PROJECTS / COMMON GROUND
       
     
PROJECTS / IMAGINARY PLACE
PROJECT PROPOSAL NORDHAVN Nordhavnen was built in the late 1800s in the Svanemølle Bay north of Copenhagen's free port and is Denmark's second largest marina. Nordhavnen is divided into sections, there is a potential in these different sections from the already cleaned field that has been cleared after its previous use, a company which has disappeared, to the completely filled frame and the constant changes that exist between these states as they occur due to a diversity of external influence. Goods is shipped out and goods is freighted in. Nordhavn as it is today, is in a transition from supply port to town, while in exile because of the ongoing deconstruction giving room to a future plan. In about 40 years Nordhavn will express and contain a new life. Within the new urban planning a grid is added above the harbor, the town's “prototype”, a green structure for further expansion. The modernist intention has been to obliterate the existing instead of strengthening and improving what already exists in a long-term process that already could have begun.  The project relates to a specific field in Nordhavn, the baseline of the area is / was the sand. The project interprets the existing industrial types, describing this neighborhood identity and history with sand being a resource as a building block, which can leave  impression and imprint. The project program is on the borderline between the old and new, it is a multi-cultural field that interprets the past and future. The conceptual idea is the ability to carry the quality of the constant replacements that have taken place in the industrial peninsula and thereby meeting the new district of 2050. The project is meant to be the cultural center of Nordhavn with constant changes between the green modernist grid that focuses on the individual; in work and life. The project is a new boat terminal to Copenhagen, a market-hall for the town and district, a concert hall, a community center and a bus terminal.  
       
     
PROJECTS / PROJECT PROPOSAL
ENCLOSURES The project is based on paintings by John Hejduk, his last works as part of the book Sanctuaries . The works appear as pictorial sections where different mythological events are taking place. These sections have been translated into a spatial 1: 1 realization, Enclosure, built with wood and tarpaulin. How can these everyday building materials be translated into something of sublime architectural value? The four incisions are to be considered symbolic in four different concepts;  Bell, Sun, Earth and Ground . Four concepts that we can understand, and thus may be a driving force to create an architectural vocabulary that can represent the mythological stories depicted. Bell defines a sound which spreads, and thereby gathers us.  Sun which is above us all.  Earth is where we all live, and Ground , the weight of what we belong to - and where we all are due. The bags are filled with “Ground”  but are emptied slowly but surely when they meet with the Sun . In between occurs Earth , where humans can live between light and gravity. Light,  Sun , coming from above down to the enclosed space as a bell hanging over us connecting the four concepts. Man can grasp the rope which fills the room with sound and makes us aware of the action taking place.
       
     
PROJECTS / ONE TO ONE
VIBRATO DOLPHIN PARK, MELBOURNE HARBOR, AUSTRALIA When my feet hit the ground in the southern hemisphere for the very first time, it was Professor Peter Corrigan's studio I was to intensively follow for the next six months. A man with remarkable strength and ability to tell stories - a pure postmodernist within the theater and architecture world. The project that landed on my desk, was to be located on Melbourne's waterfront, where an amusement park with dolphins was to be given its form. It was both a moral and ethical struggle, every week we were plotting new stories that were created in the interpretation of articles, artwork, books, movies, etc. We ran all over the city to experience and write essays. The interpretation and analysis of existing works, places and performances would supply the project with a foundation and from this basis vibrant stories originated, both as protests and as a craving to try to create a meaningful meeting between these intelligent sea creatures and man – but as we all knew   – in reality it could never happen... Freedom was probably the only way forward, which in fact was Peter's message and within this artistic freedom on our behalf. The experience gave me a broader perspective for future projects - it was deeply serious and wonderfully humorous.
       
     
PROJECTS / VIBRATO DOLPHIN PARK
FREEDOM MUSEUM MEMORIAL SITE IN RYVANGEN, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK An open space/a surface without a program. The sites significant and emotional history represents an extremely important period of change for todays society and is a memorial place for the freedom fighters of WWII. The property´s significance inspires a mood-filled facility where the individuals understanding, movement in the structure, adaptation and absorption is the origin. Through registration of the Memorial site's existing elements they are interpreted as the four monuments they are. The high portal as a strong physical and mental transition from one state to another – from the busy Tuborgvej to the evocative garden room in the memorial site. The long perspective avenue and pergola, grabs hold of you and wandering in silence comes naturally. The burial site, the structured plan in the large spacious garden and anthropogenic condensed oasis in memory of concentration camp prisoners. The memorial site exists, in its entirety, as a tight square construction surrounded by axes, to the south a stone wall from east to west. South of the wall the facility dissolves and the scattered trees condenses to a forest edge, constituting a new transition. Here arises a natural extension and location of the new freedom museum.   The mental processing started by selecting the location in dialog / affiliation with the existing facilities, as a spatial and densified re-interpretation of the natural walk, which takes place. In a common place of created dimensions located in the outskirts of nature, where it is natural to find spaces that are mutable. A meeting takes place between nature – the trees and the architectural constructed body. The forests edge embraces and creates a spatial area at the site. In the interpretation and understanding of the memorial site as a place and the individual elements significance arises a fifth element - The total monument and the evocative rooms. The walk as a discovery, is the essential concept to come to an understanding of the project's intention. How to create spaciousness that both creates a common understanding and is able to create within us wonder/reflection and thus contemplation. The project is a world you step into that at times is experienced as directionless. Through placement of discs, complexity and depth, the plant occurs both capable of being transparent and providing the opportunity to read the next room scenarios that arise in the individuals further journey through the structure. Limited access to free movement in some of the spatial experiences and an unlimited, virtually expansive freedom feeling in large areas of the building are contrasts that reinforce each experience. From the large hall to the narrow courtyard which simultaneously provides eye toward the big sky. The roof carving through the plant remains as a distinct and essential directional swath through the facility and reinforces the already existing axes.
       
     
PROJECTS / FREEDOM MUSEUM