Ulrika Ax

Real/Unreal - Ownership, profits and aesthetics in catalogue houses compared to cars and file-sharing networks.

I was thinking of file-sharing and the lack of profit it this. No ownership therefore no profit.

The Torrents works like there is a product, say a movie, wich several people have on their computers. If you would like to get the same movie, the product i split into numerous parts, sent trough the web, and then assembled again in your own computor. There is no cronological order in which the parts are sent. What happens if the assembly goes wrong?

The movie The Fly is about a scientist who has invented a teleporter. When he is to teleport himself throug space in atomic shape, a fly is mixed with him and the assembly goes wrong, very wrong…

So let’s apply this to architecture and turn it around. What is architecture that is ALL about profit and ownership? And what happens if the assembly goes wrong?
There are of course lots of buildings design with the only intrestest of profit. But what happens when it’s applyed to housing? Isn’t there other aspects to be considerd then?

I have investigated the Swedish catalogue house market. What are the values that are important? Why does it look the way it does? Has something in the assembling gone terribly wrong?

I looked at 20 different companies that sell catalogue houses. I have picked one house from each firm wich is typical for the estetics of this firm. The estetics lie not only in the houses themselves but also in the presentation of the drawings etc. All the houses are, in princip, the same, created by the limitations of economics, transportation, materal and so on. But they differ on the exterior were symbols or attributes of different kind are applied.

I sorted the houses in groups by apperance:

• The folklore type. Reminder of old times.
• The borgouise millenium
• The ”egnahemsrörelsen”. Home ownership movement.
• The modernist times.

All these houses has somewhat perverted expressions reminding of the –ism or movement which lye as a bluprint for them.
It signals history, safety, security och recognission. And it works – it sells. Is it architecture? Architecture as we, students and architects, know it doesn’t exist in ”real life”. Why is that? Is it unessesary or is it just not profitable?

Then I started thinking about what other products there are in the market that sells and works and is bought by the same people whom are bying the catalouge houses.

So I started looking at cars. The car is somewhat a necessity as well as the house. Everybody buys them. These ten cars are the ten most popular new cars sold in Sweden in September 2008. If you look at the aestheticts of them it’s hard to find any resemblance with the aesthetics of the houses. Why is that?

What would happen if there was?

Matteo Arnone

Spaces

I start to think about this project with the idea to compose something with music and of course architecture. I interpreted architecture as a space built by the concept-feelings of the walls, ceiling, corridors etc. but without seeing these elements. A good suggest it was given by the book “Pattern Language” by Christopher Alexander. He also explained the meaning of the several architectural characters for the humanʼs perception.

In the beginning my aim was to create and atmospheric sound which reminds the feeling of the architectural space. I was interested to do for example a kind of effect of a small room with a high roof. I also try to mix together different sounds and music to understand a new way for create the feeling of a space. I mixed few tribal voices with a noise of a building site but I felt nothing really interesting linked to architecture. I was very inspired by the movie “Blow up” by the director the Michelangelo Antonioni and by some Felliniʼs scenes in 8 and half. So the concept of the first process was just to focus myself on the images of music and how the music can create shape.

I discovered a sphere producing one midi input with delay. Increasing the feedback modulation, the perception of the space is wider and more indefinite, ending with a understandable structure of a sphere. This shape is given by the loop repeated many times and by the delay which gives a rounding perception. The next step of the process it came by relflecting about atmosphere of music into spaces and to see how it can change the perception of the architecutreʼs size.

Peter Behrbohm

Non-static space

What would happen, if the space you are in only existed for you. Rooms that are forming while you enter them and already vanished when you look back.
Architecture that is made for the moment. Able to change for the next moment.
Could a space enlarge when you spread your arms or a guest enters your room?





A intelligent architecture that suits to your needs, that offers you the space you want but thus does not need much space because rooms and functions you does not need are collapsed or folded up and ready to unfold and to emerge right on cue.

How small could architecture like that get? How much is needed to create a noticeable space? How much do you have to add to get this space defined against the surrounding, the environment or other inhabitants?
How much does the inhabitant need to consider this space as his space or how can the space be so suitable to the person that there is no question whose space it is?

Sofia Bolinder

Skrapan.

During the years 1959-2002 this, originally 84 meters high, building hosted the National tax board of Sweden. The Skrapan building was a symbol of the prevailing political view in Sweden. The socialdemocrats flagship. Skatteskrapan. (“Tax-Skyscraper”).





In the middle of the 1990´s, the then in charge city vice mayor in Stockholm suddenly wanted the building demolished. According to her Skatteskrapan was a disgrace for Stockholm town. Fulskrapan. (“Ugly-Skyscraper”).





The people who worked in Skatteskrapan got upset, they loved their workplace. A few years later, around 2002, also the owner of the building realized the value of it and decided to get rid of the National tax board of Sweden, simply by raising the rent enormously! Potentialskrapan. (“Potential-Skyscraper”).
They now had great plans for the building. Architects got involved. An extraordinary hotel was to be built together with exclusive offices. Lyxskrapan. (“Luxery-skyscraper”).





At this point the socialdemocrat Annika Billström steps in. She insists on building something for the people in Stockholm. She swops one of the skyscrapers at Hötorget for Skatteskrapan. The building is now a property of the city and intended to become a resourse for the citizens of Stockholm. In 2007 almost 500 students moved in. Studentskrapan. (“Student-Skyscraper”).
The right wing who won the elections 2006 kept the building as studenthousing but immediately decided to sell Skrapan. In the middle of 2008 AP-fastigheter bought it.





So what will happen next? What will be Skrapans next shape? I want to find out how the building can be developed, improved and to a certain extent re-programmed. All this depending on different assumtions regarding Skrapans future. Will the students still inhabit Skrapan? If not, who will? If they’re still there, what would make it a better place to live in? There are unused spaces in the building, how do we make people use them? Is the solution to add things or maybe to take things away? Will politicians once again use it as a kind of flagship for their political views? What means will be important for the future inhabitants of Stockholm and Skrapan?

Tim Conaglen

Becoming Perspectives

Architectural representation is saturated with images which say very little about the architecture being created – the experience of the space.

The recently released Microsoft software ‘Photosynth’ presents a way of locating a 2d image (a photograph) within its original 3d spatial context. The resultant overlapping and layering of repeated points of conjuncture forming a 3d point cloud which itself can relate a spatial experience to its users.





The reliance of architects on a single viewpoint perspective in all its forms is accepted as being ‘realistic’ and yet correlates very poorly to how we as human beings actually experience the built (and unbuilt) world.

This project is concerned with redressing this (‘perspective nightmare’) imbalance by exploring processes or methods which reflect the complexity of human visual experience.

The artist David Hockney has attempted to address these issues through a layering/tiling technique (similar to that being used by Photosynth) where coinciding elements within 2 images allow them to be placed together causing a distorted non-perspectival view similar both to the work of western artists from the late 14th Century and also to the work of the Cubists at the start of the 20th Century – Certain aspects are favoured over others allowing the artist to portray that which is of most interest to him in highest relief. Whilst this method does remove the predominance of perspective within the 2d image it fails to provide a spatial experience which is more akin with own binocular perception.

The complexities of the eye have seemly confounded the architect in terms of being able to draw/create architectural representation which can convey the underlying structure of that which we see - irregular distortions and the intangible. Using the philosophy of Giovanna Borradori as a foundation this project’s ambition is to explore the idea of being able to represent the virtual world we accept as ‘visual experience’ by using the low-tech traditional tools of the architect (i.e. without the need to develop computer simulation software).

Alvin Ekmedkciu

Modern nomads

Modern day nomads have found new ways of bringing the home along as that which is most common, of house wagons. But there exist some other ways as that of houses on water wich can be moved or houses in parts which could be transported on roads.
For the first time since the dawn of civilization, the human has become a predominantly urban creature: humans have not evolved to fit our habitat; we have changed our habitat to suit ourselves. The balance has tipped decisively away from the fields and towards the skyscrapers.
The absence of space in the city leads toward skyscrapers and high prices.

Virtual era

More and more people are using computers, internet, online worlds where they are building a second parallel life, like Second Life, which claim they have millions of users throughout the whole world.
Simulations get real and life and business go virtual.

Where virtual meets real

Rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using solid freeform fabrication. It takes virtual designs from CAD or animation modeling software, transforms them into thin, virtual, horizontal cross-sections and then creates each cross-section in physical space, one after the next until the model is finished. The primary advantage to additive fabrication is its ability to create almost any shape or geometric feature.

Future vision

The flexible future nomad would move into the (industrial) city where he would find the job that fits him better, bringing its home with him instead of today’s trend where the job is brought home, (thus lacking the contact to other people and making the job unpersonal).
• The home designed on a 3 D program could be downloaded on a memory stick or uploaded on internet thus able to be accessed and executed at any computerized execution point where the person is permitted and would like to dwell.
• Online: The architect is going to draw 3d houses and sell them online like it is already happening in Second Life.
• Physical world: The architect is going to draw physical sits for above mentioned virtual houses
• The urban planner is going to decide where the ”sits” are going to be placed in the city
• Empty skyscrapers could be used as possible places to dwell time after time.

Katarina McNabb

Kaleidohouse

This proposal was inspired by social networking, starting with online chatting and ending with the facebook phenomenon. It combines the idea of a longhouse and flat/house-share. As the name suggests it is related to the idea of a kaleidoscope, which involves the notion of infinity and endlessness of reflections…

The design process started by adding a virtual room to an existing, physical one. In the same way one would be viewing friends’ profiles, or talking to someone through a webcam, one of the walls in this room is an interface which connects with someone else’s room as if it was a continuation of the physical space.

From the idea of a kaleidoscope, or just two simple mirrors facing each other, an interface on each of the opposite walls would create a virtual longhouse of the users of this system.
This means that this ‘virtual longhouse’ connects a potentially very large number of physical houses from all over the world in real time and virtual space, at the same time offering an infinite number of different combinations.

It is basically a form of a homely flat-share i.e. a real home for its owner, a place of his own, that nevertheless keeps the lively social spirit of a shared accommodation. Such system would obviously require possibilities of privacy regulation to keep the two aspects in a harmonic balance.

The prospect of real time dynamic holography for the interface offers a third dimension to conventional projection or computer screens. Already it would be possible to create any three-dimensional scene within a designated place of a Kaleidohouse with no more than a short time of internet searching for uploaded sceneries.

Everyone’s Kaleidohouse would then become, at a certain time, a public place in a way, the person’s personal contribution to the shared virtual world, even if it was just completing someone’s living room for a short period of time.

This proposal then completely reverses the conventional values of a home, a private place where one can escape the public mess. Kaleidohouse is a shared social place and it is outside in the open that one can seek solitude.

Nicolo Sandri

UNREAL STRUCTURE

My research is based on the connection between Mathematics and Music and how they influence and create architecture. Music is the only art form, where the form and the medium are the same. Mathematics is the only science where the methods and the subject are the same. Mathematics is the study of mathematics using mathematics. Music is only created and experienced as music. Thus, there is a natural connection between mathematics and music: Both are experienced as pure objects of the brain, and both have meaning outside of the brain only by artificial connections. Architecture is the supreme balance between what is rational and what is emotional, between atmosphere and structure, between Mathematics and Music. Architecture is that Artificial connection that allows us to touch Mathematics and live the Music.

If we think at Pythagoras of Samos, one of the greatest philosopher and mathematic ever lived, he pointed out the rational proportions between the notes that compose the Greek scale and the beautiful and emotional relation between these 5 notes and the 5 planets that were moving along similar ratios, imagining the “Music of the Spheres” as the music of the universe. He lived in the 5th century B.C. So music was not so complicate at that time, but there was a need to give a structure to define the missing notes, so in the 18th century, at the time of Bach, a “tempered scale” was fixed using an irrational number, 12th root of 2, to determinate the interval between notes.

In the 60’s with the minimalistic movement by Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Philip Glass the theme of loop and repetition was introduced, like trying to give through repetition an immortal and metaphysic value to the structure.
My purpose now is to take all of this elements to create an unreal structure that is growing and evolving together with the music, programming a structure that comes out from music through a mathematical process. The music builds itself as the time passes, with repetitions and loops created used the Fibonacci sequence generate the code for the structure. What I am experimenting is to find the Harmonics in a structure, those little things that you almost don’t feel physically, but that give you such an experience that talks straight to your sub-concious.

Qingyang Yu

A Home Is Not A House

You may be protected by a house from cold wind, the rain, the sun and ect. You can have food, shower and sleep comfortably in this house. But you may never be happy because it is not home. There's no families, friends and you're lonely by yourself.

For me it is the first time to leave home so far away. Stockholm is a beautiful city and the people here is very friendly. I have a room in Lappis where I can get all the material things to ensure my study.

Lappkärrsberget (or as it often is called: "Lappis") is located very close to the university and perfect for Students at KTH and Stockholm University. It was built between 1968 and 1970 and has four- to six-storeyed houses. Each corridor contains 10-12 furnished single study bedrooms with a shared kitchen and a common room. All flats and single study bedrooms with kitchenettes are let unfurnished. At the end of 2000, a new house was completed, containing 159 unfurnished single study bedrooms with kitchenettes.

Surrounded by the nice Djurgården park, where jogging is a common thing when weather allows, it is situated just a 10-minute walk from the nearest underground station.

Lappis has an amazing student life, with its common "corridor parties", lappis pub open from time to time and the every-wednesday obligation of going either to Allhuset or Gula Vilan.

The gym and the sauna, the always fully-booked laundry rooms, the football field for sunday's match and lappis beach when you want to swim or have a barbecue and you have the perfect place to stay while being a student. Transportation: Bus 40

Info from : http://www.lappis.org/modules.php?name=aboutlappis

A video of Lappis: http://www.lappis.org/modules.php?name=Video_Stream&page=watch&id=4&d=1

Sometimes I still miss China, miss my families, friends and the life in my hometown. I wonder if I can add something into the place where I live and make my room feel more like a home, where I can feel my friends, families and my culture in it. At first I wonder how can I add these asomatous things, something just like one's feeling, into architecture. I'm thinking about what I'm missing and try to do something to solve these problems.In china I study in another city not far from Shenyang and come back home twice a year. This exchange programme is just like I study in another University and then go back home half a year later. The different thing is I'll have different friends, different life, different culture, of course, different food.

There has an old adage in China called "Bread comes first". Of course, I miss the food in my hometown. There has a share kitchen and I can cook most of the food I like, though it is a little expensive for me to buy the materials for cook, many things here in Stockholm are expensive. For families, I still back home half a year, just like when I was in my home university. Thanks to the computer and internet, I can phone my home, send e-mail or leave messages to my families. And those things I love very much, like anime and computer games, can be downloaded and run by the computer. In fact for me, if I can do the same thing, though in different places, will make me have the same feeling. You may not feel well in a strange place because the things around you are strange, which are not familiar to you. But when you have something which is familiar to you, something you always touch with in your home, you'll feel much more better. The anime and computer game are the things I always touch with in my home and now I can also do these things here, it makes me feel more like in home.

The most important thing I pay attention is about my friends there in China. I always think about that what are they doing now, what's their project going on, are they still lead a life just like these days when I was there and somethings else. I'm missing the life in my home university and the good thing is there have other four friends from my home university together with me to come KTH for exchange. For me ,we're like more than friends, we're families.

Include me there have three students in Lappis. We often have meals and have party on a small scale. It was happy time during that. But when the meal end, it's the time for me to back my room, I would be very sad and have comfortlessness. Especially when it was late in the night. The way back to my room is not long at all and I'm not a lazy guy who is unwilling to walk through such a short distance. The way become so long in mentality is because I don't want to leave my friends and back to my room alone. Every time when I said goodbye to them I would think that how nice it would be if we live in one corridor. Now I have friends from my home university and I want to keep touch with them at any time. I want to make the way from my friend's room to mine. So I wonder if I can do something to connect my friends with me. To get nearer to my friends, I think it is a way to get nearer to home, to make Lappis more like my home.

Later I've realized that if I have this kind of thought, others may have the same feeling. If I want to get nearer to my friends, others people also want to. So why not make this project bigger, make it in the whole area of Lappis. There will has one thing to connect people who live here. The problem under discuss is what the form of this connect thing. It will be something like a bridge or what else is a question to solve till now.

As it is known in Lappis, there have many buildings, each building has many corridor and each corridor has many rooms. So the connect thing will change into many different sizes--the large size for the buildings,the medium size for the corridors and the small size for the units.

And I know Lappis is a place for students, or many rooms here are for students. People will not live here for a long time--not like you have a home somewhere, you have families there and you know very well the people around you, you neighbors, the guys work in shop not far away and some other people around there. But here in Lappis is not the same. It is just like a hotel, but people live here a longer time. And the buildings seems just like the same from outside. We can not see what the inside like from the facade and don't know there are many people from many countries all over the world with many different cultures. How can we show these different cultures and let people know them, and half or one year later when the people who live there leave, how can they let others know "I've lived there"? When I went to visit my friends I saw chopsticks and bowls in the kitchen so I know someone who is Chinese have been here before. It's only a simple example.

Another way to connect people is if there has a big place for people to gather together. Last week I've been to Paris for a trip. When I visited the Cour Marly, in the Louvre Museum, I thought it was a space which is rebuilded from an outside one. It became larger and made the space more interesting. You don't feel you are in outside when you walk through it. I wonder if this way can be used in somewhere of lappis and then one won't feel like walk outside when from one building to another and in another hand people live there can have a big inside space to get together.

An architect is working for the people, to solve the problems and create comfortable for people. That's what I've thought about for my project till now. Many questions are to be answered. If I can do something to make Lappis more like a home.