Selective elective course (6 credits)
This course will explore the process of working with the existing. With the tool of design propositions we will discuss and challenge contemporary strategies of preservation taking in to consideration the processes that drives the conservation of the built environment today such as experiential economy, ecologies of reuse, social expectation and the mediation of the heritage object.
A central question will be how to interact with the historical ‘as found’, as a resource and as a material for alteration. To identify site-specific material, spatial and organisational qualities that engages and activates the existing fabric, its spaces, uses and histories. Including in identification of ‘material’ for alteration is also to identify forces of cultural expectations present in different representation of the heritage object.
The emphasis in the course will be on the theoretical study of ‘cases and sites’ using design as an analytical tool. Thus the course will not necessarily result in the production of complete architectural projects that ‘solve’ problems in their totality but the result can be suggestive analyses and proposals that work in various fields and scales of alteration from internal spaces, through the interface between outside and inside, to the larger urban context to issues of program, of alteration of expectation via different mediations, to designing the processes of change itself.
Programme/site
The programme is the alteration of an existing museum. The course will have two ‘case sites’ Stockholm and New York. In each site a central cases of alteration will be used as a point of reference to discuss and analyse alteration. The National Museum, Stockholm and the private Judd Foundation at 101 Spring Street, Manhattan will be used to discuss alternative thinking around the museum, and display in relation to conservation. The course will be arranged around site visits (2 day study-trip to Stockholm and a longer one week field trip to New York).
Stockholm National Museum
The National Museum in Stockholm presently faces an extensive renovation and modernisation that will alter the existing museum building in several ways. This transformation of the building opens up possibilities of re-thinking the use, function and program of this monumental museum building today. Since its formation in the late 18th century the museum has primarily been associated with the conservation and protection of objects for the good of the public and the nation. In the 21st
century however the museum is to an increasing extent a commercial enterprise that is as much a site for consumption as one for the experience of culture. Rather than a monumental sepulchre for the past the expansive museum institution of today can be understood as a form of infrastructure for events directed towards an increasingly globalised audience.
New York Spring Street 101
In the institutional critique of the museum, which has been central to the discourse of contemporary art since the 1960s, the 19th century museum architecture, with its enclosures, walls and openings, has been the seen as the very embodiment of the stifling power of institutions. The innovative re-use of industrial building for exhibition-spaces that started in the 1960s in lower Manhattan, exemplified in the purchase of 101 Spring Street by Donald Judd in 1968, provided an alternative to the museum’s contained and ritualised spaces. These ‘as found’ ‘ruined’ spaces vacated by industry suggested liberations from the concepts of style and history that had organised the spatial configuration of the traditional museum. Today, 101 Spring confronts a major renovation programme, and that raises questions this translation from ‘as found’ to foundation/institution.
Students who have completed this course should provide architectural designs and analysis which demonstrate: a knowledge of contemporary theories and strategies in conservation and an ability to methodically test and appraise design options and program in relation to historical contexts and preservation strategies.
This course provides a great deal of flexibility for the student but requires that the student is prepared to work independently, taking a mature and developed responsibility for choice throughout the work. This includes personal setting of goals, individual deadlines and planning of individual time. The course will be structured around two study visits; the period between these used for mapping the area of study, in academic as well as architectural terms, and the period following them for synthetic design work. The course is suitable for students planning to complete their Master’s thesis/diploma project in a subject relating to transformation of historical buildings, cultural buildings and museums.
Seminars and reviews.
The course is assessed as pass/fail,
subject to the Regulations for Master's degree programs at Oslo School of Architecture and Design, § 6-14.
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