KØBENHAVN
TRACES

Place-making through form:
an inquiry into
ARCHITECTURAL
OBJECT, EMBODIED OCCUPATION
AND PLACE

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Simon Twose | Performance Stream
VUW School of Architecture

Featured on KooZA/rch, Newport Works
Awarded - MArch (prof) Distinction

ABSTRACT

This proposal is an architectural enquiry into how intertwined formal qualities of surface, volume and geometry affect occupation at different scales. The intention is to design performances that promote a shared agency between the volumetric spatiality of the architectural object and its occupant. The research aims to experiment with this through a meshing of formal tests and spatial perception, which together act as an apparatus to activate the research questioning. The results of this research will contribute to understanding how form influences a sense of place.

Globalisation reduces our sense of belonging through repeatable spatial formulas, returning to an identity of place is significant in activating essences of the city. Avoiding the ever-increasing presence of the term Rem Koolhaas calls the ‘generic city’, and allowing for interconnecting of small and public scale architectural conditions for people. Using Scaling as a device to reinterpret architecture and the urban spatial condition of place, the DNA of past and present architectural objects are distilled and extracted from the Copenhagen context then projected back into the drawings. Through the enmeshing of structure, material, light, colour, geometry and spatial perception – derived through the manipulation of the Copenhagen formal context - this research expands on notions of place and how it is understood.

This research operates as a series of iterative experiments through the design of three projects: an installation, a mid-scale building, and a public building. Focusing upon collections, typologies and curation in order to create episodic, surreal and transformational spaces and landscapes. The final design research situated in an urban context, the port area of Copenhagen, and specific elements of the site chosen for their opportunities in testing form, occupation and place.

01

INSTALLATION

SURFACES, GEOMETRY, KALEIDOSCOPE

The installation phase experiments performance conditions of phenomenology - testing surface materiality and volumetric manipulation through tectonics, to discover possibly research trajectories of form-making towards architectural objects and embodiment. The final Kaleidoscope design aimed to link these characteristics, proposing an installation that evokes the users’ experience of place through a fragmented visual field of their current surroundings.

The Kaleidoscope is the final installation, a viewing device to observe superimposed refractions through the overlapping of surfaces and volume. The form and scale was constructed for human-proportions, to embody an optical and bodily movement. The installation device is used for altering and fragmenting space by rotating, cutting and stretching the visual field. The visual abstraction of this scopic view is used as a mode of architectural experimentation and representation for the larger body of work.

02

MID-SCALE

OBSERVATORY DWELLING

Location Lake Tekapo, New Zealand

This design inquiry examines the formal qualities of architectural objects and landscape through the intertwining of scalar. Located on the island surface of Lake Tekapo within the idyllic Mackenzie Basin, the mid-scale assembles an observatory dwelling distilled of context and resonance with the surrounding topography. The design shares an agency between the volumetric spatiality of architectural objects and its research occupants. Resulting in a locality and presence that is specific to its context and visual co-existance within the identity of place.

Interiority field

An urbane cross-section connects the representation of the embodied occupation and spatial qualities within the interspace of distorted folds. The formal shifts of the outer surfaces sharing a changing dialogue towards the interiority and scale that inhabitants occupy within the programmed voids. Forming a dwelling of both symbolic and tactile cohabitation of architecture and landscape within the isolated island.

03

PUBLIC SCALE

KØBENHAVN TRACES

Location Copenhagen, Denmark

This speculative design portrays København through the projective lenses of object, memory and infrastructure. Situated in an urban context, a redundant harbour site of the city, with specific elements of the site chosen for the opportunities in testing form, occupation and place. The aim was to operate the previous methodology of object extraction at a public-scale, within the formal context of København. In the project, selected objects of architecture are mapped and rescaled within the present site - as a place of converging urban and industrial spaces. The design applies the architectural medium of archipelago mapping, a technique to observe and study the city’s existing architectural and urban condition. Particular built objects are extracted from context then projected back into drawings, stored in a catalogue collection. Then fragmented into an assemblage of distilled elements which are duplicated, transformed, and boolean into parts, interacted with one another and rescaled on to the harbour site through a series of iterations and processes. The work shifted between digital and physical modelling, photography, digital collage and drawing. Developing towards a final diorama repository to visualise the surreal public urban-scheme of collective memories.

Archipelgo Mapping
The archipelgo of København objects are extracted from their original contect and collected within an urban catalogue. Acting as architectural ‘friends’ similar to John Hejduk projects within the Mask of Medusa, though these are København friends - they work as critical objects for interpreting the urban fabric of the cities typological make-up. An array of object scaling from chair’ towards city-size fortifications. These architectural objects have a shared agency with the ideas of place-making, through the operation of social memory and formal language. Towards a process of manipulating this stored repository of artefacts for the means of design form-making.

JESSE EWART

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