Tracing Somali Architecture

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TRACING SOMALI ARCHITECTURE


CONTENTS

ARCHITECTURAL WORKSHOPS 2018-2020 Hargeisa, The Somali Peninsula Idea and concept: Anders Michelsen & Frederik Emil Seehusen Organization and partners: Office for Urban Action: Frederik Emil Seehusen Anders Michelsen

Abaarso Tech University: Ahmed Bashe Ahmed Esa

OFFICE FOR URBAN ACTION

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1. INTRODUCTION 2. WORKSHOPS 2018-2020 3. ESSAY - ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISATION IN THE SOMALI PENINSULA 4. ESSAY - BUILDING CULTURE 5. SAMPLES: STUDENT PROJECTS

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Abaarso Tech University (ATU) is honored to collaborate with Professors Anders Michelsen of the Department of Arts and Culture Studies at Copenhagen University, and Associate Teaching Professor Frederik Emil Seehusen of the School of Architecture of the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts for the purpose of introducing world-class knowledge in design and architecture to the Horn of Africa. We are very pleased to note that the first workshop in an envisioned one-year post graduate program was successfully completed for twenty-two architects and engineers in Hargeisa from 10-17 August 2018. As part of this project, the principals of the project, Professors Michelsen and Seehusen along with ATU researchers plan to produce a one-of-a-kind book on architectural concepts and design in the Horn of Africa. Preliminary manuscripts of this upcoming book will be informed by and used during the course of the architecture program. Dr. Ahmed H. Esa President Abaarso Tech University Hargeisa, Somaliland Ahmed Esa ahesa@icloud.com

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1. INTRODUCTION: A NEED FOR BUILDING CULTURE

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“IN OUR TIME, MAN’S CAPABILITY TO TRANSFORM HIS SURROUNDINGS, IF USED WISELY, CAN BRING TO ALL PEOPLES THE BENEFIT OF DEVELOPMENT AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO ENHANCE THE QUALITY OF LIFE. WRONGLY OR HEEDLESSLY APPLIED, THE SAME POWER CAN DO INCALCULABLE HARM TO HUMAN BEINGS AND HUMAN ENVIRONMENT” The 1972 UN conference on the Human Environment . The build environment is more than ever a key factor for the future of humanity, and for sustainable development initiatives. More than half of the world’s population is living in urban areas, and prognoses indicate that two thirds of humanity will be living in cities in 2050;

“sustainable development cannot be achieved if we do not change the way we build, and control our urban spaces.”

One of the priorities of UN’s Global Goals for Sustainable Development 2015-2030 is the creation of sustainable development in urban centers in the Global South. In 2016 Habitat for Humanity stated that with the expiration of the

2000-Millennium Development Goals in 2015, the issue of bettering housing in the developing world had achieved key importance;

“Adequate and affordable housing, including upgrading slums, continue to be prioritized in draft SDG frameworks because housing not only improves outcomes for individuals, but affects communities and the global economy at large. Demand for housing remains extraordinarily high in the developing world”. While ‘top down’ strategies, like ‘slum upgrades’ or city planning should be encouraged as a way to meet demands for housing as part of a better life, there should be an equally im-

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portant call for ‘bottom up’ strategies. Because of a lack of planning strategies and building regulations in many places in the Global South, the responsibility for building often falls on local stakeholders. Either in the form of privatized entitles (developers or societies and NGOs) or by informal builders (inhabitants in informal cities) which make do with whatever they can bring together as places for living and protection against weather and climate. In this book – Tracing Somali Architecture – we take the issue of bottom up seriously as a requirement which calls for a different way to teach architecture and urban planning more in sync with local conditions, such as found in the Somali Peninsula. Instead of merely aiming for a place in international architecture debates resonating in key projects all over the world, we want to contribute a contemporary and participatory expression of the build environment, which work out of context in the Somali Peninsula. The book argues for new ways for designers, planners, and architects to engage in local conditions in the global south, through an investigation of the conditions in the Somali Peninsula. On this background it aims to bring in external inputs and ideas, developed across a global domain, relating to issues of architectural, urban and cultural history in the 20th century. What we begin to consider in this book, written in connection with the summer school project “Architecture Concept Development” in Hargeisa 2018-2020, is a pragmatism which

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essentially explores ways to involve culture with building on three levels; Culture, Concept, Communication. These three levels are used to set up the presentation in the book, as well as a suggest a general structure for the issues taken up in the summer school: Chapter 1 outlines historical and cultural conditions on the Somali Peninsula, and argues that culture is intertwined with the use of space: the development of a habitat. Around the theme of the ‘smooth and striated’ we establish an approach to the built habitat of the peninsula, in order to indicate historical genealogies of Somali building, emphasizing the interaction between settled building and moving designs of pastoralism. Chapter 2 argues for a pragmatic approach to concepts for building design. Beyond the use and direct meaning, we explore te ways which buildings resonate with culture. We explore build examples from the Western world where buildings resonate typology and culture, so that both are advanced. Thus the idea of a concept goes beyond the intention and design for a building and reflects on the buildings effect on society (and future typologies). These resonances occurs both in buildings in conscious considerations by the designer and unintentionally for instance by use. Thus in the chapter we look at buildings designed for a particular effect - thius we call generative design - and buildings repurposed to new cultural condition - this we call adaptive design. Chapter 3 deals with how resonances between building typologies and cultural understanding becomes available to stakeholders and users.


Both in the (classical) sense of direct design of buildings – design of form - an indirectly in an expanded notion focusing on how inhabitants becomes co-creator through uses and participatory actions; how the web of culture spins life and developments. In a planned Chapter 4, relevant projects and typologies currently emerging in the Horn of Africa will be registered and debated with point of departure in the preceding chapters.  

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2. SUMMER SCHOOLS 2018-2020

The summer school project and its workshops, 2018-2020, must be seen as an inclusive platform for professionals with a stake in the building-, and shaping of the habitat in the Somalian Peninsula; civil servants, engineers, architects, and developers, and city planners. The aim of the project is to enable the participants to reflect on the relationships between stakeholders and issues through roundtable design activity. In particular the importance of a cultural understanding of the context, and skills pertaining to clearly communicating ideas for a wider audience are in focus. The summer school project is based on thinking by doing, and reflection through design of concrete building proposals. The project starts from the assumption that in order to improve the quality of the build habitat in the Somali Peninsula, we first have to increase everyday value and pleasure of buildings for the user, for whom they are build. Value is thus economical value and business, but it also the respect for culture and humans and their longing for a beautiful habitat. We

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must consider culture beyond existing architecture and make building explained and enjoyed by all stakeholders including the layman. Through the summer schools the participants are given tools to bring forth building solutions in this regard, as well as relevant explanations and convincing ways of communicating about them. The individual workshops use cases and theory to understand how the Somali ways of life becomes culture in building, and how this building becomes valued as contribution to the same culture. Anthropologist Clifford Gertz describes this circular relationship, in the following way,

“Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it.�


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3. ESSAY - ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISATION IN THE SOMALI PENINSULA Working Paper, draft No citation Authors Anders Michelsen, University of Copenhagen & Frederik Emil Seehusen, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture

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CONTENT: TRACING SOMALI BUILDING: THE HABITAT SMOOTH AND STRIATED SPACE: THE BUILT HABITAT SMOOTH AND STRIATED - A FIRST APPROXIMATION: GESTALT, CODE, IDENTITY A FIRST APPROACH TO BUILDING: CULTURE, CONCEPT, COMMUNICATION

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THIS OVERVIEW OUTLINES A WAY TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE SOMALI HABITAT HAS TRANSLATED INTO A HISTORY OF BUILDING. FROM TENT PACKED ON CAMEL, OVER HUTS SPREAD AROUND TOWNS, TO COSMOPOLITAN CITIES The overview traces how the habitat becomes a cultural context for building, and how this context offers resources for architectural concepts and urban planning. And further, how such concepts can be communicated efficiently to a public, to developers, builders, and users. The present changes in the Horn of Africa presents Somalis for a huge new possibilities for building. It relies on continuing peace, economic growth, return of diasporas, urbanisation and increasing recapture of a strong Somali and Muslim self-awareness in a younger public responding to urban life and its building. Today building takes many shapes, as seen in the abundance of projects everywhere in the Somali Peninsula. But it is also highlights a serious need for infrastructure, logistics, and planning, roads, water, electricity, and sewerage, as well as solutions to climate change. Much of the current debate on the Somali Peninsula is still predisposed towards the political issues which have dominated the past four decades since the turning point of postcolonial

Somalia, the Ogaden War 1977-78 between Somalia and Ethiopia. So much, that search on the term “somali architecture” in the Royal Library of Copenhagen yields only results on ‘security architecture’! Other predominant perceptions of architecture relate to the recurring visualization of the Somali Peninsula with pictures of devatsted cities and ruins of famous buildings such as the Al-Uruba Hotel, Mogadishu, or landmarks such as Berbera in Somaliland. All of them support and underline the commonplace perception of ’a failed state.’ But as soon as we look closer at current building – in whatever size, scale and extension, from the family residence to urban environments – a new peninsula emerges, pointing to a different future compared with the six decades of postcolonial independence. The cities of the Horn of Africa may look dusty and undeveloped for the uninitiated visitor, but they are part of a vibrant urbanisation. Before the Ogaden War, Somalia’s capital Mogadishu had a mere 250.000 inhabitants, in 2017 it is

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City scape of Hargesia. The German philosopher Walter Benjamin talked in the midwar years in Europe about the all encompassing intoxicating cohabitation of urban life. In the book Berlin Childhood Around 1900, he wrote, “Not to find one’s way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one’s way in a city, as one loses one’s way in a forest, requires some schooling. Street names must speak to the urban wanderer like the snapping of dry twigs, and little streets in the heart of the city must reflect the times of day, for him, as clearly as a mountain valley. This art I acquired rather late in life; it fulfilled a dream, of which the first traces were labyrinths on the blotting papers in my school notebooks.” The German sociologist George Simmel would in “The Metropolis and Mental Life” from nineteen hundred three talk about “the equation” which “structures like the metropolis set up between the individual and the super-individual contents of life.” (Georg Simmel, “The Metropolisand Mental Life,” in: D. Weinstein (ed), The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press, 1950, p. 40 •

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almost 2.500.000, ten times more. The city is well under way to reach 3 million inhabitants, taking up its place among African metropolises. Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital, is not known to have much history before the 19th century, when it was a water stop on the way to Harar in today’s Ethiopia – therefore the name, ”little Harar”1. It has grown from 60.000 at the start of the 1970es to 1.200.000 inhabitants today, twenty times as much. One third of Somaliland’s population is now resident in Hargeisa, up from 500.000 ten years ago. It is indeed possible to argue that the current proces of urbanised building will become the defining dynamic of the future Somali Peninsula. Somali dwelling will become a habitat build around urbanisation, from well-functioning local cities to regional melting pots. It will become intensely urban in terms of architecture, planning, infrastructure, climate change etc. A new “intensive culture” related to the “extensification” of culture that has followed with globalisation processes since the early 1990s, for instance by people becoming diasporas by extension across the globe. The cultural sociologist Scott Lash writes about the changes of culture in the process of globalisation that “contemporary culture, today’s capitalism – our global information society” has penetrated almost the entire

global domain and thus become “ever more “extensive”.” One important consequence of this, however, is the tendency for the extensive culture to also become “intensive.” More is happening everywhere and more people than ever before are involved, from accidents and weather, over sports and entertainment, to political and religious challenges:

”Given (the) growing extensification of contemporary culture, on another level and at the same time, we seem to be experiencing a parallel phenomenon whose colours are other; they come in a different register and can only be characterized as intensive.”2

This raises a need for a reflective, serious and sophisticated approach to the build habitat. Over the centuries the Somali Peninsula has been characterized by a negotiation between nomadic life and cities with commercial and cultural links to the surroundings in the African continent and the Indian Ocean. From Ethiopia, East Africa, over the Arab Peninsula to the Middle East, the regions have been travelled by Somalis in designs such as the Medieval Beden-ship along with routes overland. Pastoral cultures and their desert ships, the camel, a mythological symbol of Somali culture, have interacted with sailing ships and their routes.

1 Bennett, Norman (1968). Leadership in Eastern Africa. Boston University Press. p. 70. Retrieved 14 July 2016. 2 Scott lash, Intensive Culture. Social Theory, Religion and Contemporary Capitalism. Lodon: Sage Publications 2010, p. 1-2.

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Maps of contemporary livestock trade routes in the Kenya– Somali Peninsula –Ethiopia borderlands (The Economist Intelligence Unit) and Somali Port Cities, settlements, trade routes and partners, 1000-1900 AD. To understand the Somali Peninsula as a built habitat we may start with a geography built on dynamics of movement and routes, inside and outside the Horn of Africa, along with settlements transforming nature into habitable land. In the broadest sense, the historian Fernand Braudel asserts, writing about the Mediterranean, a habitat emerges from a ’geographical history’, which he further defines as a ’long duration’ of hundreds of years, rendering nature liveable and thus a habitat. Braudel further distinguish beween the long duration, a ’mid duration’ of for instance economic cycles in trade, and a ’short duration’ of historical events such as battles of war. In the Horn of Africa we can use the idea of durations as a model for understanding how the Somali habitat develops over time in its particularity as smooth and striated spaces, which today make up the historical context for a future urban Somali Peninsula. The long duration is reflected in the orignal movement of Somalis from North to the South and East, establishing a meticuluos division of for instance clans and herding movement between water points etc. In the South, between the rivers Shabelle and Jubba, this leads to farming settlements. On the coast and inland, two belts of cities, an outer and an inner develops, of which many are hundreds of years old. The mid duration might be the development leading to Sultanates, or the colonisations following the first encounters with the Portuguese in the 16th century and accelerating

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The result has been, and is, a moving yet structured habitat emerging out of routes, settlements, trading posts, and cities etc. From Mogadishu on the Banadir coast, over the historic city Zeyla, today a village, to current commercial hubs such as Berbera in Somaliland, we see this pattern. This long negotiation also reaches inland to centres of historical sultanates, empires and groups, such as the belt of cities ranging from Baidoa over Beledweyne in Somalia to the northern Burao and Borama in Somaliland, or ancient Muslim hubs such as Harar in Ethiopia. Cties around which the Ajuuraan Empire, the Adal and Warsangeli Sultanates in the 15th and 16th century evolved, later The Sultanate of Geledi from the 17th-19th century. The Somali habitat has in the extreme reached from

its center in the Somali Peninsula to Catalonia in Spain and Beijing in China. A network of movement and settlements, of which there today only remains a few monuments such as the tombs of the mythological ancestors Sheik Darod and Sheikh Isaac3 or the fortresses of Sheikh Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, from the Somali wars with the British Empire. With a paradox, the nomadic tent packed on a camel, functional and portable architecture for centuries, comes together with the splendour of the mosque in the city, as strong building stables of Somali culture. The ‘White Pearls’ of the ocean, with a traditional name for Mogadishu, negotiates the movement inland: the result making up a dual built habitat between a smooth pastoral space and striations of urban cosmopolitanism.

Smooth and striated space – the built habitat When we attempt to define the term ‘building’ in today’s Somali Peninsula, in theory as in practice, it is clear that the momentous changes, locally or globally (in the diaspora), over the past 60 years are no less radical than the vast migration from land to city i,n the

West resulting in the industrial metropolis in the 19th and 20th century. Architecture may commence when brick meets brick, “architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins”, Mies van der Rohe quipped, 4but it does not mean much without a

3 Wikipedia: Maritime history of Somalia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_history_of_Somalia: accessed: 15/7/2018; Charles L Geshekter, Somali Maritime History And Regional Sub-Cultures: A Neglected Theme Of The Somali Crisis, The European Association Of Somali Studies. First Conference 23rd25thSeptember1993;http://dspace-roma3.caspur.it/bitstream/2307/5814/1/Somali%20maritime%20history%20and%20regional%20sub-cultures_A%20neglected%20theme%20of%20the%20Somali%20crisis. pdf (20_07_2018) Map of contemporary livestock trade routes on the Kenya–Somali Peninsula–Ethiopia borderlands (The Economist Intelligence Unit), Somali Port Cities, Settlements, traderoutes and partners, between 1000-1900 AD (Wikipedia) 4 https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/architecture in the European ”scramble for Africa” in the 19th century. The short duration might be events such as Siad Barre’s military coup in 1969. In terms of architecture and urban planning, the long duration will be registered in feats of landscape and a basic layout of smooth and striated urban space along the coast, from Kismayo northwards, and inland, almost in parallel, from Baidoa northwards. The mid duration might be the etablishment of a more developed and expanding form of settlement, for instance in the Italian colonisations projects to transform Mogadishu to a Mediterranean city for Italian migrants. The short duration might be events such as the construction of the Federal Parliament in Mogadishu involving with Siad Barre’s scientific socialism, or the urban plans set up by the British for Hargeisa in the middle of the 20th century.

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In the map above can see how the smooth space of the famous Dervishes and their guerilla war against the Britsh Empire, 1896-1920 is carved of the greater Somali Peninsula. This resulted in two decades of the Dervish State under Sheikh Mohamed Abdulle Hassan developing in collaboration and conflict with other Somali polities, such as the Majerteen Sultanate in Bosaso, and the Dhulbahante and Isaac clans. The rebellion turned a smooth space of pastoral rebellion into a striated space of a newstate employing building techniques such as fortifications. To advance the struggle, Hassan devised a chain of forts, the largest situated in Taleh, here photographed from attacking British bomber planes in the first air war in world history. Taleh and other forts were built modifications of the habitat in which the Dervishes striated their land and took steps on par with the British empire. That is, to set up a powerful state allowing for what they conceived as a proper Somali development: in fact a new smooth space from within of statehood. It took Britain almost twenty-five years to subdue the Dervish State, and they only succeded after pouring considerable ressources into the concerted ’Somaliland Campaign’ in 1920, to a place which the British minister war at the time, Winston Churchill thought was not ’a dog worthy’. Even if the campaign was succesful, in its brutal air bombing of the Dervishes forts and surrounding settlements of huts, including ma-

chine gunning of livestock, in fact luck played its part. The British victory only transpired after the death of Hassan seeking refuge in Ogaden. But even then, Hassan did not die from wounds inflicted on him by an air raid on Taleh, but from influenza contracted to the Ogaden. As I. M. Lewis argues, the Dervish State is a first national habitat for an independent Somali Peninsula. The pastoral smoothness of the Dervish guerilla – nomads taking to arms – is

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cultural context of for instance a city, as Rem Koolhaas forcefully argue:

“… the generic city, the general urban condition, is happening everywhere, and just the fact that it occurs in such enormous quantities must mean that it’s habitable. Architecture can’t do anything that the culture doesn’t”5

What Mies attempted to cool down to simple essentials Koolhaas deliberately heats up to an intense urbanisation. In between the two, the simple bricklayering in contact with an eternal beauty of design and the sprawl of real cities for real life, architecture appears today. And while many Somali still love to romance about the camel and their pastoral origin, the truth is that they are all becoming urban cosmopolites. The notions of ‘the smooth and the striated’ come from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s philosophical treatise Thousands Plateaus (1980), a book attempting to capture a new idea of reality deeply inspired by the changes of 1960s and new way of thinking about culture such as self-organization and complexity. The main idea is that reality is multiple, existing in thousand ’plateaus’. In the Global South world, it is possible to argue, that such a plural world was always there. But this plurality has becomes much clearer during the processes of decolonisation from the mid 20th century. The processes taking place in the Somali habitat from the end of WW2 with independence in

1960, become also a new complicated architecture, we may argue, where all the cultural and social resources of the historic Somalis are challenged. Once the racist, and alleged universalist assumptions of Italian, British (and French) colonialism in the Horn disappeared – in terms of architecture we may think of the Catholic cathedral built by Italians in the center of Mogadishu in front of the Grand Mosque, or the urban plan for Hargeisa set up by the British Empire - a new complex world emerges, described this way by Deleuze and Guattari:

“The space of nomad thought is qualitatively different from State space. Air against earth. State space is “striated,””

or gridded. Movement in it is confined as by gravity to a horizontal plane, and limited by the order of that plane to preset paths between fixed and identifiable points. Nomad space is “smooth,” or open-ended. One can rise up at any point and move to any other. Its mode of distribution is the nomos: arraying oneself in an open space (hold the street), as opposed to the logos of entrenching oneself in a closed space (hold the fort)”6. The idea of “smooth” and “striated” space enables a first indication of what kind of build

5 Katrina Heron, ”from Bauhaus To Koolhaas” (Interview with Rem Koolhaas). Wired 0.01.96. https:// www.wired.com/1996/07/koolhaas/ 6 Thousand Plaeteus, Translaters foreword, xiii blended with strategies of a striated statehood. In this sense, the Dervish fortifications are extremely interesting because they appear as nodes in a networked space which emerge of the blend, by deliberate steps of striation. The forts create an achitecture for national defence and a national habitat which marks the landscape in a deliberate strategy of building. The Dervishes wanted to be left untouched by infidel foreigners, preserving a space of tradition by fortifying their way of life. The interaction between smooth and striated resulted in a direct effect of architeture and planning on a landscape, in specific designs such as forts, and strategically by redefinitions of the negotiation between nomadic life and cities. In this blend, the Dervish State is a first modern experience for the Horn, which might be parallelled with the Ethiopian emperor Menelik II’s unification and expansion of Ethiopia 1889-1913. The Somali national development recommenced and developed in the framework of receeding colonialism during WW2 and in the decade after, coming to full fruition with Somalia and Somalilans’s independence in 1960.

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American architect Robert Ventury argued in the 1960s in the book Complexity and Contradiction that “complexity” and “contradiction” are important characteristics of architecture and urbanism, in a certain sense yet another variation over the theme of smooth and striated. What matters when understanding building and planning of a built habitat is “how a large number of parts … interact in a non-simple way,” and this may be analyzed by looking for contradictions. He popularizes this assertion by examples such as the main street of the town or city, claiming that ‘Main Street is almost alright’ in its balance between contradiction and complexity. On top, a picture of an American Main Street from the 1960s, from Complexity and Contradiction and below the main street of contemporary Hargeisa. In the meeting between striated and smooth space on the main street in a city, we may argue that a culture of the built habitat appears in its complexity and contradictions, that the constant smoothing structures of life intermingle with designed striations of build structure, leading to issues of architecture, planning and design. •

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habitat may be relevant for current and future Somali life. In the expanse of the African continent, Somalis are particular for being some of the least resident people. Nomadic life may appeal to philsophical ideas such as Deleuze and Guattari’s, where the nomad is seen as a counterposition against a system. But in the Somali Peninsula it is a grounded way of life which interact and exchange with urban settlements. Negotiation between nomadic life and cities become a negotiation of smooth and striated. What Deleuze and Guattari term a ”smooth

space and striated space—nomad space and sedentary space”7 can be seen as a long

duration of a certain way to build a habitat interacting within a framework of smooth and striated. In one end we find the smooth moving camel and its modular architecture, in another end the white palaces of colonialism in Mogadishu. Two delineations in between which a built space can be thought and created. So we can agree with the French philosophers when they argue that the smooth and striated is an intresting idea that may define something more complex, ”the two spaces in fact exist

only in mixture: smooth space is constantly being translated, transversed into a striated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth space.”8 Hargeisa is laid out by striations of colonial urban planning, but appears as dusty structures out of the ‘smooth’ Guban desert. The uninitiated may see this as a need for de7 8

velopment. But such an approach is also a stereotype which explains away that the city looks the way it does, because it emerged from a water point of passing nomads and huts that over years striated into buildings. When leaving Hargeisa one has an experience of disappearing into the smooth sand mass of the Guban which strangely compares with the surprise of finding oneself in the midst of a city on arrival; the striated city loose itself in smooth passages of the desert and vice versa. The build habitat in the Somali Peninsula may need development but it is also, as any culture, a full world of meaning, forces and possibilities. It is a world where settlements are mixed with movement. Along the lines of movements on roads, pathways, rivers, up the mountains down valleys, along the high plains and the lover plains, the built habitat emerges from everywhere, from tents inside desert scrub turned to fences by use of the hangool, to mansions of the returning diaspora or the Grand Mosques with its minarets; all of them negotiating the smooth and striated. The mix of striated and smooth becomes frameworks ”translating”, ”transversing” and ”reversing” life, as Deleuze and Guattari say. Smooth space translates into striated space. Striated space returns smooth space. From the smooth mythological landings of Sheik Darod and later Sheikh Isaac around present day Zeila, the Somali people has come to inhabit the Somali Peninsula by smoothing East and South, across the rivers Shabelle and Jubba

Thousand Plaeteus 474 Ibid.

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Three groups of pictures on this page and the next two pages, which indicate the movement from traditional to modern building in architecture. First the classic Islamic city, here a street from Harar with classic Islamic features of architecture and an urban space made up of narrow passages. For instance, intricate patterns, color, mashrabiyas, the closed balconies with oriel windows, carved wooden latticework, in the West derogatively known as the ’harem window’. Further inner atriums and patios, as seen in the plans defining the closed space of the private family house. The space of the house is closed to the outside, but opens inside to patios, gardens, a well or fountain at the centre; a space guaranteeing privacy, climate protection and convenience in accordance with Islamic notions of a dwelling for obeying God and emulation of Paradise. To the far right in the top example of principles for detailing private space according to the islamic idiom, here heights of windows and control of light, openings and transparency between inner and outer. “The art of building is the first and most ancient of the sedimentary crafts”, writes Ibn Khaldun in the famous treatise The Muqaddimah (1377 AC) and comments on Mosques, “It should be known that God singled out some places of the earth for special honor. He made them the homes

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of His worship. (People who worship in them) receive a much greater reward and recompense (than people who worship elsewhere). God informed us about this situation through the tongues of His messengers and prophets, as an act of kindness to His servants and for the purpose of facilitating their ways to happiness.” (Kitābu l-ʻibar, Book One, Chapter III, 6; p. 443). In the next group of pictures we see how the Somali tent is based on effective, lightweight and portable architecture, covered by materials to be transported as well. Next pictures of the Somali hut, both from the late 18th century, which show a predominant form of architecture in villages and larger towns and cities until independence, here pictured in Berbera in connection with the famous camel market, and in a drawing of a pathway in a village settlement at the fringe of this city. Note the mashrabiyas in the back on a house which is a mix of wooden hut and stone building. •

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In the third group the modern idiom of architecture in the West appearing in the first decades of the 20th century, here represented by the French architect Le Corbusier’s work, still influential today. The modern approach is informed by industrial and technical possibilities of building, for instance reinforced concrete casting. Le Corbusier writes in the first decades of the 20th century that “a house is a machine for living”, here exemplified in a page from Towards an Architecture (1923) where the functionality of cars are compared to the tectonics of the ancient Greek Parthenon Temple. In the next picture

we see concrete plates on columns most possibly reinforced by steel – ‘the slab’ – precast in a factory or on the spot. The construction becomes a visible skeleton which opens to a free space of flows inside the building, and a design aesthetic translating the constructive tectonics directly into a form comprehending all aspects of the building, construction, materials, space, and openings. When finished all the elements comes together in the new modern aesthetic with no ornaments and no façade, but an essential core of principles, visible and all comprehensive. Le Corbusier was inspired by large passenger ships, or principal elements such as the column, free space at the ground of a building, ribbon windows for abundant light, roof terrace for outdoor life and relations to nature, ramps instead of stairs to emphasize movement and ease of transport,

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and open spaces throughout the plan allowing for free movement in all parts of the building, as seen in the famous Villa Savoye in France, in the next picture. Finally a page from the book Urbanism (1924) where Le Corbusier argues, “We are no longer nomads: we must build cites”. Le Corbusier further asserts in Towards an Architecture, “Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the image of these is distinct and tangible within us without ambiguity. It is for this reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms. Everybody is agreed to that, the child, the savage and the metaphysician.”•

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Hargeisa, aerial photo and ”The Desired Structure” of Hargeisa, from UN-Habitats, Hargeisa. first steps towards strategic urban planning (2007). In the document the following action plan is set up, ”Objectives of the action plans: Using a concrete example to demonstrate to local authorities and the community the concept of participatory planning. tangible results in a short period of time Using the successful results to support the mobilization of stakeholders for participatory planning of a broader scope (p. 46). Below picture from the national country planning of Denmark from 2006, On the large picture a visualization of transport and settlement in the commercially important Eastern part of the peninsula Jylland. In the box statement of main objectives of the planning: 1. Maintain separation between city and country, 2. Development must benefit the whole country, 3. The planning must be based on respect for nature, the environment and the landscape, 4. Physical planning must be closely linked to the overall transport structure, 5. Planning must be holistic (https://www2.blst.dk/udgiv/Publikationer/2007/978-87-92256-02-7/html/kap04.htm) •

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into Northern Kenya, and into the Ethiopian highlands.9 Deleuze and Guattari writes about the dynamic exchanges between smooth and striated,

”This raises a number of simultaneous questions: the simple oppositions between the two spaces; the complex differences; the de facto mixes, and the passages from one to another; the principles of the mixture, which are not at all symmetrical, sometimes causing a passage from the smooth to the striated, sometimes from

the striated to the smooth, according to entirely different movements”10.

This may be taken as a first approximation for design of a built habitat of Somalis: the smooth and striated are merely other names for architecture and urban planning, and vice versa. Put differently, what has been the tradional way of living in a culture, may become a dynamic potential for the future of the built habitat in the Somali Peninsula.

Smooth and striated - a first approximation: gestalt, code, identity The idea of smooth versus striated makes it possible to set up specific models of the Somali habitat which can unite new ways of relating culture and architecture. In most parts of the world any clear simple relationship between the two - such as ‘hold the street’ or ‘hold the fort’ - have long ceased to exist. At places it disappeared after some centuries of history, in Mediterranean Europe already in Roman times, in the US by the Western expansion of white Americans and the genocide of the indigenous population from the 16th to 19th century. Often it was seen as a challenge and deliberately shut down. The smooth nomad way of life was kept out of powerful states, by architectures such as the Hadrian Wall protecting the Roman part of Britain, begun AC 122. Or the

Great Wall of China initiated as early as the 7th century BC. These walls had the ingenious double function of keeping nomads out as well as settled peasants inside, should the latter be tempted to move. However, no wall would completely subdue movement, and the smooth space of our philosophers would remain a factor to be counted with, as we see right up to the present day’s conflict over global migration. And most importantly, they changed the relationship to something within, built into culture, opening for multiple expressions over the centuries. Striated space and smooth space would become markers and monuments in the landscape, as in The Dervish State’s ruined monuments, such as we see in the Dervish Sates’s capitol Taleh,

9 Historical Aspects of Genealogies in Northern Somali Social Structure. Author(s): I. M. LewisThe Journal of African History, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1962), pp. 35-48 10 Ibid., 475.

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Hassan Fathy, drawing of Mosque in New Gourna, Luxor Egypt, built in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Next, pictires of the finished Mosque, from the side and top. Below facades of a section of houses in New Gourna, which show how vernacular traditions are aesthetically modifed to attain a modern aesthetic, for instance as seen in Le Corbusier’s work. The design of New Gourna combined traditional materials and techniques with modern principles as a state of the art architecture for the poor, but was never completed and much of the village has since disappeared partly because of faulty construction, even if UNESCO has involved in protection plans. Nevertheless New Gourna became a signature example of modern regionalism attempting toiuse the modern idiom in relation to local and regional needs in an adapted sensibility. Below picture and section by Bjarke Ingels (BIG), Mountain Dwellings, Copenhagen 2008. An example of Ingels’s provocative play with contextualism and meanings. In Denmark which has a notorious flat geography anything relating to notions of mountain is bound to provoke. Here not only name but design invigorates a new type of artificial ’mountaineousity’, as if the Danes has now come to point of rebuilding their flat lands in the image of the Alps and Himalayas. The structure is marked by an elevating ’hill’

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the first public building of modern Somalia and Somaliland, build by Yemenite stone masons for Mohammed Abdullah Hassan. In some cases smooth movement would turn into redefinitions of striated space, as in The Ottoman Empire set up in Northwestern Anatolia by Ozguz Turks invading Asia Minor in the 13th Century. Or as part of diplomatic and neocolonial manouvers, as the infamous Sykes-Picot plan from 1916 building national ‘walls’ across the Middle East at the convenience of France and Britain, against local freedom fighters contributing to the allied victory over the Ottoman Empire. Or in the agreement about Ogaden between Ethiopia and Britain in 1897, which would place large number of Somalis within modern Ethiopia and lead to assumptions of a possible fully Ethiopian Horn, as Haile Selassie indicated in the famous Qabradare speech in 1956, where the Emperor claimed that Somalis were part of the “great Ethiopian Family”; in I. M. Lewis’s word,

“asserted that, inevitably, the future advancement of Somalis lay with Ethiopia,”11 – a proposition tested to utter destruction in the Ogaden War and later. In short, in the past our theme has been involved in the making and breaking of regions, constructions of borders, nation state building, and conflicts over ethnicity, cultures and space, from borders to mutual visits of families. And most importantly, the long negotiation between nomadic life and cities has translated 11

into a different habitat in the past 20 years in the Somali Peninsula. The camels on the roads of Hargeisa still smoothing in from the Guban make way for urban building and sidewalks, leading to a new form of urban smoothness appears which ad its culture to the striations of planning and architecture. From the clear divisions between different forms of liv – the pastoral versus the urban, the tent versus the coastal city – ways of living that would often not have much contact, a new mixed way of life blending the smooth and striated appears as a domain for architecture and urban planning. Whereas – with a quite crude periodisation, the smooth and striated may be the same as different forms of the pastoral and the urban until the Ogaden War, this distinction is now disappearing. Instead it become facets and aspects of a new urban life. What follows is not harmony but a new social and cultural world with new divisions following for instance from education, connections or a revitalized Muslim life. It is not any longer about different ways to subsist but about delineations and definitions of culture registering in perception, meanings and emotions of an urban life, how people make meaning in a city. Before independence Somali building remained unchanged over centuries, a nomad would live in the same tent as her forefathers and the city dweller would visit the same mosque as his father’s clan. Today emerges new challenges appear to architecture and planning which demands new ideas of functional problem solving and new forms of beauty.

Lewis, p. 152

of flats with gardens on top of a multi-story car park. The construction thus becomes as functional as fascinating. A 3,000 m² photorealistic mural of Himalayan peaks is printed on the huge shiny aluminium plates, on the side of car park, perforated to let in light and allow for natural ventilation. ”Architecture is about trying to make the world a little bit more like our dreams” say Ingels. Mountain Dwellings instantly became a Copenhagen signature building and contributed to putting the new part of Copenhagen, Ørestaden, where it stands on the map. Beyond all its clever practicalities the building sends a message of irony and experience. It is an experience architecture for a city priding itself o.n returning high scores in liveability indexes such as the annual list in the magazine Monocle (https://monocle.com/) The difference between Fathy’s work and Ingels’s work could not be greater. Yet, they focus on the same aspects of building being joyful, serious and respectful to dreams and hope of a better life.

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On top, two pictures of the final building plus a 3D rendering of perspective, Rio Architects, Ministry of Energy and Minerals in Hargeisa (http://rioarch.com/project/ministry_of_energy_and_minerals/). This building is a very sucessful example of how a fast developing city impacts its habitat by new significant architecture. The building brings together element of current Somaliland achitecture, the combination of larger office structures and small hut-like structures, a closed compound-space, distinctive use of white surfaces and marked patios, and a characteristic gardening layout set up by geometric patterns cast in concrete circumscribing flower beds and passages in paved with fine stones, here also with sculptural elements and a decorative oil pump.

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Such as we see in entertainment venues as the Lion Garden in Hargeisa, or the urban sprawl of Dubai, both of them expression of intensive, urban culture. Or in the resurgence of learned Moslem forms of piety among young Somalis, up against the long Sufi tradition in the Somali Peninsula. The smooth and the striated develop and negotiate in a new urban culture. The term “culture” is one of the most difficult words in the English language, the literary scholar Raymond Williams famously asserted. Not least, Williams explained, because it would take on quite different meanings over time, such as for instance “inhabit, cultivate, protect, honor with worship,” and more. In early uses it would have to do with ”the

tending of something, basically crops or animals.” Later it grew into the idea of being

”cultivated” which would take on the meaning of ”civilisation”, not least in German and French languages. In this capacity it would become part of Western imperialism, chauvinism and racism in the 18th century as an idea of some civilizations being superior to others. In the 20th century the notions would end up in what Williams called

”a new social and intellectual movement,”

in which culture became defining for the meaning of life, for instance through art, poetry or political engagement and critique, ”culture

was developing in English towards some of its modern senses before the decisive

effects of a new social and intellectual movement.” Williams condensed this novelty famously in his definition of culture as ”particular ways of life.”12 Life that does not fol-

low the same shape everywhere but take op the challenges and possibilities of a modern world. From tending the land and the herd, culture has evolved to a framework for a creative modern life, involved with social visions of a common modern way of life for all, further developing into massive changes of capitalist industrialism after WW2 and affluent consumption as well as in the decolonisation movements, for instance in the Somali Peninsula. In this development modern architecture and urbanism appeared, to make building serve the purpose of a better and more beautiful life, as the Bautohaus School’s founder Walter Gropius announced in the Bauhaus Manifesto from 1919:

“Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.” 13 This way of thinking the smooth and the striated takes its point of departure in a designed habitat related to particular ways of life in an urban world, instead of relations between substantially different life forms divided between

12 R. Williams, Keywords. A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976) (London: Fontana, 1988), 12. 13 Walter Gropius, “Bauhaus Manifesto and Program” (1919), p.1. http://mariabuszek.com/mariabuszek/kcai/ConstrBau/Readings/GropBau19.pdf.

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The idea of design on a global scale; or, a human habitat on a global scale is part of the modern DNA. Whether in effect of designs or in deliberate design, the world is today becoming very small, and one obvious solution to climate change may come from techniques such as ”terraforming” inducing biospheric techniques on a global scale, ”weather modification techniques”, inducing deliberate changes to weather patterns, or new types of building such as the 1990-project Biosphere II, a designed and fully functioning ’copy’ of the earthly biosphere, with many aspects of nature artificially reproduced, induced and set up and adjusted in its mutal parts, a closed-system experiment, – for example, the right kind of song birds with the right kind of vegetation and the right insects - to make it possible for human to live inside the system. 8 people lived in the shstem n total enclosure, 1991-1993 and the system, today part of the Columbia University, was thought to be a method to cultivate Mars for human habitation. To the left a picture of the Middle East seen from space at night, the Somali Peninsula in the bottom, Djibooti almost totally lit. Below ,interior design for survival in the US. Closed ballistic missile silos are being redesigned to luxury apartments for worried customers, many of

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land and city. But what does this then entail for architecture and urban planning? A preliminary answer may be that we construct buildings that guide our orientations and experiences, our understandings and expectations, and our appreciation and demands of building. What we in more technical terms call gestalt, codes, and identity: • Gestalts: organised wholes and parts of perceptions; how a given building appears to the user, how it looks, how it feels, how it sounds, even smell, how it opens to functions and makes you feel ’at home’. How is the facade, how the window, how the walls, how the plan and the bedroom, where will the children be, and so on and so forth. • Code: the rules that follow from repeated experience and deliberate innovation of how a building can appear; codes and rules for building in the right way, how to set up windows to guarantee privacy, light and climate protection. • Identity: The way gestalts and codes condense in the experience and make the inhabitants want more of, whether a the design of their favourite cafe or mosque, or, a new neighborhood. We want to identify but we also want experiences that challenge our identity. Architecture and urban planning appears with gestalts, codes and identity, by rules which transform sensibilities into built orders for ways of living, which we identify with through seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, and so on – all that makes us the humans and bodies we are.

When sensibilities turn into meaning they guide codes of the world, from legal texts to the price tag in the supermaket, but they also spur emotions and beliefs, and come to balance what is the better way. Thus the Prophet Muhammad recommends that a road in a city should be as wide as to make two camels pass and by this the prophet in fact comes to define what a ’good city’ will become, notwithstanding that he might just have generalized practicalities from his home town Medina, involving with revelations of Islam. This is also why meaning constantly evolves and adapt to new outlets for the smooth and the striated. Any word uttered always has its own particular meaning, sound and emotion. In the case of the size of roads in a city it is possible to redefine the Prophet’s two camels into a thundering eight track freeway with airconditioned Mercedes and Toyotas in Dubai, without that making the Emiratis feeling any less Islamic. Culture emerges from involvement and interaction of the smooth and the striated. Whereas Hargeisa still sports few wellpaved roads, not to mention well structured sidewalks or formal signs and traffic lights, this is not merely lack of progress. It is a certain way to gestalt, code and identify, which the city’s inhabitants live with or value. And when stribes for safe pedestian passage is painted on the streets around the Deera Mall in the middle of the city, nobody really pays attention. Even if the lack of protection for pedestrians compels everyone on foot to tread smoothly but very swift not to be run over be striating four wheel

whom come from Silicon Valley. Everything is included, storage of food and water, swimming pool, plants, and HD -creen with images transmitted from the surface of the world, framed as a cozy window of a family home. In the bottom the famous American designer and system thinker Buckminster Fuller who in the 1960s claimed that ”everything is design.” Here a draft of the world from 1927, with modern icons like skyscrapers and aeroplanes, Fuller notes that the world will need 2 billion new homes over the next 80 years.

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The predominant architectural style at the moment can be said to be ”contextualism,” defined by an encyclopaedia this way, ”Contextual architecture. Also called Contextualism, the term suggests an architecture that responds to its surroundings by respecting what is already there, unlike Constructivism or Deconstructivism which deliberately work against established geometries and fabric.” Constructivism became a predominant style in the midwar years, for instance in the Soviet Union, and was hugely formative for ’modern architecture’ from the 1910s onwards, in particular when it translated into the ”International Style” after WW2 in the work of Mies van Der Rohe and Philip Johnson, and developing into many different versions often by critical adaption of local and regional cultures such as Hassan Fathy’s work in New Gourna near Luxor, Egypt, or Oscar Niemeyers urban planning and architecture in Brazilia and many other projects in Latin America and Europe, or Jørn Utzon’s work in Australia in the Sydney Opera house. The international style was in the 1960es heavily criticised in continuous and critical experiments such as brutalism, metabolism, structuralism, further the famous British group Archigram and the Italian group Superstudio from the 1970s. At the end of the 1970s, a new set of ideas appeared,

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cars. Sophistications such as lanes for bicycles, in Scandinavia developing by the hour, are not really sensible for persons who recently was used to the moving camels in the Haud and have no intention whatsoever of challenging her life on a bicycle. Perhaps former nomads prefer to go on this way, even after many years in Hargeisa, becausa culture of a city without sidewalks, bicycle lanes and signs makes one feel more at home, ”between buildings,” as the Danish urban planner Jan Gehl says. 14 In that sense the

urban space of Hargeisa is not about sidewalks but about a frame for the Somalis’s love for meeting with each other, something valued in Hargeisa as a particular way of life. Thus making it clear, that the old encounter in the desert between nomads, or between nomads and city dwellers, has changed into something else, where neither camel nor man really are in need of sidewalks.

A first approach to building: Culture, Concept, Communication In the capital of Saudi Arabia one finds a center for research into energy, KAPSARC (King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center) which was opened in 2014. It is a 70,000 square meter campus which include an energy knowledge center; an energy computer center, a conference center with exhibition hall and 300-seat auditorium, a research library; and the musalla, a place for praying to the public. The building is a distinctive and multifaceted architecture which at immediate sight seems to grow in an almost organic yet distinctively designed manner. It looks as the basic contradiction of a huge artifict, yet almost a living organism, to one side appearing as a built habitat in an unforgiving environment, to another as part of rolling sand dunes. 15 This building brings many of the points we

have discussed above. On a basic level it striates the smooth landscape of the desert as a structure rising up to thunk about itself, so to speak. It may roll up as a sand dune rising but it also cuts the edges and become a modular and clearly striated structure, almost breaking up in different functional parts and programs. It is filled with new materials and technology such as protovoltaic arrrays and potable water recycling, and 30% of the bulding is built by materials recycled. The central idea of this advanced building seems to be a kind of huge machine or robot. It wants to express the knowledge institution it houses: a hugh tech way of living for thinking and adapting to the extereme environment of the Arabian Peninsula. The building is trying to develop an idea

14 Jan Gehl, Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space. Island Press 2011 15 https://www.designboom.com/architecture/zaha-hadids-kapsarc-riyadh-saudi-arabia-10-25-2017/ socalled postmodern architecture claimed to be ’after’ modernism in design, emphasizing lack of rules, constant experiment, deliberate focus on aesthetics and artistic awareness, and play with the modern conventions such as Le Corbusier’s. A particular influential version of the postmodern change was socalled deconstructive architecture for instance in the work of Daniel Libeskind and Bernard Tschumi. At the same time deconstruction expanded on notions of culture, rules and communication even if the net result was often very complex and almost sculptural work, as one sees in Frank Gehry’s pruduction. The work of Zaha Hadid which is behind the project pictured here, KAPSARC (King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center), started out from deconstruction but was also focused on a more complex set of parameters, reinforced by use of new computer-based rendering, allowing for not only more elaborate forms, almost impossible to draw by hand. But also for calculating all sorts of aspects of a buildings program, function and structure, from modelling of climate effects to modeling of movement of flows in the building. What is today known as BIM- and parametric design which allow for subsatntial data syntheses and complexity of hitherto unseen magnitude. This has turned architecture into a huge system of

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relations, what is some times called a ’topology’ of complexity where everythnig can be related to everything. In this development deconstruction has given way to a contextualism which involves an increasing sensibility towards contexts, in the sense of life, social concerns, aesthetics, and livelihood. Thiis can be discussed as ”liveability,” measured in the more affluent societies for use by inhabitants, in development of tourism and in competition between different urban habitats for allocation of investments and jobs in globalization processes. For a city to be ’liveable’ it must be developed in all sorts of ways and not least with an extraordinary focus on culture and life style. It must develop an all comprehensive approach to urban planning, design and experiences that emphasizes a reflective approach to the smooth and striated; to how life and design comes together in hypersensitive forms of ”intensive culture” (Scott Lash) or features catering to the ”creative classes” (Richard Florida). The present text is clearly inspired by the present focus on contextualism also when it implies an accept of the fact that architecture must make do with what is there, as argued by Rem Koolhaas, ”Architecture can’t do anything that the culture doesn’t. We all complain that we are confronted by urban environments that are completely similar. We say we

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of all the functions it houses in a self concious and sefl-reflective manner. • This made clear in the view of the building. The building communicates it purpose in a play with function, forms and context. This is no less clear when seen from inside, where passages, parts and windows, including courtyards etc. seem to play out as a large artificial membrane, protecting from, yet transporting the context into the conceptual core. In fact we may argue that central principle of the building seems to be a built habitat addressing its own future by a ”translation”, ”transversing” and ”reversing”, as Deleuze and Guattaru argued above, of landcape, climate, heat, sun, water, energy and so on. It might from one angle look like a space ship just landed, from another angle as an animal appearing from the depth of the desert. It communicates precisely what it is: a building for future climate change, contextualising in this change, into survival, while reflecting on it simultaneoulsy. The building works very well as an example of the three key notions of the present summer school: culture, concept and communication: the three ”C’s”: • Culture: Culture is in a sense where the building starts. KAPSARC is not an empty building but relates to Saudi culture and it has a specific purpose. It is not a simple building and does not hide that a lot of money was put into it or that the architect had abundant possibilities at hand. But this potential has resulted in a building filled with function and purpose. It is grounded in an innovative and culturally sensitive understanding of culture, it shows a seri-

ous analysis of the many examples of modern architecture in Saudi Arabia. It has a very clear and plastic style. It is grand as well as detailed in its aesthetics, which at every twist of angle changes a bit, indicating future solutions to a habitat in the area, bound to become heavily impacted by climate change. • Concept: It is thus a precise statement about how conceptual grounding can take place in a large variety of specifics, set up as data involved in design in a very detailed and thus well argued architecture. It is a grand design in the tradition which became abundant in the 1980s and 1990s, for instance in deconstructive works such as Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum Berlin, but it is also adapted to context in a pragmatic manner which is currently characteristic for the best architecture. It wants to make a difference, no question, but does so by bringing together many different issues, from new technology and traditions to climate protection, over a self-reflection of function made visible by experimental of form; thus ending up with a more plastic, artistic, and flexible approach to building. • Communication: The bulding is extremely aware of the need to communicate and tell a different story in order to come through to the user and the public. It attempts to bring together artistic work and contextual function with telling a story of future living in an area which will become even more inhabitable due to climate changes. It is made to look tantalizing for the developer, owner, funder, user, or architectural critic, but also to a society: proclaiming that this is the way to build and live for the future.

want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living.” It is furthermore possible to make distinctions between different forms of contextualism; cultural contextualism which takes the culture of the city the first focus for any insertion of architecture; build contextualism as KAPSARC which emphasizes context by drawing on complex data-sets and relations between a building and the outside; topological contextualism which works by creating formal and aesthetic models out of representations of contexts such as maps and google imagery, features of which become active in figures, or diagrams, extracted by digital drawing on digital representations, which is then used to develop design solutions..

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4. BUILDING CULTURE

Working Paper, draft No citation Authors Frederik Emil Seehusen, Royal Danish Academy of Arts, School of Architecture & Anders Michelsen, University of Copenhagen

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CONTENT 1. ADAPTIVE SPACES 2. GENERATIVE SPACES

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Images from top clockwise - 2. A shopping centre in the prime location the Hargeisa. 1. A typical evening in the centre for Hargiesa. 3. proposal for a combined shopping and residential building.

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IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER WE PRESENTED SOME CONDITIONS FOR TRACING ARCHITECTURE IN THE SOMALI PENINSULA; HOW CULTURAL CONDITIONS ARE INVOLVED WITH THE UNDERSTANDING AND USE OF ARCHITECTURE. THIS CHAPTER WILL LOOK ON DIFFERENT STRATEGIES USED BY ARCHITECTS AND LAYMEN TO CREATE PRODUCTIVE FRAMEWORKS FOR CULTURE IN BUILDING. As stated in the introduction we are interested in buildings which create a resonance between a contemporary culture and the building use, and which can bring make explicit cultural tendencies. But which also allow the user to expand the use of the buildings and create an active expression of cultural conditions and trends. We argued that space is never passive, but is an ongoing negotiation of new use and invention by the inhabitants. Thus the design of such ´resonating´ spaces between cultural tendencies and an inanimate build environment, is a at times intentional; at times unintentional, sometimes brought in by the architect; sometime by the layman. The summer school explored the different ways for building design and culture to intersect. Though the format of a workshop a group of city-planners, architects, civil servants, and engineers can worked together to address different cultural issues through the design of buildings.

Hargeisa is the vibrant street life. Slow moving traffic in part because of poorly maintained roads, allows for crisscrossing of pedestrians, animals, and street vendors. In a way the dysfunctional infrastructure allows for a society, (with a nomadic past) to occupy the street as a market space. A scenario with activities not far away from the historical trading stations on the way to Harar, from where Hargeisa originated. As the city is experiencing a rapid urban transformation; and as the infrastructure is inevitably modernized, places as we see in picture 2 (picture of street activities) will be replaced with low-maintenance, asphalted roads; thus - pergaps - making an end to the current situation of the ‘street as a marked place’. This, in conjunction with a city of few, if not no public areas, will most probably mean that future market places in Hargeisa, will move from conventional shops and street marketing into larger shopping malls. Thus many of the qualities we see today in the urban environment will need to be re-created though private projects and building projects.

Picture 1. street activities A noticeable cultural issue or condition in 53


Picture 2. existing shopping center In our proposal for a shopping center, we explored the idea that a shopping center can be a place for social interaction, and a kind of semipublic meeting point in the city. The shopping malls we visited typically followed the same typology; one central corridor with shops on both sides. Evidently there was little activity in these places beyond simply; shopping. Picture 3. model from workshop We imagined that a shopping center could be a place for primarily socializing. Then, secondly shopping: Perhaps the longer people stayed in the shopping center, the more they might consume. The shopping layout is laid out similarly to a European medieval city; different ‘streets’ would intersect in a ‘marked place’, which constituted and adapted the shopping arcades, and the central café and restaurant area. Thus the experiences is one of an urban streetscape more than a traditional shopping center, and with the purpose of extending the street- and public life into the shopping center, instead of separating these. The shopping center is intended to be built with the materials available; hard surfaced materials like glass fronts and stone flooring, by shaping the arcade and corridors like canyons, with oblique angles benefitted the quality of the spaces in two precise ways; 1. By reducing the sound reverberations, 2. By bouncing strong daylight into the center of the building

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in softer forms. Even though the proposal is far from replicating the qualities of the historical trading stations, or the modern interpretation of the trading station in the busy streets of present day Hargeisa, our proposed design combined a functional as well as typological connection with the streetscape. Functionally by creating a semi-public space in the city. Typologically through the creation a new relationship with the street; which allows for a future spaces in the city. This approach finally created a story of the relationships between new architecture and the cultural use of the street. This is of importance, because it brings forth the possibility of a complex model; a cultural space that both negotiated the cities development needs and reflect on how this can positively make sapce for urban life in contemporary Hargeisa; CULTURE. A cultural significance; the narrative of the trading station, but also the story of a society dependent on collective interaction to pass on important news and information. CONCEPT. The invention of a typology. In this case the image of the informality of the street, as a continuation of a building of ‘streetlike’ corridors. This potentially new narrative is what we mean by bringing forth and make explicit cultural tendencies.


COMMUNICATION. A mediation of these strands of culture, into relationships which organizes program.made events together. In short we are referencing to this by our threefold; Culture, concept, communication. Seen as a whole we argue that architecture is a model and a resonating space; a laboratory for cultural trends and tendencies, and the potential for the formulation of new typologies, in the form of explicitly formulated functions.The chapter is split between what we call which is a way to approach Culture, concept, communication

from the perspective of the architect as well as the user: a. Adaptive spaces – buildings which has served one purpose, and is now becoming ‘adaptive’ to new uses and definitions of architecture. b. Generative spaces – spaces with intentional strategies to promote user-participation of use, and to deliberately generate culture. This includes different types of flexibility.

ADAPTIVE SPACES Building and infrastructure adapted to new cultural conditions Derelict factories, warehouses, old institutions, power stations and other buildings whose program have become obsolete have shown to be especially successful at adapting new programs and to attract new cultural conditions. These structures house spatial properties that can provoke new functionality and push forward a creative use. Historically misappropriated and rundown buildings and areas, even city parts such as The Meat Packing District in New York, are examples of this. Some examples: The Tate Modern in London – a world class modern art museum is housed in a former power station. Here, the contemporary culture

of making site specific installations matches nicely with the former power station’s unusually large container; the building and the culture are reversely dependent. In Copenhagen, a previous industrial harbour has been turned into a place for leisurely swimming activities. The harbour creates a different experience and vantage point of Copenhagen and the activities traditionally associated with going to the beach. The Spanish steps in Rome are today an active street scape for tourists and locals alike, but was built as infrastructure. The spaciousness of the steps invites for sitting down and has by now become a destination in its own right. These examples indicate how buildings or infrastructure have been refitted to current

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Images from top clockwise. 1. Copenhagen Harbour. People swimming in the industrial harbour. 2. Rome. Steps used as resting, and collective space. 3 + 4. Copenhagen. The Royal Library. 5. London. The Tate Modern Art Museum, showing the large turbine space.

(The Unilever Series: Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project is curated by Susan May, Curator, Tate Modern)

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culture, and how both the culture and typologies are pushed forward in an interdependent dialogue. More so; the geometry these structures come to express also become cultural or social forms through the interaction and actions which they relate to.

“The building as a material entity is not culture, but by being a realization of the underlying structures of society it is the means by which the society as an abstract structure is realized in space-time and then reproduced… “, as Sophia Psarra puts it.

Building types which historically have expressed cultural and collective situations Certain types of buildings have an obvious collective situation. Museums, libraries and culturally significant institutions circles around collectivity and even a certain expected cultural situation as the premise for its use and existence. According to Sophia Psarra;

“Modulating movement, space in urban areas and complex buildings like museums and galleries produces patterns of social co-presence, a kind of virtual community based on mutual awareness rather than a pre-structured pattern of social relations. So, a building can receive information from society through spatial configuration, but also transmit effects back to society through the same means.”1 1

Put in another way, when we go to the museum we expect the possibility of bumping into other people and even possibly interact, under the pretext that we are in a museum and certain expectations for use and interact are implied. This can be used strategically to produce or advance a certain culture. In the “Weather Project” in the large turbine hall at Tate Modern in London by Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson the building became part of the concept for the exhibition. See image. (The Unilever Series: Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project is curated by Susan May, Curator, Tate Modern). The installation, which was a huge and defining success for Tate Modern, shows a projection of a sun. The scale of the installation, and the sensuous effect of the constructed sun expands what the visitor might expect in a modern art museum; The installation itself seems by motive, scale, as well as sensuous qualities to expand the expected experiences found in an art museum. During the installation people would rest on the sloping slab beneath the sun, creating a casual collective situation. This situation is in turn pushed forward the museum typology or architecture by challenging the museum space, and the culture surrounding the act of going to museums. From the description of the project it is evident, that the notion of expanding both art and museum is already present;

”In this installation, The Weather Project, representations of the sun and sky dominate the expanse of the Turbine Hall. A fine

Sophia Psarra – Architecture and narrative: The Formation of Space and Cultural Meaning

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Residential house in Copenhagen.

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mist permeates the space, as if creeping in from the environment outside. Throughout the day, the mist accumulates into faint, cloud-like formations, before dissipating across the space. A glance overhead, to see where the mist might escape, reveals that the ceiling of the Turbine Hall has disappeared, replaced by a reflection of the space below.” 2 Danish National Library The Royal Library in Copenhagen which is an extension to an older library and also adjacent to the harbour front is another example of how the culture surrounding an institution is actively addressed and challenged. The library building which is visually, or conceptually elevated above the street indicates an openness towards the city; visually you can access the library from any direction, there is even a busy street cutting through the building. Vice versa the library - could we almost imagine – spill out into Copenhagen. This indicates an at once traditional and serious institution but also a reframing as part of an urban and vibrant

GENERATIVE SPACES

Beyond the reuse of existing buildings in adaptive strategies we will now look at different strategies which intently shapes spaces in ways

condition. This relationship is further advanced programmatically when the visitor enters the building and is confronted by a café – here all sorts of people meet to socialize: Under the pretext of a library situation, this becomes an informal space for casual interaction, dating, and meeting. As the above examples indicate we may say that the relationship between a buildings ability to frame a certain expected culture and the ability to allow, or even advance new functionality is at the centre of how culture becomes manifests in buildings. There is a didactic relationship between the design of buildings and the culture expressed within them. This separation is described by Sophia Psarra, when she claims;

“These two aspects are dynamically interrelated. In the first case space is used in a conservative mode to reproduce existing social relationships and categorical differences… what we know naturally as the elements of culture. In the second case space is used in generative mode, creating a potential for social encounter.”3

which allows for a change of use, and thus the possibility of a resonance field between new functionality and new typologies. We call these

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/unilever-series/unilever-seriesolafur-eliasson-weather-project-0 3 S.P. – Architecture and narrative 2

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From top Clockwise. “Having accommodated all existing staff and their current office dimensions within the Machine, a collaborative Nucleus can be created that increases company collaboration, community, and happy accidents.” , ACTIVISION|BLIZZARD HEADQUARTERS, Santa Monica, California, Headquarters for the interactive entertainment software industry’s leading publisher, including open and private offices, conference rooms, gaming areas, a screening room, an all-company assembly space, and a cafeteria” https://rex-ny.com/project/activision-blizzard/. 2. Diagram showing the interior organization of the program of the CCTV headquarters. 3. Photo of the CCTV headquarters building.

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types of spaces as group for generative space..

“Today architects are addressing the issue of how to balance a buildings ability to perform designated functions with an ability for users to create “strategic incorporation of vagueness and indeterminacy”, in the words of Patrik Schumacher.

Everyday buildings and infrastructure Even though the traditional institutions like the library and the art museum currently are changing, expanding, and shifting their culture and more than ever are negotiating and formulating their cultural identity and values, most building typology formulates and is formulated by its culture. In Denmark the function of the kitchen has developed immensely in a cultural sense, in the past two-three generations, and is today the central informal social place in the house. In other cultures this might be the drawing room as in the United Kingdom, or the living room in the United States. In our own project for a residential house in Copenhagen, we have intentionally placed the kitchen as a central space that connects the more private functions like bedrooms with the more guest friendly spaces like the living room. Aligning the space according to its social use, the house is a mediation between private and public. This is what we in the terms of S.P. may call

“a conservative mode to reproduce exist-

ing social relationships and categorical differences”.

However, the geometry of the house is aligned so that the three sections – private/bedrooms, kitchen, public/living room – each has its own ceiling height. As you move through the spaces of the house the experience change; from the entrance you are naturally led to the kitchen, and on to the living room. To enforce this point the proportions of the bedrooms are proportion-wise wider than they are tall, while the living room is taller than its width. Seen from the street this narrative is expressed almost naively in the stepped roof. By combining existing social dogma of a centralized kitchen, with a simple geometric building envelope consisting of three shifted ‘boxes’, each with its own experiential quality, “used in generative mode, creating a potential for social encounter” as Sophia Psarra remarks. Generative space : spaces with programmatic collisions and indeterminacy Historic typologies like ‘open plan’ of the typical office floor, and the cubical office space, and ‘flexible partition wall systems’ are early examples of types of spaces deliberately applying strategies for indeterminate use. But the promise of total freedom by having as few restraints as possible is not always the most appropriate scenario (never wrong, but also, never right): Dull scenarios that does not invite users to creatively engage with the space. “A blank slate upon which any activity can occur

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has produced sterile, unresponsive architecture.” in the words of Joshua Ramus, a former OMA partner, and founder of the New York based office REX; Spaces should, Ramus says,

“accommodate change, contemporary design still relies on an antiquated version of flexibility: one size fits all.” According to Ramus, his office “advocates delimiting activities” and in which “collisions between activities unleash surprising potentials.”

CCTV – Beijing Examples of this we find in several projects by the dutch architecture office OMA. The project for the CCTV headquarter in Beijing; a state television channel, is an example of how building typology can combine a fixed set of programmatic relations while expressing a kind of uncertainty, or unstable situation. OMA proposed an odd looking building shape – a kind of three dimensional zigzagging tower. Diagrams reveal that the shape of the building is in fact driven by tying a building program together in a continuous loop; This is enabled by one long continuous infrastructurel connection, in the shape of elevators, linked spaces, and corridors connects all functions. This in turn essentially allows the personal of the large telecommunications company to interact across the entire building. While the interior communicates fixed but strategically arranged programmatic relationships between spaces, the exterior of the building tells, or communicates, another story.

62

The contextual condition for the CCTV Headquarters; Beijing, is like any metropolitan condition, a mix of building typologies and historical entities; here Hutongs and high rises reflects a large proliferation of socio-economic differences and cultural conditions. These differences are considered in the building shape which, depending on the viewing angle, engage Beijing in a surprising number of ways.

“The building is visible from most of Beijing; sometimes comes across as big and sometimes small, from some angles strong and from others soft“,

according to OMA. The building essentially reflects the inherent unstable situation of any metropolis, reflecting the city as an changeable condition of multiple vantage points or perspectives. Yet at the same time the unique building typology express a strong unity for a state owned telecommunications headquarters wanting to signal a strong and stable condition. This ability to create signs for functions which are still open for interpretation, is a hallmark for OMA. Generative use as spaces of communication - soft generative use We have so far indicated a few different strategies for allowing the user to inhabit the spaces arranged by architects, in either forceful-, or more facilitating ways: a. Open plan (indifferent to the user: allow many uses, but few indications of use)


b. Sequential (conservative to the user: leading the user through a building in an intended sequence, for example). c. Programmatic (generative to the user: indeterminacy created by strategically arranged program). The above strategies all in their own way allow for a culture to manifest. They also all have in common strategies, that indicate the user as inherently irrational, which then can either be led (sequential), let be (open plan), or arranged (programmatic). We will now begin to bring forward the idea of the aesthetic user; one which is creatively provoked by the surroundings, and in where programmatic confrontations are gently weaved into the geometry of buildings. The UK office Zaha Hadid Architects are known for their experimental building shapes, but what is less known are the intellectual reflections of their work, carried out by the studio’s director Patrik Schumacher. In an essay on “social Self-organization” Schumacher argues for a more soft generative use; even though buildings often physically frame how life, day to day becomes possible, and separates inside from outside, private from public, and so on, this only constitutes one function of buildings. Buildings as we have come to see them in the above chapters are also experimental testbeds for the generation of culture. Schumacher takes these observations a step further when he argues that buildings ;

“operates ... via thresholds and demarcation lines that do not constitute physical

barriers at all, but rather function like signals, indications, and indeed communications.”

And hereby also starts to indicate how we might begin to think about design of buildings. Beyond their basic rudimentary function, separation and physical inclusiveness, buildings should create spaces which indicate thresholds of both programmatic, as well as experimental territories which are indeterminate.

“Thus the ‘hard’ architectural tradition of walls, fences, locked gates etc. should deemphasized and replaced by a ‘soft’ ontology of expressive thresholds, indications, and atmospheres that operate semiologically as guiding orientations, invitations and priming characterizations, in short as language rather than as physically operating apparatus of exclusion.” Mixed strategies for generative space Considering for a moment OMA and their design for CCTV as portrayed in this chapter, we clearly see an ambition to establish a new typology, we instigates a dialogue between an ambiguous urban condition in Beijing, and the interpretations by a public body. If, for argument sake, this approach sees the user as a cultural or collective body, the idea of soft architecture imbued by Patrick Schumacher, sees the user as a sensuous being; acting and reacting in a direct contact with the building through expressive thresholds, indications, and atmospheres that operate semiological as guid-

63


ing orientations. (P. Schumacher) Though arguably different in their approaches to the users or inhabitants of their buildings, there is a commonality by which both acknowledges the need for indeterminacy in building: The possibly for the occurrence of events beyond the intended functions for the building. In our workshop, and the various proposals put forward by the participants in the workshop, there was an equal interest in creating culturally resonating spaces, though the strategic use of indeterminacy, or ‘wiggle room’ for the user. Though done slightly different than the above examples, the following comparison, allows us to describe more accurately how the ideas outlined in this chapter is used in our workshop. It also serves as a way to extrapolate more clearly what we mean by ‘communication’, when referencing to the overall structuring vice; ‘culture, concept, and communication’. For instance, in the design for the shopping mall as discussed in the beginning of this chapter, the idea for the ‘street’ can be seen as an interposition between the two; On one hand, the concept of carving out passages of varying width, angles, and changing ranges of visibility, encourages a curiosity from the user and communicates spatial phenomenons such as thresholds, passages, demarcations, niches. This is similar to the way Schumacher talks about communication. But on the other hand, the metaphorical use of ‘street’ talks about a different kind of communication. This is closer to the ideas proposed in OMA’s design for CCTV, in which a typology is able to represent functions, and ideas. Thus

64

its meaning is negotiable by the user. Conclusively we have seen that the cultural condition premeditates the architectural, but also that architecture can be a test-bed for culture. What we come to see is that there are several ways to deliberately attain such a resonance between culture and building. But common for all of these is that they allow varying degrees of flexibility for the user or inhabitant, through a deliberate use of programmatic indeterminacy. The workshop in the summer of 2018 explored these themes, while the coming workshop, summer 2019 will continue this discussion. The following chapter, which will be outlined at a later stage will explore the connection between the cultural observations in the first chapter (here chapter 3),and the conceptual ways to actively consider culture as an integral component of any building, in ways we have outlined in this chapter, through case studies of both existing buildings in the Somalian peninsula as well as building designs from the upcoming workshop.


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5. SAMPLES OF STUDENT PROJECT

Working Paper, draft No citation Authors Frederik Emil Seehusen and students from Royal Danish Academy of Arts, School of Architecture

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CONTENT BACHELOR - 1. YEAR STUDIES BACHELOR - 2. YEAR STUDIES BACHELOR - 3. YEAR STUDIES MASTER PROGRAM EXAMPLES

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The first year bachelor program aims to train the student’s form-making competences in a diverse set of materials, as well as an introduction to the broad field of architecture and architectural speculation. This buildup of the program follows two parallel tracts, which oscillates between theory and design. Theory is conducted by study groups, and lectures, reading curriculum etc. Design constitutes the major work load where the students propose one complete project proposal per semester. (two per year). The skills taught in design includes hand sketching, charcoal drawings, physical model building, and 3d modelling, and 2d plan and section CAD drawings.

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EXAMPLES OF STUDENT PROJECTS - BACHELOR FIRST YEAR

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01

02 Aenne Kristine Thomsen 01 Map/ drawing 02 Drawing 03 Plan 04 Plan 05 Elevation 06 Elevation 07 Site plan

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b

a

3 2

4

+00

-0,2

a 5 1

-0,4

b

03

plan 1 1:100 1 huggegürd 2 atelier 3 bad 4 kontor 5 køkken 6 sov og ophold

b

a

6

+00

+0,1

a

b

04

plan 2 1:100 1 huggegürd 2 atelier 3 bad 4 kontor 5 køkken 6 sov og ophold

05

06

07 71


01

01

01

02

03 Caroline Royal Rasmussen 01 Concept drawing 02 Drawing investigations 03 Landscape drawing 04 Plan drawing 05 Section 06 Model photo 07 Model Photo 72


01

01

04

05

01

01

06

07 73


Signe Bay Bøgh Larsen

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Snit A:A 1:100

+1.6

Soveværelse

-0.2

+0.4

-0.4

Køkken m. ophold +1.6

-0.2

+0.2

+0.0

Atelier

+0.0

Huggegård

+0.2


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The second year program advances the techinical aspects of thinking by doing. Halfway between the beginning and the completion of the three year bachelor program the students are encouraged to develop their own particular design interests, as well as pursue experiments which challenge the conventional understanding of architectural proposals.

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EXAMPLES OF STUDENT PROJECTS - BACHELOR SECOND YEAR

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_

registrering af stedet

_ _

tegningen som en fabulering over konteksten

_ _ _

domæner og intensiteter

01. VIEW Passage ind gennem skred i bygningen. Fordelings området. Det eneste ovenlys. Bygningens centrum. Konstruktion. Tagkonstruktionens udveksling med de vertikale bærende søjler, der lukker sprækker af lys ind i lageret, og indgangs passagen ved trappen.

78 _

indsættelse i det store

_ _

institut for bygningskunst by og landskab

_ _ _

frederik koefoed


_ch

_cg

_cf

_ce

_ba _cc _cd _ab

_bb

_ac _ad

_ca _cb

_aa

ellem rum og volumener

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84


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The Third year program, and the final year of the bachelor program leads to the final bachelor project. The objective of the year is to both synthesize the past semesters experiments and acquired skills, and to make an architectural statement characterized by each student’s desires and interests. The bachelor project points into the future for further academic education to be pursued, as well as into a possible future of job applications, work and the skills needed for architectural practice. Students: Frederik Koefoed Kristoffer Tjerrild Lund Camilla Skjolding Emma Sofie Fugl Sara Brinkmann Jønler Lydia Madsen

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EXAMPLES OF STUDENT PROJECTS - BACHELOR THIRD YEAR

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Afd 6 - Første År - 13/14

Afd 6 - 3. år - 2014

01

01

01

01

01

01

01

01

3

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-0,20

-0,40

KONCEPT spalten/opskĂŚring

-0,20

-0,20

-0,40

-0,40

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The master program is introduced by a few examples indicating how the progression from first year to third year is continued and advanced at the master level. Contribution: Frederik Emil Seehusen Sara Jønker

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EXAMPLES OF STUDENT PROJECTS - MASTER PROGRAM

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03. KONKRETISERING

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Tegningsundersøgelser 1:500

Modellen undersøges til at udspænde det langstrakte felt, gennem en positionering af elementer, opskæring i fladen, rytme og interval. Mens modellen undersøger en særlig vending og tektonik, anslår tegningerne et større lanskabeligt træk.

forsætning, forplantning

0.2 TEGNINGSMEDIERING

Kant, Krydsning, bevægelse foldes

glidning

03. KONKRETISERING

URBAN PARK OG BIBLIOTEK URBAN PARK OG BIBLIOTEK

EN EN

SNITSNIT B B

gentænkning af et offentligt rum i Tokyo gentænkning af et offentligt rum i Tokyo

kte bystruktur kte bystruktur

ke Shibuya Crossing finder man sitet for den forhenværende park Miyashita kōen. En smal e,keogShibuya strækker sig langsfinder den store gadefor Meiji Omgivet af park kommercielle Crossing man sitet denDori. forhenværende Miyashita bebyggelser, kōen. En smal Et den sted,store der gennem tiden harOmgivet undergået transformationer, e,den og pulserende strækker sigby. langs gade Meiji Dori. af mange kommercielle bebyggelser,og som ommende Olympiske 2020. den pulserende by. Et lege sted,ider gennem tiden har undergået mange transformationer, og som

Projektet udfoldes som en kombineret urban park og bibliotek, der på én gang skaber en følelse af at være midt i byen, men på sam-

me tid tilbagetrukket. Programmerne begge for at og åbne samti skabe nye mødeProjektet udfoldes som en kombineretrummer urban park ogpotentiale bibliotek, der påkrydse én gangmellem skaberintime en følelse af at sfærer, være midt byen, men på samsteder politisk neutrale og demokratiske derpotentiale henvender forskellige befolkningsaldersgrupper. Et sted, dermødegiver et me tid som tilbagetrukket. Programmerne rummerrum, begge forsig at til krydse mellem intime og og åbne sfærer, samt skabe nye alternativ til politisk områdets kommercielle interesser,rum, og bevarer et vigtigtsigbyrum i det tætte bydistrikt.og aldersgrupper. Et sted, der giver et steder som neutrale og demokratiske der henvender til forskellige befolkningsalternativ til områdets kommercielle interesser, og bevarer et vigtigt byrum i det tætte bydistrikt.

ommende Olympiske lege i 2020.

02. TEGNINGSMEDIERING 02. TEGNINGSMEDIERING

+100 +100

+100 +100

Obersvationsdæk Obersvationsdæk

-100

-300

-100

-300

-100

-300

Forsamlingsplads

-300

Forsamlingsplads

Forsamlingsplads

-100

Forsamlingsplads

-200 -200

-200 -200

0 0 Indgang Bibliotek

0

Indgang Bibliotek

0

Lån og afleveriung Lån og afleveriung

PC og printfaciliteter PC og printfaciliteter

Indgang Mediatek Indgang Mediatek

1. 21. 3. 2 4. 3. 5. 4. 5.

Sitet set øst fra vejen Meiji Dori Yamanote line, der kører vestlige kant Sitet set langs øst frasitets vejen Meiji Dori setlangs nordsitets fra vej Meiji Dori Yamanote line, derSitet kører vestlige kant Nuværende Sitet situation - Sitet og ryddet set nord fratom vej Meiji Dori Sitefoto Nuværende situation - Sitet(2012) tom og- 1:2000 ryddet

Mediatek Mediatek

Sitefoto (2012) - 1:2000

Situationsplan 1:2000

Feltundersøgelser 1:2000

Situationsplan 1:2000

Feltundersøgelser 1:2000

Læsepladser Læsepladser

Magasiner Magasiner

Lån og afleveriung Lån og afleveriung

+80 +80

Garderobe Garderobe Mødested Mødested

Kaffebar

Læse- og hvileområde Læse- og hvileområde

Kaffebar

Tegningsundersøgelser 1:500

Modellen undersøges til at udspænde det langstrakte felt, gennem en positionering opskæring i fladen,felt, rytme Modellen undersøges af til elementer, at udspænde det langstrakte genog interval. Mens modellen undersøger en særlig vending og nem en positionering af elementer, opskæring i fladen, rytme tektonik, anslår et større lanskabeligt træk. og og interval. Menstegningerne modellen undersøger en særlig vending

forsætning, forplantning forsætning, forplantning

Kant, Krydsning, bevægelse foldes Kant, Krydsning, bevægelse foldes

Tegningsundersøgelser 1:500 glidning glidning

tektonik, anslår tegningerne et større lanskabeligt træk.

03. KONKRETISERING 03. KONKRETISERING

-100 -200 -100 -200

Børneområde Børneområde

SNIT A

Bambus bed

SNIT A

Bambus bed + 110 + 110

Læse - flexrum Læse - flexrum

Legeplads Legeplads -240 -240

Indgang Park og bibliotek Indgang Park og bibliotek

+120 +120

Opbevaring Opbevaring Personale Butik

Personale

Butik

Køl Køl

Spisebar Spisebar

Opvask Opvask

SNIT A SNIT A Kig til galleri Kig til galleri

Indgang galleri Indgang galleri

Ovenlys Info

Ovenlys

Info

03. KONKRETISERING

Galleri Galleri Kig til galleri Kig til galleri

Akademiske bøger Akademiske bøger

studiemiljøer

SNIT AA

Studieceller

SNIT AA

Studieceller

studiemiljøer

03. KONKRETISERING 03. KONKRETISERING

Personale Personale

Administration Administration

Depot Depot

Personale

Depot

Personale

Depot

Tværsnit AA 1:200 Sports plads Sports plads

Grushave Grushave

Tværsnit AA 1:200 Tværsnit AA 1:200 Vandspejl

Yoga plads

Vandspejl

Yoga plads

Yoga plads Yoga plads

Plateauer Plateauer

Tværsnit A 1:200 Tværsnit A 1:200

PLAN 1 1:200 PLAN 1 1:200

Tværsnit A 1:200

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104

Køl

Opvask

Info

Spisebar

studiemiljøer

Akademiske bøger

Personale

Opbevaring

Indgang galleri

Indgang Park og bibliotek

Galleri

Butik

Ovenlys

SNIT AA

SNIT A

Studieceller

Kig til galleri

Kig til galleri

+120


105

Personale

Administration

Depot

Depot

Personale

Vandspejl

Grushave

Plateauer

Yoga plads

Yoga plads

Sports plads


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