Faults Aida Espanol Vilanova, Aarhus School of Architecture PhD project - The works of the Danish architect, Hans Christian Hansen (1901-1978), Tectonic Matters
Hans Christian Hansen was a project leader at the office of the City architect in Copenhagen between the late 1930’s and the early 1970’s and was responsible for developing different public buildings which are material and tectonic-wise extraordinarily rich, and quite unusual in its geographical historical and cultural context. The purpose of the project is to identify and interpret those buildings by following a Research through Design (RtD) methodology, in which experiments of different nature and duration, are supposed to expand on the overall knowledge of the project. Although, the specific methodologies and tools differ according to each experiment, however, from a general perspective, the project starts out at the building site, rather than the archive. The lack of HCH’s personal information and the author’s belief on the capacity of the built works to reveal data support and motivate this approach. Faults, aims at exhibiting certain continuities, and therefore discontinuities, within HCH’s buildings. Mostly, it focuses on relations comprised within the facades of the buildings and the subject of tectonics from a very bottom-up approach. A series of photo collages comprised of 2 photos belonging to 2 different buildings are joined together in order to display both, alignments and fractures of materials, rhythms, compositions, dimensions, colors, elements, material formats. Here, the name Fault is basically understood as movements, displacements, breaks but also junctions, between two buildings. Therefore, it adopts the original geological meaning of tectonic faults of rock’s or earth’s surface. Furthermore, the mere act of merging together 2 distinct buildings constructs a fake reality.
100
KÅRK 38
Nørrebro Vænge, housing, 1939-42
Hulgårds Plads, housing, 1943-45