Nesting

Photo credits Niclas Rosander / http://niclasrosander.se

I was just listening to a seminar by Sou Fujimoto.
He brings up many things that I walk around with on my mind.
His manifesto back to primitive architecture, something called 'Primitive future', is about the relationship between the space and the body. He talks about, how in the beginning when humans lived in caves it was us who adjusted to the spaces we inhabited, found our way to use them and claimed certain spaces for specific functions.
It is this thought of the cave vs. the nest (where the nest has been prepared for human habitation, and a cave is the opposite) the cave requires a creative act on behalf of a human.
The cave alters the behavior of its occupant by offering no indication of how to use the space. Although to some degree this ambiguity is inherent in all spaces, the cave is completely undefined. He calls these creative acts of appropriation the beginning of architecture.

And so by nature humans start to nest - to appropriate and claim space, to give it a smaller - human scale.
It is this human scale, or the variety of scales found in nature (example: trunk/branch/twig/leaf/vein) that makes us somehow feel at ease, in our element.
Fujimoto suggests that is is this duality and coexistence of opposite things that creates the richness and makes us feel safe.
So that in going back to the primitive, and finding its order (or non-exisitng order) and the diversity of scales, accompanied by the duality of openness - closeness (protectetness) is the recipe for the future - primitive future.

Fujimoto is so inspiring and his simple almost childish way of boiling things down to their essence and never ceasing to ask questions about how we use and define space creates something so rich...
It just proves how the process is the most valuable part of a project, how important it is to give thoughts time and room to grow into maturity.
Fujimotos ongoing exploration of this primitive architecture constantly gives birth to new projects and takes him further in his thought process.
It is this process of nourishing an idea, understanding it and being able sort out it's architectural abstraction (which then would have the inherit richness of the original idea) that I am after.

Short film by Mark Tipple

When photographer Mark Tipple filmed the ocean and the ocean wasn't so nice anymore...

A drawing says more than 1000 words

I have a fetish for drawings, especially axonometric projections and drawings that says more than 1000 words.

A drawing that can communicate dimensions and spatial relationships and sometimes even an atmosphere all in one. Those drawings deserve a blog all to themselves.

City of Urban Robotz - Jimenez Lai

Beyond the Campo Marzio - Matthew Davis + Miles Gertler

Beyond the Campo Marzio - Matthew Davis + Miles Gertler

Eisfabrik Megaframe - Henry Stephens

The Unbuilt - Olivier Pershav

Junya Ishigami- Park Groot Vijversburg

The Unbuilt - Olivier Pershav

Vertical restructuring high-rise tower rehabilitation - Grégoire Arthuis

Céramique Quartier Marrakech - Ricardas Blazukas

The ocean by Mark Tipple

I have an obsession with the ocean, it draws me and scares me. It puts me in awe and invites.
So amazing and sometimes not at all inviting.
Powerful and forceful, pure energy of mass moving...
All of these photos are taken under water by Mark Tipple. Wow.

Landscapes

What inspires me the most of all to create is landscapes.
It can at occasions be cityscapes or urbanized areas but most of all it is natural landscapes.
My dream is to travel the world and just go from place to place to experience them.
Like Bryce canyon, I would like to go there.

Bryce canyon in Utah, photo credits to http://nirvanaexcursions.com/

Sanfångaren / The sand catcher by Eva Johansson

I have since a long time thought about changing landscapes and how architecture could change with the landscape. I have specifically thought about tides and water, how architecture could be integrated into that and life cycles.
Dreaming about such a project, I came to think about a very poetic project, diploma thesis at KTH Architecture school in Stockholm by Eva Johansson in 2013.

The project investigates how a structure and spaces can change with the ever-moving sand dunes of north Jylland in Denmark.

This is how she explains her project:

"I am fascinated by landscape that rapidly changes and is shaped by 
wind and water. The wandering sand dune 'Rabjerg Mile' in northern Denmark 
moves across the North Jylland peninsula 15 feet per year. By introducing a 
built structure, a permanent element on site asserts the sand dune's 
rampage and thus man's view of time and place. It is a lookout tower, 
a landmark, a measuring stick, and a visitor centre. The building's main task will be to 
accentuate Rabjerg Miles movement. The sand is active and continuously generates 
new spaces and spatial experiences. 

Rabjerg Mile is one of the largest migratory dunes in Europe. The sand cushion measures 
1 km wide and is moving over the cape in a north-easterly direction. Rabjerg Mile consists of 
about 4 million cubic meters of sand. On average Rabjerg Mile moves about 10-20 
meters per year, depending on the wind strength. 

During the 1500s and 1600s large areas of Denmark  had trouble with
shifting sand. The sand destroyed crops, graveled back roads and forced 
residents to move from their homes. Year 1905 the state bought the land around Rabjerg 
Mile and created a conservation area to preserve the phenomenon moving sand. 
Since then, the sand dune has moved 1.5 km. In about a 100 years the road  
and the railway up to Skagen will be completely sanded over.'

The sky, my roof

Nebula of glowing hydrogen, photo from the Hubble, http://hubblesite.org/

The city

When I was a kid, there was this intro to a television show with a miniature village that captured me every time. The intro was a model of a city on a hill, lit up in the night and it had a train running around it (I believe that the show was called 'skymningssagor').

I think that this one, and other shows with model cities like ('Skrotnisse') completely captivated a child's imagination and I think that looking back, it was one of the things that made me start thinking about architecture and becoming an architect.

There was definitely something about the atmosphere, about seeing the city from afar.
The same fascination led me to night-walks and evening drawings of the city once I moved to Paris.

The city is like this living organism, and during the day you can't see into peoples homes that much even though you are surrounded by other people (around you, moving above you and under you).
But in the night the city lights up and the windows create a mosaic of peoples' lives, many small ones, like looking into a doll house. Everything becomes accessible and the contrasts particularly strong.

I love the way the city transforms in the evenings and the ambiance that being surrounded by hundreds of peepholes of warm lit-up homes creates.
The dynamics of the city captivates me very much.

Night by the Seine, photo by Emelie Nielson 2010

Junya Ishigami, ‘How small? How vast? How architecture grows’

So subtle, all the way from the fine-lined drawing, to the model, to the built.
I could look at the universe of these delicate models all day long.

From the exhibition ‘How small? How vast? How architecture grows’ by Junya Ishigami

From the exhibition ‘How small? How vast? How architecture grows’ by Junya Ishigami

Little gardens by Junya Ishigami

Kait Worshop by Junya Ishigami

Luis Barragán

Light. Colorful. Multi-facetted.

 

Indoor pool, The Gilardi House, Mexico City, 1975-77

Cuadra San Cristobál, Los Clubes, 1966-68
© Armando Salas Portugal/Barragán Foundation, Switzerland

Casa Gilardi, Mexico City, Mexico 1976

Barragán House, Mexico City, Mexico, 1948
Photo © Barragan Foundation, Birsfelden, Switzerland/ProLitteris, Zurich, Switzerland

Lightness

Weightless, almost transparent architecture fascinates me. There are a few japanese architects who work with just that, dissolving the limits of the built, that creates an almost dreamlike atmosphere.

The absolute weightless architecture, something that could be identified as lightness or dissolving or transparent, is like this architecture dream, that is realised and keeps the dreaminess and doesn't lose on the way to construction.

Sublime and dreaming go very well together and lightness definitely makes me dream.

Japanese pavilion at the 2008 Venice architecture biennale, by Junya Ishigami

Serpentine pavilion 2009 in Hyde Park, London by SANAA

House NA, also called Transparent House, 2010, by Sou Fujimoto Architects

SALT

The dead sea, Israel, photographer unknown

The dead sea, Israel, photographer unknown

Salinas grandes, Jujuy, Argentina, photographer unknown

Salinas grandes, Jujuy, Argentina, photographer unknown

Salinas grandes, Jujuy, Argentina, photographer unknown

Saltworks in Bilma, Niger, photographer unknown

Saltworks in Bilma, Niger, photographer unknown

Saltworks in Bilma, Niger, photographer unknown

Memory/Ruins

I have been flickering through photos of abandoned buildings/homes for a while, photographers like Bryan Schutmaat or Marchand and Meffre's photos of Detroit. There is something fascinating about ghost towns, about looking into peoples homes, and something even more fascinating looking at ruins, something touched, and then untouched.
What remains? What takes over the space?
It lives on, lives its own life, when everyone else has forgotten about it.

I think that just the presence of the abandoned creates very special state of mind. An atmosphere of void or chaos or just stillness.

A place always has memory. Sometimes its easy to read (or not) but the case of finding the poetry is also the case of finding the memory. To be able to read it (the memory, mystery and actions at a place) and to reread it or reinforce it, to create a new memory.

Memory can also be about associations, how we relate to our world. So different people would have diferent associations. Although architects often talk about "the soul" of a place, which then would be somehow at least semi-separated from our own associations.

Places definitely have an identity of its own, in my opinion (or lack of identity) independent of peoples associations. The sublime has memory.

From 'Grays the Mountain Sends' by Bryan Schutmaat

Ghost town Keelung, Taiwan by unknown photographer

Finding the poetry

Architecture that is sublime or architecture that is thriving, to me, manages to find the poetry - /of a space /a context /an environment and becomes the most it can be. Capturing the specific characteristics of a site, reinventing and playing with the landscape, how a project is a part of or forms something externally and internaly. Finding the poetry is always a common mentioner.

Alvaro Siza is extremely good at finding the poetry. It seems like a sharp eye (pure talent also of corse) and travels can do that to a person.
Like with his Portuguese World expo pavilion from 98, the horizontal thin sheet that is held up on each side by rhythmic columns that forms spaces between them. The sheet is so thin, almost like a boat sail or a paper sheet laying across, that it is hard to grasp how the construction is even made up. The entity forms a frame through which one can see the blue horizon of the ocean.

Sketch by my friend Camilla Levin during our trip to Portugal in 2012
(Portuguese World expo pavilion '98 by Alvaro Siza)

Sublime blog

I am freaking out over this amazing blog: http://tectonicablog.com that has everything innit!

Landesarchiv NRW by O&O Baukunst Architects

Left to it's destiny

Photo by Emelie Nielson, Norway 2009

Character

It happens quite often that people point at building we pass, asking what my opinion is of it?

The problem is that many times I have no opinion, they don't move me. Like a person without any feature of personality to remember they remain anonymous. Sometimes they can be vulgar and unattractive to me, but many streetscapes are just full of the bland.

But then, there are buildings that tell me something about themselves. I am mysterious, or young and nifty or ancient and wise. Buildings are of course more than the surface that meets the eye, skin and bones and structure as well as spatial personality.

Something that annoys me is too much steel, the kind you keep seeing in many new-built corporate buildings. 
I think that a building with excessive steel bracing is like a beautiful girl with big braces smiling.
Personality - pleasant or unpleasant, interest me a great deal.

The Fuller Building, or 'the Flatiron building' is grandpa-like to me, or more like a dandy-like grandpa when he was young and slender and handsome.

'Flatiron building' 1902 by Architect Daniel Burnham
Original photo credits to nycvintageimages.com