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Søren AagaardPortfolio2009-2012

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Folkets Hus, Vilhelm Lauritzen, 1956

Folkets Hus (House of the People) in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Danish modernist Vilhelm Lauritzen was built to be a place of assembly for the Danish guild unions in the 1950s. Today the building serves as a concert and event venue.

The building is characterized by several assembly halls of varying size with each their own course through the building, thus allowing several events to be going on at the same time, while sharing the buildings cen-tral functions, such as kitchen and restrooms.

The project seeks to analyze the building and explore its characteristics using different methods of drawing, and attempt to transform these characteristics into an object or specific motive (4).

BUILDING ANALYSIS

Descriptions:

1. (p. 4) CAD drawing in scale 1:50 showing the constructional character of the building. The motive is an excerpt of the elevation by the building’s main entrance, based on a preliminary measurement.

2. (p. 5) Crayon drawing in scale 1:10 showing the material character of the building. The motive is an excerpt of the building’s facade. (35cm x 35cm)

3. (p. 6-7) Pencil and graphite drawing in scale 1:50 showing a projection of facade and section. (150cm x 150cm)

The drawing describes the highly complex interweaving of spaces and func-tions, and how the body’s movement through and experience of the spaces reveal the correlation between space, structure and the abstract grid of the facade, thus providing the building with a sense of phenomenological trans-parence.

The exterior grid of the building shifts the scale between the experience of the interior spaces and the scale of the city, creating a distinguished space embed-ded in the structure of the city.

The main halls of the building are seen very clearly in relation to the facade grid, which becomes abstract around the function core and juxtaposed fields reveals a more free communication throughout the building.

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Photographs, exterior and interior.

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CAD drawing.

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Crayon drawing.

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4. The Dissolution of the Grid

Photographs of a model/object offering different views of abstract motives describing the structural rela-tions throughout the building. I.e. the relation between space and structure and how the displacements created between them dissolves the underlying grid.

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HOUSE WITH A WALL

The project is a study of the classical as a motive, and an exploration of the foundations of the house as an archetype. It establishes the idea of the house by the use of certain elements, while the classical is composed and embeds the house in our imagery.

The plan of the house and wall is based on a loop that, by folding in a corner, fastens the house in the inward corner of an L-shaped courtyard while at the same time leaving a public space in relation to the house itself.

The idea is to ask the stupid question that might reveal something fundamtental in architecture. It’s about expressing something classic, but by twisting the familiar, seeking to define something contemporary.

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Photographs of model.

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The project is an in-fill assignment in an urban context, accounting for functionality and study-ing the assumptions of dwelling.

The site is in the centre of Copenhagen, at the transition between the loosely structured, but very dense historic city, a baroque park and the bussiest traffic hub in Denmark. It is an ex-tremely composed context, where many references meet and layers of time and space overlap, creating a complex image.

The project is inspired by Danish art historian Carsten Thau’s reading of the city as a loosely woven fabric, where the creation of a place can be seen as the tethering of the city’s meshes into tighter knots creating the intimate density that we require to dwell. In a new era of spaceless communication, this is what links the modern being to the urbanity that he/she is a part of and creates a picture of how we inhabit the world.

The site is surrounded by tall brick buildings giving it a character of being one thing out of the same substance, where light and shadow create a daily play between impressions of surface and void, giving the place a heavy layered and almost cubist character (see sketches opposite).

HOUSE IN THE CITY

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Pin-up.

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The SiteGouache, chalk, ink - scale 1:200 (30cm x 40cm)

The drawing shows how the fluid penetrate the solid at the scale where people inhabit build-ings, thus tying a knot in the city fabric around the creation of dwellings or homes. The drawing elaborates the mesh as a motive in the creation of a new place in the city, while at the same time describing the spatial conditions of the site.

The CityGouache, chalk, ink - scale 1:500 (80cm x 120cm)

The drawing studies the complexity of the city, and how it can be described as being composed of different conditions. It claims that the city consists of something solid (the physically static - i.e. buildings), something fluid (the physically dynamic - i.e. traffic, people, things) and something ethereal (the physically intangible - i.e. places, atmosphere, space).

The different conditions are each represented by a layer in the drawing, creating a nonfigura-tive pattern as well as map of the context, describing the city’s structure and relation of mass, movement and space.

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Next spread: plans and sections.Section principle. Collage.

Interior

The building houses ten student appartments and common areas, such as kitchen, conference room and terrace, to serve these as well as a bookstore at ground level, adressing the street.

The transition from street to appartment, from public to private space, has been explored throughout the process. The project uses the bookstore as well as the created ‘atrium’ (p. 20) programatically to create these transitions. From street to store to passage to distribution space and common areas to shared access and private appartments.

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Situation plan. Ground floor.

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4th floor

3rd floor.

2nd floor.

1st floor.

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The AtriumCirculation/distribution space

‘The Atrium’ is the outdoor circulation space, that leads to the appartments, common areas, the terrace and the courtyard. The cubist motives of the the site have inspired the specific spaces, while the whole course and its direct relation to the street and city is a transcription of the mesh motive.

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TerraceCourtyard

Niche

Passage

Gallery

Balcony

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Exterior

The house attaches itself to the existing buildings and fills in the void, but in substance and form it dif-fers from the surroundings. While the fenestration of the apartments serve as a seam between the new and the existing buildings, the dimensioning of the openings around the inner atrium/circulation space create an abstraction, wherein the house attains an emancipation and timelessness that makes it refer back to its surroundings and historic context.

A house that in shape, dimension and typology refers to its surrounding, but in abstraction and sub-stance differs from them, creating a charged situation in an otherwise cluttered environment.

Profiling

The building is constructed with loadbearing outer walls of concrete, and windows framed in thin profiled dark steel.

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Elevations.

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Opstalt

Development of a brick pattern related to the character of the material. The project was one out of ten projects that were chosen for erection. Finally the wall was exhibited in Billund Skulptur-park, Billund, Denmark.

The process from model to drawing.

WALL

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The wall in the landscape.

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The project consists of four pavilions, each one formed to exhibit a specific work of art and placed specifically in relation to the landscape. The site is a public park by the large fjord in Roskilde, Denmark. The landscape of the site is quite complex and consists of natural beach and forest, fields with grassing livestock and the horizon and far extent of the water. The ebb and flow of the tide is very present, and the sense of cyclical time have been a motive throughout the process.

The main point of the intervention has been to place the four pavilions in a sequence that stages the scenic qualities of the area. The pavilions are tied together by a looping course, that is repeated in lesser scales around and in the houses.

On the exterior the pavilions represent a typology that refers to the urban grid and the park’s close connection to the city. Each house is however distorted for its specific situation, both out-side and inside, and has been formed to house and exhibit an artwork, and each pavilion present their own distuingished space within.

Photographs fom site

ROSKILDE SCULPTURE PARK

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Map 1:1000, pencil and graphite on paper (150cm x 120cm). drawing that studies the landscape character, the specific views at the site and its relation to the city.

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Surface, volume and point. Creating a place in the landscape.

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Situation plan 1:500, pencil on paper (200cm x 150cm). Drawing showing the new course, the pavilions and their relation to the sculptures placed in the landscape.

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House for Still Life.

Pavilion for display of Sam Taylor-Wood’s video piece ‘Still Life’.

The building is symetrical and is connected to two cyclic courses, one through the house and one through the landscape, circling the house. This spatial se-quence works as a way of anchoring piece in house, and house in landscape, and is a reference to the theme of the artwork, and the overall sense of time at the site.

Situation, detail from site plan.Still Life.

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Sections, plan, elevations, pencil on paper (70cm x 100).

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House for Ancient Sound.

Pavilion for exhibition of Paul Klee’s painting ‘An-cient Sound’.

The building is organized around the sky-lit exhibi-tion space, which sets off its distorted shape and twisted corridor. The visitor is led through the building to an outside space defined by a small grove of trees and the large overhang on the backside of the building.

The spatial sequence of the house is again an interpre-tation of the artwork. The visitor passes through this irrational building and experiences its enclosed space and is then led to a place of a new or another state or condition, revelating the landscape.

Ancient Sound. Plan and section.

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Model exploring the spatial intent of the project.

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House for Spanish Dancer.

Pavilion for exhibition of Edgar Degas’ sculpture ‘Spanish Dancer’.

The building is characterized by a circular room, in which the statue is exhibited. By its shape, the room implies a directionless space which the small sculpture can inhabit in its scale and motive.

The windows appear as openings in the wall, and the direct sunlight dissolve the otherwise clear symmetry of the space.

Rendering of exhibition space during daylight. Materiality and character. Model.

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Plan and section. Above: Model.

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URBAN INTERVENTION

Project for a multipurpose hall in an urban context. The project interprets the typology of the small scale industries that are still characteristic of the area. At the same time it attempts to establish a socially consistent intervention in an otherwise socially deprived area of the city, to be original in its surroundings and to create a more stable environment as a replacement of an empty plot of land.

The interior space has been created to embrace the moving body and to stage the relationship between the residential and public functions of the city in scale, volume and transparency.

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Model renderings.

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The project is for a small house with a simple programme defined by a character inspired by a literary reference. Based on ‘The Process’ by Franz Kafka, the house is shaped around an enclosed circuit of rooms that in their course and dimensions continually negotiate the relation between space, void and mass. A house without rooms, where space is not between the walls, but rather in the walls. The project seeks to study the potential of space, and to propose a somewhat more existential interpretation of the concept.

HOUSE FOR THE PROCESS

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Study of the material character of the house.

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Development of plan and section.Plan concept.

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Sectional projection.

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The process covered a transformation from the specific place (studied through measurements and drawings) unfolded to a new spatial intention (explored in model).

The intended space remained scaleless but was developed as a picture, using analogies such as double exposure, to create an image that is neither drawing or photograph, but a medialess projection of space.

The images show the model, and its use for and merge to drawing.

Unfolding. Photographs. Generated space.

SPATIAL TRANSFORMATION

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Double exposure.

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2009-The Royal Danish Acedemy of Fine ArtsSchool of ArchitectureDepartment 5

1st year (p. 36 - p. 43) At Høgni Hansen and Stine Henckel Schultz.

2nd year (p. 10 - p. 35)At Rikke Gry Rasmussen, Stine Henckel Schultz and Camilla Hornemann.

3rd year (p. 2 - p. 9)At Anders Munck and Claus Pryds.

2011-www.StudArk.dkCo-founder of and contributor to the new established network for architecture students in Denmark.

The website offers a platform for sharing projects, events, experiences and inspirations across the various aspects of architecture and between the two architecture schools in Denmark (Aarhus and Copenhagen). The initiative seeks to create an environment of exchange, debate and information for the students to interact in.

Education

Projects

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Søren Kryger AagaardVendersgade 29, 1. th.

1363 København KDanmark

s.aagaard@hotmail.com+45 22 23 97 33

Contact