaldsens Museum (1848). But when we look at the spatiality of the two plans together we see a surprising similarity: Both Brandt and Bindesbøll are rounded by neoclassicism; but both know that they also have to give up classicism in order to advance into the modernity defined by the physicists. Their site plans are

therefore classical in their basis; but with a whole new way of organizing each unit’s contribution of atmosphere and sensuousness. The rooms and gardens are thus not subdivided in a hierarchical structure that forms a whole, but divided into an equal system that together forms a unity.

In The Hydroglyph Park (2001) the same is applicable: A floating and changing composition, where the smallest units of the park together form a unity. Here the smallest unit is the same as the unity in its total: Water flow.

Only by realizing that the built environment and the grown environment are complementary to each other can we get the full and fantastic description of what architecture is and what it can do. The dead matter and the living matter. The sensation of soaring buildings and infrastructure; and the power of aesthetics, the expression of growth, the sensuousness of matter, the sun, rain, water and light, and the narrative value of plants.

All this the Japanese garden understood 800 years ago. In Japan I have seen centuryold cherry trees bloom for ten glorious days and fade away again – like the white butter­ flies of Inger Christensen’s (1935-2009) poe­ try. Here the narrative of the plants and the aesthetic feeling of nature is incredibly strong.

All people understand this – across cultures and across centuries. We all know the power of nature. We all have a body that exists in nature. This is the basis of empowerment of aesthetics.

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Apollo visits The City Dune in mid June this year after three weeks in a cocoon

How do we enhance the experience of a place, an event, a meeting? How do we stretch the moment of Now for as long as possible? Is that even possible?

In The City Dune (2010), the complemen­ tarity to the built environment is the grown environment. Both are necessary to understand the whole project. That is fundamental in my view of architecture: Learning from the order of nature and quantum mechanics.

The site of The City Dune is in the middle of the city. Here I have created a sample, a piece of new nature; not as an image, but as a process.

The City Dune tells the story of the Nordic weather, how the wind alters the sand and the snow, how the Danish word for dune – mile – in the ancient Nordic language meant both sand and snow, because the sand crystal and the snow crystal shared the same spatial characteristics, and how The City Dune has learned from this in the way it is shaped by the strong winds of the central Copen­hagen harbour.

The City Dune is not created in accordance with the perfection and the geometry of Euclid but in accordance with the order of nature. The buildings and nature are equal parts of the spatial composition. The two building volumes, like two masses of trees, create divisions and classifications of different spatialities, different spatial sequences, states, atmospheres. The Dune shaped in collaboration between building and terrain; a spatial unity made of several spatial units.

All are the same; they just look slightly different. Like clouds.

The result is a new place in the city. A new context. A new and created genius loci.

To be sensed and experienced with your own body on the local climate’s conditions as you move through the space, followed by the white Apollo.

To The City Dune, Apollo comes. Obsessed, as we know from Ovid, as he is with the beauty of Daphne. To experience the process of the space, its flowering and withering.

Like the flight time of butterflies. Like Daphne turning into nature. A short moment in time – stretched to its sensuous and aesthetic maximum.

In Danish, a period of time is called tidsrum, literally: timespace. Learning from Asger Jorn’s timespace-sketch from his book The Order of Nature (1961) shows this effort in a small diagram. It is the body, nature, time, changes, the spatial, movement, the aesthe­ tic that stretches the now. In life as in architecture.

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What I discovered in G.N. Brandt’s little grey box of slides

What did I find when I looked into the private collection of slides of landscape architect G.N. Brandt? I found images of the garden of the future: The garden of the future will be scenic. It will be 100 per cent green. It will be nature.

It will not be architectural, says Brandt (to which I reply: No of course not: We know that nature and the built environment are complementary to each other).

The garden of the future will be made very quickly, very cheaply, very effectively.

The garden of the future will be cheap to maintain. The garden of the future will be rich in amenities and leisure.

The garden of the future will allow for the individual plant life. It will be the narra­ tive, the evolution of the individual plant that will interest us.

The garden of the future will be complementary to the rational in everyday life. The garden of the future will be the recreational free space complementary to the dull weekday. It will be the useless complement to the demands of utility.

The garden of the future will work with the (deliberately) unclear opposite the clear.

The garden of the future will work with the strong natural feeling of trees, of roots, of matter. The garden of the future will create the scenic condition for life.

All that I found in this little grey box, you see exhibited here. Photos of G.N. Brandt’s Own Garden – the garden he used for his experiments to develop a new perspective.

What a wonderful view!

The discoveries of Brandt’s little grey box are what I strive for today: A new order of

nature in the urban context. Scaled from Brandt’s small private garden into a new way of organizing the entire world.

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If in a colourful breeze the dweller rests

A requiem of butterflies that is Danish ­modernity’s greatest poem: Inger Christen­ sen’s The Butterfly Valley (Sommerfugledalen) from 1991. Where the valley is made dry and dusty by eroded mountains whirled up into the light breeze.

Adam Oehlenschläger’s The Gold Horns (Guldhornene) from 1803; an epos about the Danish nation’s traumatic loss of its greatest national relics – found in the fertile moraine clay of Zealand – when a poor watchmaker in 1802 stole the ancient Golden Horns and remelted them into petty jewellery.

And the lectures of the Danish-German philo­sopher Heinrich Steffens from 1802 where he ushers in the Golden Age and where he teaches the Danish artists and poets to throw away their old Lutheran idea of guilt and to loose themselves in sentiments, in feelings, and to sense the world as it reveals itself to them visually and sensuously.

Oehlenschläger is the first poet of the Golden Age. I believe that Inger Christensen is the last. With her requiem she makes everything that is fantastic rise only to let it descend again into a new beginning. Perfection accomplished.

What Steffens starts, Christensen ends in 1991. And thus Oehlenschläger’s epos about the Golden Horns is not so much about the loss of Danish identity as it is the knowledge that we have an identity at all. From possessing a strictly scientific interest for the archaeologist, the Golden Horns turned into sacred relics with a directly artistic value for the people of Denmark.

Christensen puts all this into systems.

There is nothing random in her poetry.

Everything follows a meticulous plan. And yet her poetry is full of surprises. It is in the meticulous following of a system that the poetry occurs.

According to legend, Steffens’ lectures were painfully systematic and unbeliev­ably boring. But still they contained a power that changed the history of Denmark and the greatest minds of his time. It is Stef­ fens’ lectures that turn Oehlenschläger into a poet. What would have happened if Oehlenschläger had not heard Steffens?

Who knows – maybe he would have become a watchmaker and stolen the Golden Horns himself.

Three objects of great value. Three objects with a lot of substance, a lot of matter. Out of which basic elements of life and wonder emerge from which to create something ­entirely new.

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Four weeks in Vejlø in the summer of 1972

Cocoons are a way of settling. They are temporary shelters against the weather.

From egg, to caterpillar, to pupa, to butterfly. Four extremely different states of a life cycle. A complicated process for four weeks of life. An amazing experiment!

On the Danish island of Vejlø, in four short weeks of the summer 1972, artists and architects Hoff+Ussing facilita­ ted a process to create a truly new way of settling.

In an experiment, arranged by the Danish Mini­stry of Culture, the architects developed a new planning praxis, a new way of settling and living together. An amazing ­experiment!

By abandoning Modernism’s three dominating principles of architecture (the geometry and right angle of Euclid, Descartes’ coordinate system, and the principle of hierarchy), Hoff+Ussing set architecture free from the ensnaring frames by which architects for 2,000 years have told people how to live and how to plan their urban life.

Instead, Hoff+Ussing ask people to be free to settle in ways that enrich their lives, in each their own way.

By erecting 150 poles, 3 to 5 meters tall, in a random system of 3 groups, Hoff+Us­ sing create a starting condition from which people can build their homes from whatever recycled material is available on the spot – not unlike the very first settlements in Denmark 10,000 years ago. The result is a makeshift settlement that creates a whole new typology of architecture. Through collaborations and learning-by-doing, the settlers discovered new ways to form and shape facades and roofs to fit into the ran-

dom system. They developed a new set of fundamentals by which to build a home.

It is architecture without controlling ­architects. A work without an author. Instead, the architects facilitate a process by which a settlement can occur and let people themselves organize their life.

The site plan of the settlement is drawn on cardboard found on-site. This not only lets you pull the pieces apart and put them together again as you want. It also lets you examine each settlement group seperately from the others. Take them out of their context and examine them on their own. Thus each piece of cardboard is both a snapshot that you can extend in time through investigation of each individual group; and a way of classifying the settlement in its unity.

Thus, Hoff+Ussing bridge architecture’s age-old problem between the unity and the whole. No part can be subordinated to another. Its smallest part is equal to its largest.

Everything is interconnected. It’s similar to how M.G. Bindesbøll creates Thorvaldsens Museum and to how G.N. Brandt organizes his Own Garden with living matter organized according to the principle of unity.

During the four weeks of 1972, a new way of settling was introduced in Denmark. And then quickly forgotten by the rationality and planning principles of the Danish welfare state.

Left behind like the faint memory of a soft touch of a butterfly on a warm summer’s day. The butterflies die. It is time to be reborn.

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9 Absorbing Basic 9 Absorbing Basic Elements Elements

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Aesthetics Empowerment of aesthetics is just that: The belief that our senses and our feelings should play a complementary role to the rational in determining how we want our world to be in the future. And the courage to base our decisions on this belief.

I suggest that empowerment of aesthetics should be the fourth contribution to the United Nations Brundtland Report’s (1987) three sustain­able values to form the new direction of our world: Social, Environmental, Economical and Aesthetics.

Aesthetics is not how things look. It is not about images. Aesthetics is all the sensory feelings of humans: All our senses and all our emotions.

This room is about senses. Our senses. How we perceive the different materials and different spatialities, how we absorb them, what we associate with them, what they make us remember, how they make us feel.

Thus, this room is a hands-on exploration of the power of aesthetics as the main influence on the quality of our lives. Here I urge you to touch, smell, listen and feel. And to wonder, discover, reflect and imagine. This, I believe, is the path to new recognition.

And that is why I insist that aesthetics is the most important thing there is.

The aesthetic experience is the basis on which we develop a dialogue with each other.

In this room I have sampled a selection of senses, feelings and wonders organized in the order of nature: The abiotic, non-living matter like wind, water, light, temperature and sand, that together with the living matter, the biotic, forms everything. The everchanging and different states of being which all have their own purpose. This is my suggestion for which atmospheres we shall base our future on: Our cities, our countryside, our world.

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Atmosphere

Atmosphere is a thin film of enclosure around our world. Without our vaporous, water filled atmosphere, life on Earth – or indeed life anywhere – would not exist.

But atmosphere is also what you sense in a particular situation.

Atmosphere thus consists of both a specific space, and its context; of the space itself, and of the sensation of the ambience of the space.

Like the waterless waterfalls of the Japanese Zen Gardens, whose stones, shapes, textures and (non-existing) flows of water are formed from knowledge accumulated by studying the natural phenomena of nature. The ambient beauty and sensuous richness of the Zen Gardens are so much more than their factual and individual components: The stones, the rocks, the vegetation and the (lack of) water.

I believe that it is in the complementarity between the quan­ti­ fiable facts and the qualitative amenities of a given space that is the secret to achieve the full understanding of atmosphere. As the essential part of life: Physically, sensuously and aesthetically.

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Sand

Silicon: Sand is nothing more and nothing less than eroded quartz made into tiny crystals rounded by the wind. And yet I know of nothing more evocative, nothing more poetic than the sound of crunching sand underneath my feet. Like snowflakes.

The sound of silence when the snow disappears on the sandstone floor. The sand grain that scratches on the stone – made of the same material, but in another configuration. The scrunching sound when you walk. A sensuous interaction that makes you aware.

In the built environment, sand, stone and water are mixed with cement to a flowing foam that solidifies over time. The Roman architect Vitruvius (C. 75-25 BC.) introduced the matter in his Ten Books on Architecture almost 2,100 years ago. Since then it has been impossible to imagine an architecture without abiotic matter. This is not a critique. This is not a lament. This is how it is.

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Sound

Sound. The soundtrack of our lives often passes us by without us noticing. But I have begun noticing the poetry of the noises around me. The rhythm and the song of the poet. The calling of the wolves as old as the ages. The laughter and the sorrow of my fellow human beings. The sound of a thousand airplanes taking off. The whisper of pine trees and airplanes.

When we first begin to notice the sounds surrounding us, we will notice a sensuous aspect much stronger than our vision. After all, it is only a very small part of what we see that we actually realize we see. I will choose the ear over the eye any day.

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Root

Quiet. Subdued steps on a thick layer of pine needles. Aesthetic empowerment is not only sound. But also the absence of sound.

We know this from the woods. The power of nature.

Nowhere are the power and the feeling of nature stronger than in tree roots: The crooked branches, the amorphous sequences, the non-geometrical, the non-hierarchical. Tree roots are everything that the built architecture is striving for – but cannot reach. They are the order of nature.

The painters of the Golden Age studied the crooked tree roots.

G. N. Brandt passionately photographed the roots’ natural power.

The great Danish modernist architect Arne Jacobsen (1902-1971) drew roots – but in contrast to the former, Jacobsen drew the roots as tree stumps. Ever the rationalist, Jacobsen’s trees had been cut down and made into furniture. To chairs. To The Ant that can be stacked and packed like anthills. The only thing left of the trees were their roots: The aesthetic, the sensuous and the useless part of the trees. The part that is useful for creating the empowerment of aesthetics.

I cannot think of a clearer illustration of the difference between rational modernist architecture and the aesthetic feeling of nature.

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Bark

Do you know why I find bark so fascinating? Bark is at once living and dead, growing and fractured, protective layer and integral part of the tree. Once you become aware of the sensuous qualities of bark, everything else quickly fades. You could say it is a matter of not being able to see the forest for the bark.

Bark is waste material in the production of wooden building materials. By recycling the bark and using it as panels we can provide the architectural space with an atmosphere of natural order.

It improves the quality of the air you breathe and share with others, the feeling of warmth, and the surprising scent that fills you with associations – the space becomes personal.

It is the deep sensuousness, the compact atmosphere of being in the middle of a dense forest, and the realization that you are enclosed by dying and living organic material – made of dying and living matter yourself.

Step into the tree’s exterior – and listen.

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White

In the beginning was chaos. While the universe began to expand after Big Bang it also decreased in temperature. It became more and more ordered. With that order, the Universe changed its background colour toward white. Today it is beige. The universe moves toward white. When it reaches white, everything becomes total order. White is order; it is standstill, peace and tranquillity. With the entropy = 0 all life ends. As I see it, white is not a colour; it is a state of being.

I believe modernism was wrong in its aim of making white the future frame for living. It is from chaos that life arises. Not from white.

White belongs to nature. It is the magical Nordic haze, the mist, the fog, the shifting clouds. White is matter. A matter of state. White is weather. Step up, step inside the white. You are now inside the cloud that Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) always wanted to be: The autumn cloud. Inside the cloud that J.Th. Lundbye painted playing with the trees, that J.F. Schouw explored and founded his meteorological theories on, that B. S. Ingemann (1798-1862) used to define how the sky is divided, and that I have lived my whole life wondering about. Scientists, painters and poets – everyone has a view on clouds. These ever-changing yet always identifiable states.

Let’s talk about the weather.

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Earth

The Earth changes states. Molecules form out of atoms. Lava erupts. Mountains are formed and erode. And turn back into soil, mud, clay. Back into earth. The Earth’s own requiem.

Soil, mud and clay particles are the smallest entities there are before they turn into basic elements. As such, earth is the final material. Prima Materia. From here you raise the civilization. And soil civilizations will become.

Here is a wall whose bricks are made entirely out of earth. The process is as simple as it is fascinating: I have borrowed earth from an eroded mountain, put it into a form and pressed it into bricks.

And then I have performed the oldest architectural practise there is: Stacking. Stacking bricks on top of each other to build a wall that can protect you. When I am finished with the wall, I can return it to nature – out in the woods of Venice. And it will return to clay, to soil, to earth. As such, this wall is nature and architecture at once: Complementarity within.

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Projections

Architects always draw images of the future: Pretty images of what is to come, how the world will look 10, 50, 100 years from now, with nature-like constructions, electric cars and high-techno­logical solutions. Rational postcards from the future to please clients, politicians and decision makers. To please ourselves. I believe that drawing images of the future is not only impossible – it is simply futile! The only thing we know for sure about these images of the future is that the future will definitely not look like this.

Instead, I believe in exploring the aesthetic atmosphere of the future. On this screen I have sampled a series of (consciously) unclear pencil drawings. Here are sequences of vague spatialites: Suggestions of forms without any final expression. Sampled with those are trees, roots and crooked forms – formed by the wind, the rain and the weather. It is living matter, natural and architectural space at once, simulta­neously.

These are not drawings of how the future will look. They are sketches of an atmosphere of how nature and architecture can interact and give us a hint of how we can affect the future. The closest, I b­ elieve, we can get to visual insight in the future, is this attempt.

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Reflection

Duality and doubling. And imprecision and distortion. For me the mirror contains in itself the complementarity between the manmade order and nature’s order. On the one hand we have the symme­ trical, the geometrical and the perfect reflection of the outer world.

On the other, we have the errors: The slightly crooked projection, the twisted shapes, the order of nature. The error of nature.

And in the middle of these two complementary perspectives: You. Your body and your eyes. Watching you watching yourself in the Danish pavilion in Venice.

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to be continued ...

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Curriculum Vitae

combines unique amenity values based on the order and the processes of nature with cutting-edge climate adaption and resilient urban design.

Stig L Andersson is a professor in urban design at The University of Copenhagen and is a much sought-after lecturer and teacher at universities and architecture schools in Europe, Asia and the United States.

Recent SLA projects include The City Dune in Copenhagen, Denmark; The Yellow Mud Garden in Xian, China; Bjørvika Harbour in Oslo, Norway; and The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Holland.

Stig L Andersson has received numerous ­national and international awards, including The European Landscape Award, The RIBA Award, Nykredit’s Architecture Prize, The Eckersberg Medal and in 2014 The C.F. Hansen Medal – the highest national honour given to a Danish architect awarded by The Royal Aca­de­ my of Fine Arts and HM Queen Margrethe II. In 2014, Andersson curates the exhibition in the Danish pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, under the title: Empowerment of Aesthetics.

Stig L Andersson Professor, landscape architect Creative director, founding partner SLA Architects Stig L Andersson (b. 1957) founded SLA Architects in 1994. Having studied nuclear physics, Japanese culture and chemistry before becoming an architect, Andersson graduated from The Royal Danish School of Architecture in 1986.

From 1986-1989 Andersson moved to Japan with Japanese ministerial research funds. Andersson was particularly interested in Japanese culture’s relationship with substance, space and changeability – fields he has integrated and developed in his own practice since 1994.

Stig L Andersson is founding partner and creative director of SLA. Beginning as a (purely) landscape architectural practice, SLA has developed into an international interdisciplinary organisation working with urban design, landscape and city planning. Renowned for his sensuous and poetic work, Andersson

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Photos page 6, 20, 22, 24, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 62, 64 and 66 by Jens Lindhe

Page 40 (clockwise from top): Hydroglyph Park

by SLA; G.N. Brandt’s Box of Slides, courtesy of Gentofte Lokal Arkiv; Photo of Own Garden by G.N. Brandt courtesy of Gentofte Lokal Arkiv; Der Kommende Garten by G.N. Brandt; G.N. Brandt’s Two Slides courtesy of Gentofte Lokal Arkiv

All other photos (unless otherwise stated) by Torben Petersen Page 28 (clockwise from top): Cloud by SLA, photo by SLA; The last Blackboard of Niels Bohr courtesy of The Niels Bohr Archive / Photo

by AIP; Asger Jorn’s Letter to Niels Bohr courtesy of The Niels Bohr Archive; Niels Bohr’s Letter to Albert Einstein courtesy of The Niels Bohr Archive; The Natural Order by Asger Jorn, Water and Rockery Plants by G.N. Brandt; The Spirit in Nature

by H.C. Ørsted

Page 42 (clockwise from top): The Butterflies of The Valley of Butterflies by Peter Sunesen/SLA; The Valley of Butterflies by Inger Christensen; Introduction to Philosophical Lectures by Heinrich Steffens Page 44: Attacus Atlas Cocoons by SLA, Site Plan of Vejlø Settlement by Hoff+Ussing courtesy of Carsten Hoff, Photograph of Vejlø Settlement by Hoff+Ussing courtesy of Carsten Hoff

Page 30 (from top down): The Yellow Mud Garden

by SLA, photo by SLA; Sketch of Roots by J.Th. Lundbye courtesy of Den Hirschsprungske Samling; The Deer Garden by Sigvart Werner

Page 64: The five projections drawn (pen on paper) by Mette Gitz-Johansen.

Page 32 (clockwise from top): Sketch of Clouds and Tree by J.Th. Lundbye courtesy of Den Hirschsprungske Samling; Slaraffenland by SLA, photo by SLA; Sketches for Arches by M.G. Bindesbøll courtesy of Thorvaldsens Museum; Sketch of Branches by J.Th. Lundbye courtesy of Den Hirschsprungske Samling; Sketches of Profiles by Kasper Heiberg courtesy of Kira Kofoed and Køge KØS

Page 68-69: Cloud by SLA, photo by Stig L Andersson Page 71: Stig L Andersson Portrait by Mette Gitz-Johansen

Page 34 (clockwise from top): Mémoires by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn; Fin de Copenhague by Asger Jorn and Guy Debord; Experiments on the Electric Alternating Struggle’s Impact on the Magnetic Needle by H.C. Ørsted; New Order of Nature by SLA, photos by SLA Page 36 (clockwise from top): Façade of Thorvaldsens Museum by M.G. Bindesbøll courtesy of Thorvaldsens Museum; Clouds photos by Stig L. Andersson; Site Plan over Own Garden by G.N. Brandt courtesy of Gentofte Lokal Arkiv; Plan of Thorvaldsens Museum by M.G. Bindesbøll courtesy of Thorvaldsens Museum; Hydroglyph Park

by SLA, photos by SLA Page 38 (from top down): The City Dune by SLA, photos by Jens Lindhe and SLA; Sketch of Time Span by Asger Jorn, Courtesy of Museum Jorn Silkeborg

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Empowerment of Aesthetics Copyright Š 2014 by Stig L Andersson and Forlaget Wunderbuch 1st edition, 1st printing Photographs by Jens Lindhe (exhibition) and Torben Petersen (objects) Translated by Kristoffer Holm Pedersen in consultation with Christopher Sand-Iversen Graphic design by Klaus Gjørup and Per Andersen Typeface North by Trine Rask Paper by Arctic Paper Munken Pure Rough 150g/m2 (content) Munken Pure Rough 300g/m2 (cover) Printed by Narayana Press Published by Forlaget Wunderbuch Skovbakken 35 DK-7800 Skive Denmark post@forlaget-wunderbuch.dk www.forlaget-wunderbuch.dk ISBN 978-87-992806-8-1 Printed in Denmark

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P ublished by FORLAGET WUNDERBUCH

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