Road trip 3 -Winchester

One of my partners in architecture, Line Eriksen, have come all the way from Denmark to spend a week with the emergent studio. This also gives a good reason to go on a trip to Winchester to see the Round table and the Winchester Cathedral. The road trip team consisted of Line, Melissa Royle and her boyfriend Marcus. The Cathedral have the longest Gothic nave in Europe. It was fantastic, inspiring and beautiful.

Line will be working alongside the Emergent Studio all weak. Everyone who met her know, that she is talented and clever, so I am certain it will be an inspiring and busy week.

Symposium ideas

The symposium is this Friday.

Melissa and I are working together on an idea to combine fire and water. The project will be a conversation between us, paintings, a movie and a sculpture to support this. It is quite a workload, but we have some really cool ideas that will hopefully inform the Living Bridge project and our written thesis'.

I am quite hyped about the movie. It draws references to the movie “Chelsea Girls” by Andy Warhol. It is an experimental peace of cinematic art from 1966. Combining two pictures at the same time, the two pictures will ether supplement each other or clash, creating a whole different feel of the scenes.

Hopefully the amazing result will be shown here in its full glory after Friday.

Away from the pentagons

With a bit of guidance, I have decided to move away from the pentagons. They seemed weak compared to the idea of the project. The spaces of the Living bridge should be informed by their functions, by the spacial qualities, not by a mathematical shape.
IF the pentagon was chosen, it would limit the shape of the rooms.
Even though the pentagon have a natural growth pattern, limiting the shape does not feel like the right thing to do.

There are many other ways to make spaces “grow”.

The living bridge will be a journey onto and also into the Limfjord. It will be a journey of cleansing and light. A journey that is normally not undertaken by the majority of the public. This project will give the public a chance to experience this journey.

The way to move forward in the project is defining the feeling of the rooms and the way of cleansing that should take place. This will inform how the rooms will be designed. Space before shape.

Looking at the water

the water is a surface

Being in the water

the water is a space

Joining pentagons

The idea for the Living Bridge project are slowly coming along slowly. The first idea.

Building on water is quite different than building on land. When looking at the sea, the water shape a line, a surface. This is an illusion. The surface of the water can be breached, and an object submerged.

The initial idea is creating a modular system of pentagons. Connected the pentagons take a person on a journey into the water.

Being a module system, the pentagons can be joined into clusters. Having walls and openings create different light in the different modules. The light is filtered through the rooms like the light in Japanese houses are filtered through the screen walls.

The joining of the pentagons have no finished shape. More can always be added or taken away to extend or diminish the experience.

Roadtrip 2 - Stonehenge and Salisbury

The Emergent students ventured out on yet another journey into the British landscape. This time the road led to Stonehenge and Salisbury.

Stonehenge was impressive if you view it in its original context. On a top of a hill, standing 5000 years old. It was supposed to be walked to from a distance, arching above you as you approach.

Today you drive there by car and can't get close to it because of a fence. It is a shame that you cant walk between the boulders, trying to capture the spirit of this magical place. Even though is was a little anticlimactic, it was still an awe inspiring experience.

After Stonehenge we drove to the city of Salisbury where we spent some time in and around the gigantic cathedral. An impressive Gothic structure standing alone in a flat landscape, towering over the rest of the city.

Roadtrip 1 - Weald and Downland

Durring my time here, the Emergent team has been on a series of trips around the southern England. Here are some pictures from the Weald and Downland.

Returning home

Returning home after weeks living in the English city of Portsmouth, was NOT was I expected. To illustrate this in words, I think it is a good idea to speak of my expectations.
I expected Aalborg, where I studied and lived for four years, to be the same as it was when I left. I suspected that I might return to my old patterns. These were both patterns of thought and action.
As it turned out, my expectations had no hold in reality. The world changes and I have changed since I left, so to suspect a relation to be the same was quite naive. Furthermore, the reason why I was in Aalborg was now completely different.
Before I left I decided that I wanted to share the Aalborg I know. I wanted everyone to feel that my home was their home. This was quite a big goal for a trip of 7 days. This sharing was a sharing of everything. I shared my friends, who willingly and selflessly shared themselves. I shared information on secret spaces in the city, and the city opened up. Nothing seemed to be able to go wrong and nothing did.
What I find interesting of this experience, reflecting on it, is that I saw the city in a whole new light. I shared, but what I shared returned to me in different shapes and form and with more intensity. I made new friends; I learned to know my old friends anew. The city surprised me and overwhelmed me and won me over. The city is still rough, still dirty, still tough: but if you are to scratch a little in the dirt, the most amazing things come into the light. The wonderful thing is that I did not expect it.