stephanie-lee-dodd-blog

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 03

Model remake in ‘Træpap’ at roughly 1:50. This time I added the ‘legs’ in timber at the points where the places for sitting are. These photos show early exploration using the jute curtains to determine where best to place the jute in the design. I decided that the 30 degree axis, the ‘transfer’ axis, was the most appropriate place providing the desired level of privacy and screening between the places for walking and for sitting.

At this stage I also determined that the ‘waterfalls’ would run on the ‘long’ axis and at the point of the threshold between the walking and sitting places the water would run in a small valley to mark the transition from one space to the other.

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 03

Working in a model ‘up a scale’ from the previous to explore the different axes and form. The formal logic for this model was informed by the introduction of a third ‘axis’ on a 30 degree angle to the standard ‘long’ and ‘short’ perpendicular axes. Programmatic decisions informed the relationship between these three axes, with the ‘long’ axis designated for walking, the ‘short’ axis for sitting, and the 30 degree axis for ‘transfer’.The regular orthogonal form is made more complex, introducing interesting perspectives and relationships.

This model lacked rigidity and was not that useful for exploring the next stage of experimenting with the different desired effects of using the jute and water, so I decided to remake it in ‘Træpap‘.

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 03: form experiments

My intention is to weave the circulation pathways with integrated waterfalls to create a constant pleasant ambient sound of trickling water. This formal exploration I have called ‘stair waterfalls.’

The subtle changes in elevation make for interesting sight lines as I imagine people moving through the pathways. The void across the centre is a highlight of this model for me.

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 03

Material investigations continued

To study the porosity/density/opacity properties of the jute I made a small ‘tunnel’ with six hanging layer of jute that can be added and removed depending on the experiment.

Using this process I discovered that one layer allows for a visual connection, which is almost completely eliminated with only three layers. This effect creates simultaneous privacy from and awareness of others. For the program which is, I imagine, a space for private conversations this effect of being able to have awareness but a degree of anonymity is important. The jute could be used as a method to create screened ‘private’ pockets that still have connection to other thoroughfares and walkways. Having a visual connection between these spaces is important to allow for the keeping of a respectful distance between private conversations, yet maintaining a level of privacy. Importantly, this degree of privacy is achieved regardless of how close or far apart the panels are placed.

Also, the jute would have a sound absorbing characteristic, further providing privacy to conversations as well as being a visually warm material creating a soft atmosphere in the space. 

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 03

Material explorations.

Following the mid-semester presentations it was clear that I had not explored the jute material sufficiently as an option to use in my architecture. Layering and light play were my focus for these experiments exploring using the jute as physical curtains ‘walls’ to block sight and absorb sound, as well as create a soft and warm atmosphere.

this piece of jute has been layered and fastened with wire to create a dense and rich texture

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Day 5: Norway Study Trip

Stop 1: Hedmark Museum, Sverre Fehn. 1969-70.

Sverre Fehn’s mastery of concrete and connection between new and old is the main attraction of this project, which displays an almost obsessive attention to detail. This museum is on the grounds of a medieval castle, with the main exhibits housed inside what is known as the ‘Barn’. Fehn’s balance between the cold, off-form concrete and the warm timber structures creates an intoxicating contrast. 

The best example of this material contrast is in the individually designed displays that encase or support the different items on display. The guide explained to us that Fehn’s intention was for the objects to tell the story of the place, rather than having explanatory text for each. The fixings, supports and cabinets were specifically designed for each object from a contrasting material to emphasise its ‘otherness’ from the room. In doing so, each object gains an aura of dignity and respect. 

These display elements also have a tectonic expression that enhances the experience of gazing upon the object, and for many of us this aspect was perhaps more appealing than the objects themselves. 

The most intoxicating moment for me was this concrete staircase with the swooping underside and the warm light falling on the stairs leading up. 

Stop 2: Jensen+Skodvin Office, Oslo.

After Fehn, we visited the office of Jensen + Skodvin in Oslo, where we had the chance to interrogate them about Mortensrudkirke as well as their design philosophies more generally. They very generously offered us an hour of their time, and were very frank in answering our questions. Along with Jan Olav Jensen and Børre Skodvin we were joined by Torstein Koch (who recently became a partner in the firm I believe). 

Their design philosophy is rooted in attention and respect for the site - the site was there before the project and should remain there after. They endeavour to tread as lightly as possible on the landscape, or even include it where necessary such as rocks that protrude through the floor at Mortensrudkirke. They described their design philosophy as a ‘negotiation between the site and the building’ as ‘the site has requirements as well as the building program’, which is pertinent given the extreme landscapes to be found in their native Norway. 

Following on from this, Jensen expressed his disdain for the introduction of explosives in construction projects, lamenting that this has led to lazy architects. He believes it is more interesting to solve how to meet the ground than just build on a flat site. 

With this sentiment front of mind, they encouraged us to never stop inventing and to explore and understand the geometry and geometries beyond the obvious, as ‘that is where the answers lie’. 

An incredibly motivating and inspiring appointment to close the formalities of the study trip.

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 02: Task 02

Task 02 Pin-Up

1:20 drawing

1:20 model

Plans and axo of Aarhus spolia building and wall element

Process map

Material exploration model

1:50 models

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 02: Task 02

Experiments with brass sheet material to develop possible wall and roof shapes. 

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 02: Task 02

The mindmap showing the complex overlapping ideas I want to represent in my design.

Having grown weary of the tendency to approach architectural conceptual development in terms of binaries or dual relationships (light/dark, massive/light, open/closed) I am endeavouring to develop a design that has many layered relationships through loose and strong associations.

Abstracting the idea of ‘wall’ away from only physical manifestations, I married the strongest of my spolia experiments from the first task with an abstract characterisation of a ‘wall of sound’. Linking this back to the chosen rituals (opening/closing curtain and performance) was a little difficult, but I eventually settled on a program of a ‘space for private conversations’ which can be protected by a curtain of sound made by rain falling on the metal sheet roof cladding. Such a wall of sound also marks a break from the very quiet environment of the grain shed that I experienced visiting the site. Finally, borrowing from the theatre typology, I wanted to elevate these pods for conversations so that they would act as ‘stages’ for the performance of these conversations. This would then reverse the purpose of the grain shed from its role as protection to exposure. The final poetic moment is that the architecture transforms the infra-ordinary Danish rain into something extraordinary.

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 02: Task 02

Material exploration and opportunities

Using some green plastic sheet I explored the opportunities of ‘slicing’ up the green corrugated steel sheeting that is on the rear wall of the grain shed. The goal here was to explore how to blend the wall into the roof so that it could become a space that is ‘activated’ by rain. As the rain falls on the metal it creates a soothing sound which reminds me of being in rural setting in Australia where corrugated zincalume is a common roof cladding material. 

First I cut the triangular shape into strips, the curved them around into a sort of shell.

From this point I thought more about how I could make the architecture ‘perform’, given my two chosen rituals are the opening and closing of curtains every day, and the ritual of watching theatre or performing. I toyed with the idea of having these long, curved walls that are then drawn up through a weighted mechanism, using the weight from rainwater collected to lift the fins into the shell shape. 

When I drew the ‘plan’ of this idea after making the sketch model I wondered whether this shape was significant in any way in Australian Aboriginal painting, which uses symbols to tell stories or provide a kind of map for the landscape - not just the physical landscape but that of Dreaming (which can be crudely described as the Aboriginal stories of creation). Upon investigation, I discovered that the shape I had created is used in Aboriginal painting to signify clouds or rain, or a sandhill - which can be a key marker in the desolate desert landscape of central Australia.

When on this path I was challenged to think about how to have this space be enclosed, given the Danish location and that it might not be so pleasant to sit in this shell in the cold weather. At this point, I kind of stalled this development and re-entered more conceptual exploration of the elements of my rituals....

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 02: Task 02 Some thoughts.

During the past week or so since receiving this task I have been struggling with designing a space that lacks “place”. The brief is to design “from the inside out” - a space that embodies an atmosphere rather than a form that carries a visually distinct or aesthetic shape. I am struggling because usually so much of a design can be drawn from looking at the site, at the place; and now to design without such a designation has left me a little bit lost. 

In Australian Aboriginal culture, ‘place’ carries great meaning and significance as it is the land that tells the story of creation and ancestors, known as Dreaming. The chunk of land known as Australia was declared terra nullius (land belonging to no one) upon settlement by Europeans as there were no distinct or visually recognisable structures (at least to the Europeans) and so the assumption was made that the land belonged to no one and was hence up for grabs. Something I had not thought about is that there must be such significance in the land and such possibilities for shelter and life in ‘place’ that the Aboriginal people - who are the oldest cultured people in the world and have inhabited Australia for at least 70,000 years - felt no need to build structures; the structures are embodied in the landscape, in the place.

And so if I’m to embark on designing a space without ‘place’, then perhaps my design could seek to create a ‘place’ in and of itself, based on the assumption that this design will sit within a Danish context, specifically Aarhus. Just a thought.

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 02: Task 02

The Infra-Ordinary (1973) Georges Perec What speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event, the untoward, the extra-ordinary: the front-page splash, the banner headlines. Railway trains only begin to exist when they are derailed, and the more passengers that are killed, the more the trains exist. Aeroplanes achieve existence only when they are hijacked. The one and only destiny of motor-cars is to drive into plane trees. Fifty-two weekends a year, fifty- two casualty lists: so many dead and all the better for the news media if the figures keep going up! Behind the event there is a scandal, a fissure, a danger, as if life reveals itself only by way of the spectacular, as if what speaks, what is significant, is always abnormal: natural cataclysms or social upheavals, social unrest, political scandals. In our haste to measure the historic, significant and revelatory, let’s not leave aside the essential: the truly intolerable, the truly inadmissible. What is scandalous isn’t the pit explosion, it’s working in coalmines. ‘Social problems’ aren’t ‘a matter of concern’ when there’s a strike, they are intolerable twenty-four hours out of twenty-four, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, tower blocks that collapse, forest fires, tunnels that cave in, the Drugstore de Champs-Elysées burns down. Awful! Terrible! Monstrous! Scandalous! But where’s the scandal? The true scandal? Has the newspaper told us everything except: not to worry, as you can see life exists, with its ups and downs, things happen, as you can see. The daily newspapers talk of everything except the daily. The papers annoy me , they teach me nothing. What they recount doesn’t concern me, doesn’t ask me questions and doesn’t answer the questions I ask or would like to ask. What’s really going on, what we’re experiencing, the rest, all the rest, where is it? How should we take account of, question, describe what happens every day and recurs everyday: the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual? To question the habitual. But that’s just it, we’re habituated to it. We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us, it doesn’t seem to pose a problem, we live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither question nor answers, as if it weren’t the bearer of any information. This is not longer even conditioning, it’s anaesthesia. We sleep through our lives in a dreamless sleep. But where is our life? Where is our body? Where is our space? How are we to speak of these ‘common things’, how to track them down rather, how to flush them out, wrest them from the dross in which they remain mired, how to give them a meaning, a tongue, to let them, finally, speak of what is, of what we are. What’s needed perhaps is finally to found our own anthropology, one that will speak about us, will look in ourselves for what for so long we’ve been pillaging from others. Not the exotic anymore, but the endotic. To question what seems so much a matter of course that we’ve forgotten its origins. To rediscover something of the astonishment that Jules Verne or his readers may have felt faced with an apparatus capable of reproducing and transporting sounds. For the astonishment existed, along with thousands of others, and it’s they which have moulded us. What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we open doors, we go down staircases, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed in order to sleep. How? Why? Where? When? Why? Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare. Make an inventory of you pockets, of your bag. Ask yourself about the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out. Question your tea spoons. What is there under your wallpaper? How many movements does it take to dial a phone number? Why don’t you find cigarettes in grocery stores? Why not? It matters little to me that these questions should be fragmentary, barely indicative of a method, at most of a project. It matters a lot to me that they should seem trivial and futile: that’s exactly what makes them just as essential, if not more so, as all the other questions by which we’ve tried in vain to lay hold on our truth. Text from: http://www.ubu.com/papers/perec_infraordinary.html

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 02: Task 01

Exploring spolia in Aarhus, these are the ideas I had for using the elements as-is, with modifications and as general building materials. The strongest idea I feel is the fringed ‘steel’ to create an atmospheric space involving incidental and intentional interaction with the material to create sounds.

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 02: Task 02

Instant thoughts for inspiration.

James Turrell. 2010. Within without. Installation at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Photo from: https://nga.gov.au/JamesTurrell/Images/500/100422

Kendrick Kellogg. 1988. Karuizawa Stone Church. Karuizawa, Japan.

Own photo.

Yukinori Yanagi. 2018. Icarus Container.

Photo from: https://www.biennaleofsydney.art/artists/yukinori-yanagi/

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 02: Task 02

Some quick thoughts after receiving task 02...

what are the possibilities of a wall? how is a wall formed? what is the function of a wall?

a wall can be created through erecting a structure OR by excavating material underneath or overhead. A tunnel is a closed wall - does a tunnel have a floor or ceiling? when does a wall transform to become something other than a wall?

a wall can obstruct a view

       or a wall can be something to lean on while looking out

           or sit on

a wall can stop you

       or lead you

a wall can separate

       or enclose

a wall is in direct relation to the floor

or to the ceiling/roof

a path cleared in a pile of leaves makes the leaves act as a wall to direct movement

a wall is a boundary marker

       inside / outside

       territory / trespass

       us / them

experience of space created by walls is directly influenced by the qualities of the two corresponding horizontal planes: floor + ceiling

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 02: Task 01 - Transfer

Axonometric and exploded axonometric drawing showing the elements of the wall in the grain shed at Aarhus harbour. 

The base of the wall is made from modular pieces of concrete encasing steel columns. Timber purlins run horizontally allowing the interior jute cladding to be attached as well as the exterior corrugated metal sheeting. Apart from the columns in the concrete, the other elements are probably easily dismantled into pieces for re-use.

[stephanie-lee-dodd-blog]

Phase 02: Task 01 - Transfer

Exploring possibilities of spolia in Aarhus in a grain shed at the port.

This plan shows the chosen building marked with the rough location of the chosen elements.

1:500 when printed at A3.

This building was chosen as it contains elements that are probably easily disassembled for re-use as well as providing a narrative association to the Aarhus harbour. We believe that this area of the harbour is likely to be redeveloped in the near future for residential purposes given the prime harbour-front real estate. This grain shed identifies the city of Aarhus as a main port, and its association with agriculture is representative of Denmark more broadly. This area of the harbour is design purely for function, with aesthetics a lower priority, if considered at all. The materials in this building contain properties that make them candidates for use as spolia.