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KONSTFACK Department of Design, Interior Architecture and Visual Communication Master’s Program in Design: Spatial Design Corse code: MDE102 Level: Advanced level Valid for: Fall 17
COURSE MODULE DESCRIPTION Course components: Explorations 1, 12 credits & parts of Orientations 12 credits,
Teachers: James Hamilton and Einar Rodhe (responsible teacher) + guests
“Let us pass now from the zoo of reality to the zoo of mythologies, to the zoo whose denizens are not lions but sphinxes and griffons and centaurs. The population of this second zoo should exceed by far the population of the first, since a monster is no more than a combination of parts of real beings, and the possibilities of permutation border on the infinite.”
The Book of Imaginary Beings, Borges J.L. 1969
THEMES SPOLIA Spolia are building elements or materials in reuse and refers to “any artifact incorporated into a setting culturally or chronologically different from that of its creation”[1]. Spolia can be used for pragmatic reasons – it has historically often been more efficient to look for good building elements in already built structures than to produce them from scratch – or in order to load the new building or artwork with meaning by transplanting symbolically charged artifacts. Throughout history, seized fragments have been integrated in new structures in order to claim the political and cultural heritage of the donor structure. Spolia challenges the balanced, uniformed and ordered in favor for variety, discontinuation and unexpected relationships between building elements. Spolia are often creatively misread or transformed to carry a new message, removing and replacing embedded mythologies, layering sites and histories. THE AMUSEMENT PARK In Delirious New York , Rem Koolhaas describes Coney Island as a place that offers contrasts to the city, stating that if Manhattan is artificial, Coney Island is SuperNatural [2]. Gröna Lund has a similar relation to Stockholm. Being crowded with attractions, the amusement park is an extreme architectural condition, an antithesis of the homogeneity of the city. Due to Gröna Lund’s limited footprint, its carousels, pavilions and rollercoasters are intertwined, morphed and distorted, a hyper specific architecture, reminiscent the threedimensional urbanities of Tokyo and the fictofuture Los Angeles of Blade Runner. The different scales of architecture – furniture, interiors and buildings – are merged in robotic superfurnitures. Filled with scenography, dreamscapes, horror shows, architectures in miniature, the amusement park is a heterotopia, a house of mirrors, weaving the fragmented micro narratives of each of its visitors fantasies together. HETEROTOPIA In a lecture from March 1967, Michel Foucault outlined a theory of the heterotopia. A space of otherness. Literally translated heterotopia means other place (hetero – other, topia place). Conceived in opposition to the utopia, a no place , heterotopias are real, physical spaces that are separated from the homogenous spaces of a culture by reflecting and distorting time, self and the rules that define “normal” while within them [3]. In the context of this studio the heterotopia is doubly important. In the first: The heterotopic is reflected in the aesthetic and metaphysics of the spolia, often a surreal insertion of something other into the homogenous fabric of an architecture. The fundamental characteristic of spolia as a heterotopic fragment is its displacement from the specific time and place of it’s origin, a donor structure from which it was taken. Like the precarious heterotopia of Foucault’s mirror, spolia is simultaneously of the structure we see it in, connected with all the space and material that surrounds it, and the structure from which it was taken, a displacement and doubling of the historical. The second: The lense through which we will perceive the real, physical site of this studio. Within the types of heterotopia outlined by Foucault, Gröna Lund embodies the heterotopia of illusion , a place outside of both normal perceptions of time and limits of behaviour. Like spolia, Gröna Lund is inserted into the fabric of the city, enveloped by it, and commonly recognized as a part of it, albeit a foreign one.
Within our understanding of both spolia and the heterotopic there is a point at which the historical and the
ahistorical, the fragmented and the whole, what catches the eye and the filler around it, all meet. The
fundamental characteristic of these meeting can be defined as meetings of the generic with the specific.
An investigation of the interior in relation to the generic, the specific, their manifestations and their
nudgings, flirtings, rubbing, bumpings and intersections are the underlying themes this studio proposes.
METHODS
Working with real building elements and unique objects as a starting point for design differs fundamentally
from a design process where the level of detail is increased step by step from abstract lines on paper to
mockups and prototypes. During the course, a series of minilectures on representation will be held on a
weekly basis to strengthen skills for the documentation, analysis, and transformation of intricate spaces,
building elements and found objects. The series will include techniques for modelling, 3dscanning, image
making and introduce the concept of hyperdrawings – drawings that layer multiple projections,
techniques and methods of representation to describe the parts and whole of a project in one
composition. Work will be carried out by students in predetermined pairs. The work will be reviewed twice
weekly in focused meetings with individual groups and at least one teacher. At specific moments during
the course work will be reviewed by teachers, peers and external critics in large critique formats and
seminars. Those who are new to Konstfack will be given introductions to the wood workshop, the print
shop, the digital lab and to the sculpture lab.
Like Foucault’s mirror, this studio will attempt to reflect and distort current cultural relationships to
pleasure, playfulness, a wild drive to distract, to have fun and forget.
[1] Kinney, D. (2006) The Concept of Spolia, in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe (ed C. Rudolph), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK [2] Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan . New York: Monacelli Press, 1994. Print. [3] Foucault, Michel. "Of Other Spaces," Diacritics 16 . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Spring 1986. Print, 2227.
COURSE LITERATURE Jasper, Adam and Ngai, Sianne Our Aesthetic Categories: An Interview With Sianne Ngai, Cabinet 43. Fall 2011
Esch, Arnold. On the Reuse of Antiquity: The Perspectives of the Archeologist and of the Historian , 2011 Foucault, Michel. Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias , 1967 Hung, Matthew. Kowloon Walled City: Heterotopia in a Space of Disappearance, 2013 Kinney, Dale. Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine , introduction, 2011
SCHEDULE OVERVIEW W 3536 Prologue intro week, texts, Gröna Lund wood workshop + archival research W 3738 Part 1 documentation + analysis of donor structure Survey techniques analog / digital Archival material Result = taxonomic representation of whole and parts W 3944 Part 2 spatial / tectonic composition Program description as narrative fiction Result = 1:50 model of structure / room + drawings W 4546 Epilogue exhibition material + specific contextualization of spolia / structure strategies Result = exhibition + 200mm x 200mm perspective collage A detailed schedule will be handed out at the course introduction. LEARNING OUTCOMES See course syllabus for Introduction and broadening of perspective (MDE102). COURSE REQUIREMENTS All students need to:
Actively participate and contribute in tutorials, workshops, seminars, pinups, critiques. Present and hand in an academic portfolio (atlas) that documents their work adhering to the
minimum material defined in project briefs, including written statements. Present and hand in an individual study plan for their master studies at Konstfack.
GRADE CRITERIA To receive a passing grade for Exploration 1 and the module of Orientations each student must do all of the following:
Show that they have planned and performed the projects and created a proposal that has a high and relevant level of precision and articulation.
Have used methods and approaches that have been suitable for the project and argue for the choice.
Explain and justify their own proposals in such a way that the projects outline, intention, outcomes and artefacts are clear and make sense.
Judge the quality of a his/her own and others students’ work and design proposals in relation to the relevance for the discipline and profession.
Explain and justify the design proposal in which way it is relevant for the discipline and profession. Judge the quality of a his/her own and others students’ work and design proposals in relation to
the relevance for the discipline and profession. Actively participate and contribute in classes, seminars, tutoring and presentations throughout the
course.
