FORSK! - research projects from Aarhus School of Architecture

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This exhibition at the entrance-hall level of the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen is on the work of eight research students and graduates from Aarhus School of Architecture. 

These projects cover a wide range of subjects from understanding natural and historic man-made drainage as it has to adapt or be adapted for increased rainfall - a consequences of climate change - through new possibilities in the way we use traditional materials like concrete and, for wood, how new techniques of digital fabrication can be used to develop new forms of construction. 

 As people move into cities some buildings in rural settlements in Denmark have been abandoned and one of the projects looks at how we assess buildings that are no longer needed and might be demolished and looks at how we understand and remember buildings that are part of a common cultural heritage.

The project by Elizabeth Donovan explores how a strong visual or graphic presentation that shows the complex history of sustainability over a century reveals new connections and suggests hierarchies or priorities when “bridging the gap between discourse and practice.”

“Each project further illustrates a rising need for interdisciplinary dialogue to both develop and build knowledge and hereby influence the world.

Aarhus School of Architecture labels this research by design. This methodology, developed at the school, tests ideas and theories through real-life case studies … a proposed solution to a relevant problem, rather than a theoretical consideration.”

Timber curtain by Niels Martin Larsen and Maya Lahmy
explores how we shape materials - here by using digital control of a router to cut precise joins to construct a complex lattice of curved and twisting sections of timber.

Mass and Manipulation by Jon Krähling Engholt
Concrete is normally flat and relatively smooth but here a rubber membrane that has a pattern of cuts made with a laser is used for the former and is supported in different ways as the concrete sets. The weight of the concrete means that the rubber stretches and as the cuts stretch they distort or twist to reveal a different characteristic of concrete that as it sets changes from a viscous fluid to a solid.

Don’t Blame the water! Katrina Wiberg
In many settlements, particularly if they are low lying or close to the coast, modern expansion is often over marginal land - building on meadows and marshland that had taken or slowed down surface water when rain was heavy. 

Maps can show features of the landscape that have been overlaid by man-made drainage systems over decades or even over centuries.

The study area for this project was the settlement of Lystrup. Historical maps, contemporary maps and flood maps were compared to correlate  historical wetlands with flood-prone residential areas to resolve the actual relationship.

Decisions about climate resilience have to include "the planning processes and decision-making mechanisms that shape urban development."

We claim or reclaim land for new developments to extend urban areas and settle in places that in the past were considered to be either unsuitable or difficult for habitation and studies like this will make it possible to distinguish between the Dry and Wet City because "When the cloudburst occurs, the water takes over, and the ice age landscape emerges. The Wet City awakens."

 

Bespoke Fragments Anders Kruse Aagaard
 … explores concrete wood and steel but uses them in a way that challenges our perception of these traditional materials that normally we barely notice.
Concrete is twisted over curved and almost free form steel reinforcing rods to create shapes that are closer to sculpture than structure and in Intermediate fragments from 2014 ash is cut and curved and twisted using digital machining and then slotted into a complicated concrete base for a striking interplay of materials and forms.

Urban Carpet by Polina Chebotareva
10,000 pieces of Douglas fir were linked together with steel wire, the wood charred to form an unfamiliar surface that protects the surface from moisture using a technique related to the Japanese Shou Sugi Ban. 
When it rains the wood gives off a slight scent of smoke that enhances the experience and with use the colour changes to brown so you can trace where people have walked.

For the festival in Aarhus in 2018 the Urban Carpet was installed on a traffic Island in the middle of the main road in front of the central railway station - an area of 100 square metres. 50,000 people cross over here every day but normally people do not notice the island so it is described as an overlooked urban space. The carpet challenges preconceptions and invites people to experience a familiar route in a new way.

Transformation of the abandoned Mo Michelsen Stochholm Krag
This project looks at the impact as people migrate from the country to the town and buildings are abandoned. It recorded but also intervened in the decay cutting through some buildings that are destined for demolition to reveal new views and a new focus on both the structure and on perceptions about how it was used and its role in the community as it is  lost from a common history.
Biopsies of the abandoned 2015 looked at a farmhouse in Ydby dated 1780 and tracked the decay of a pig shed.
The reverse biopsy 2016 looked at an abandoned confectionary in Hurup  two months before it was demolished. The building was cut through and for the first time that opened a view and link between the shop in the front and the bakery at the back and revealed a stratification and private history to stimulates a reassessment of the place these buildings had in the lives of people … those who lived in them and those who visited them or possibly knew them only from the outside.