NYE FREMTIDER / NEW FUTURES
How do we live and work now and will do in the future in this shifting world? What about the spaces we inhabit and the architecture we conceive? Has our physical context also acquired a shifting condition? It seems that whatever surrounds us remains in an apparent stable state. However, infrastructures, constructions, landscapes, and even what we mistakenly denominate as nature, are undergoing processes of perpetual transformation at diverse scales.
… A new residential district extends over a former industrial dock; a delightful canal substitutes a street that had been asphalted over a riverbed; an existing house is moved hundreds of kilometres away or lifted up to deal with changing territories; a supposedly virginal lake occupies the former pit of a coal mine; urban farms scatter in vacant lots; bricks recovered from demolished houses fill the façade of a new school; devices, materials, textures and construction methods are picked up from here and there…
As a result of this shifting world, the idea of a static built environment is shifting in itself. It also questions our role and ‘what it means’ to be an architect. We are surrounded by spaces in transition, and impermanence, thus, defines both the condition of being and use of the -physical and mental- territories we seize as architects. Both territories and architects necessarily have to be versatile, adaptable, flexible, and even reactive. Shifting territories for an unstable environment in this way can become a fascinating way of looking at the world and our role as architects within it.
The exhibition Nye fremtider / New Futures presents projects made by the students at Studio3 in the Fall semester 2018. They are located in Løgstør, Denmark, where issues of overlapping, unstable, and disappearing landscapes due to nature, climate and man-made transformations take place. The discussion about how to transform local and specific knowledge into global and general strategies is part of the pedagogical approach.
