Maria Bjurenhed Portfolio 2023

O P OLIO RTF

about me

I am an architect from Stockholm living in Berlin. I finished my masters’ studies at Lund University in 2023. Alongside my studies, I have gained professional experience as an intern at different architecture studios.

My personal interests involve art and architecture, as well as travelling and exploring new places. My passion lies in the process of design, and I highly value sustainability and care for material. I consider it to be of great importance to curiously and continuously explore architecture and its possibilities. Creative joy is very important to me.

In my portfolio I present some of the work I have done during my years as a student.

education software

MArch / Lund University

September 2017 - February 2023

5-year architecture studies at Lund University, including bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Exchange year / TU Berlin

September 2021 - July 2022

Two semester exchange at the architecture master of Technische Universität Berlin.

Independent Courses

2013 - 2021

Lund-, Gothenburg and Stockholm University. Over 120 ECTS in psychology, philosophy, art and language studies.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Illustrator

InDesign

Photoshop

CAD-software

AutoCAD

ArchiCAD

Revit

3D and rendering software

Rhinoceros

SketchUp

Corona Render

Vray

work experience languages maria bjurenhed

E: maria.bjurenhed@gmail.com

Portfolio: issuu.com/mariabjurenhed

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mariabjurenhed

Architecture Intern / JSa

August 2020 - March 2021

Mexico City. Internship involving design work for several different projects, within different project phases. The two main projects involved developing a large-scale educational project and a transformation of a town house.

Architecture Intern / Zeller y Moye

August 2019

Mexico City. Internship during university holiday. Tasks involving visualizations, drawings, and technical drawings.

Architecture Intern / Factotum

July 2019

Puerto Escondido. Internship during university holiday. Tasks involving visualizations and project research.

Resource / IM Lund (Volunteer)

January 2017 - May 2017

Lund. Supporting newly arrvied refugees with school- and homework assignments.

Office Manager / Rewir

April 2015 - June 2016

Stockholm. Administration and service, including responsibility for office security economy assistance and purchase managing.

Swedish: Native

English: Fluent

Spanish: Advanced

German: B2.1

FLIP PARKHAUS CLOUDS

Transformation of a car park into hybrid housing.

Pages 6-13.

Scenography for a play in an urban environment.

Pages 14-15.

ST. JACOBI ATELIERS

Ateliers and a hidden courtyard at the entrance of a Berlin cemetery.

Pages 16-21.

FABRIKSBADET

Transformation of an abandoned wool factory into baths and spa.

Pages 22-29.

INNER CHAPEL

A modest chapel for a village in Rwanda.

Pages 30-33.

LOCATION: Berlin, Germany.

PROGRAM:

Hybrid housing, co-living and ateliers.

COURSE:

Degree project.

TEAM:

Solo project.

FLIP PARKHAUS

Transformation of a car park into hybrid housing. Degree project, 2023.

Flip Parkhaus is a project developed to start a discussion about the current housing market. The project is based in Berlin, a city where the situation for those seeking housing has changed rapidly. People looking for a place to live must often search for a long time or pay an excessive rent, and those who are already housed often have to deal with unreasonable renting conditions.

Flip Parkhaus criticizes the housing market by proposing an alternative for those looking for accommodation. By organizing and initiating a transformation of an abandoned car park, new housing is created where previously there was only desolation. The transformed car park, Parkhaus 76, not only creates new housing, but also creates space for the public. There is room for creativity, play and space for discussion.

Parkhaus 76 has four floors. The lower one houses ateliers for rent while the three upper floors have apartment units and shared spaces.

The parking garage is situated on Chausseestrasse 76 in Wedding, close to Berlin’s central areas. It is abandoned an unused since a couple of years and has a very favorable position on the site, making it suitable for a transformation project. With a school building to the east, a canal to the west and a schoolyard and football field to the south the site has a lot of potential for housing.

Facade Northwest. The entrance is designed to allure the public to get close to Parkhaus 76, inviting Berliners to discuss future housing projects.

The original building is a typical parking garage with a height difference between its levels. It is a deep, almost square, structure with pillars and beams carrying slabs at a low ceiling height. Today the only inhabitants are the city’s pigeons.

The transformation is carried out inside of the original building, keeping it mostly intact. Apartments and ateliers are created by adding sandwich plywood elements to create rooms within the structure.

The ground floors accommodate the entrance, ateliers and a café run by the residents.

The middle floors houses apartments as well as flexible common rooms shared between the residents.

On the roof, a playground, and apartments in the shape of townhouses are added, giving the whole building a new silhouette and a more human scale.

Visualization of entrance and the outdoor furniture towards the canal.

Upper part: ground floor. Lower part: first floor (+1.35 m)

The 0 m 5 m 10 m 0 m 5 m 10 m

Section A:A.

Section B:B.

Visualization of interior street.

The apartments are Parkhaus 76 most private rooms. They are designed with plywood elements easy to match with different color, letting the inhabitants invest as much time and effort on their interior as they please.

The typical apartments are 20 or 30 m² in size, with a small balcony of 0,6 m in width.

The apartments on the roof are 25 m² and 12,5 m² (for students). The student units have the same dimensions as a parking space. Students have access to a shared kitchen.

When two smaller apartments lie next to each other, which happens in eight places of the project, there are possibilities for flexible solutions.

By removing one wall a larger apartment of 40 m² for three people is created.

LOCATION: Malmö, Sweden.

PROGRAM:

Scenography and urban installation.

COURSE: Basic course.

TEAM:

Maria Bjurenhed & Amanda Angelhag.

CLOUDS

Scenography for an urban play. Third semester, 2018.

Clouds is a scenography for a famous Swedish play written by August Strindberg. A Dreams Play is based on the angel Agnes who comes down from the heavens to witness the troublesome life among humans.

The projects Clouds suggests a scenography controlled from the skies. The means are simple: to build a large clothesline-like structure above the square in Malmö that constitutes the stage and fill it with semitransparent plastic sheets. Clouds is a light and uncomplicated scenography that creates many possibilities.

Site plan showing the ”clothesline” standing in the square.

Section of the scenography.

The layering of the plastic sheets creates depth in the scenery, allowing the actors to move through the sheets between their scenes. The property of the play can also be created with the sheets, through ”objects” made of the same plastic, lowered down from the lines above. The color of the sky will determine the backdrop and by hanging the plastic in layers, a three-dimensional depth is created.

Scenography model showing how light moves through the layers. The wires that carry the sheets will be made of metal to ensure stability.

LOCATION: Berlin, Germany.

PROGRAM:

Ateliers and a public courtyard.

COURSE:

Studio Adreizehn: Form Follows Material.

TEAM:

Maria Bjurenhed & Greta Altenburger.

ST. JACOBI ATELIERS

Ateliers and a hidden courtyard in Neukölln. 9th semester, 2022.

In Neukölln lies a cemetery called St. Jacobi. It has its entrance right on the busy street Hermannstrasse, but with its length on over half a kilometer it is a quiet and green oasis in the city. Its use as a cemetery is about to change and graves are slowly being taken away or moved. The future for the cemetery involves schools and housing. Today, broken gravestones lie in sorrowful piles around the scene.

St. Jacobi Ateliers is a project adapted to the cemetery’s past, present and future. It activates the abandoned stonemasonry that lies next to Hermanstrasse and transforms

it into ateliers for creative workers and a small coffee kiosk for the public. Meanwhile, the gravestones that today lie shattered and chipped around the grounds will get new life and their memories live on through walls, created out of the broken stones. Even though the text will be divided and the names unidentifiable, these walls will be a fragmented puzzle of the past, letting the cemetery’s memories live on.

The heavy and colorful materiality of the gravestones present in the courtyard contrasts the light wooden structure of the ateliers.

Site plan. Scale: 1:4000 (A4).

Facade on Hermanstrasse.

Section A:A. The red elements in the drawings are added in the transformation and the black elements are existing.

Warthestrasse 0 m 5 m

5 m

Model showing the courtyard in relation to the entrance as well as the ateliers. The roof structure inside the transformed stone masonry will be constituted by a grid of wooden beams, floating lightly on top of the walls.

The courtyard between the ateliers can be used by the current atelier occupants as an exhibition spot or for other types of events. At the same time, it is open to the public and creates transition between the busy city life into the calm green park of the cemetery.

Section

LOCATION: Marieholm, Sweden.

PROGRAM:

Public training pool, spa, and café.

COURSE:

Architecture in time and space.

Bachelor Tesis.

TEAM:

Solo project.

FABRIKSBADET

Transformation of an abandoned wool factory into baths and spa. Sixth semester, 2020.

Fabriksbadet is a project drawn in the bachelor studio Architecture in Time and Space. The studio focuses on transformations: The reshaping of the existing and the meeting between new and old.

Fabriksbadet translates to The Factory Bath. It is a suggestion to transform the old factory building in the small society of Marieholm in the south of Sweden into a swimming pool. The transformation will drastically change the buildings activity and purpose but keep its history and identity intact. Fabriksbadet offers pools for exercise, recreation and diving and a spa with an outdoor pool and saunas. The establishment also houses a coffee shop and a restaurant.

The aim is that Fabriksbadet will awaken the sleeping society that is Marieholm today.

Visualization of the training pool.

The factory is one of many in a cluster of buildings that from the end of the 19th century until 2008 served as an industrial village. This is a part of Marieholm that historically holds great importance for the society. Nowadays it is nearly forgotten.

The train station is in a five-minute walking distance connecting Fabriksbadet with larger cities in the region. To the south are kilometers of fields that connect the area with open nature.

By reviving and activating the most central building in the complex, the wish is to make Marieholm a place to visit.

Site plan, the industrial village is marked in dark grey.

A. Factory (1933) B. Offices (1943) C. Steam plant (1940) D. Weaving mill (1904) E. Spinning factory (1923) F. Extension of Weaving mill (1950) G. Warehouse (1942) H. Coloring shop (1943)

The original brick facades show the buildings load bearing structure clearly. The facades will be almost completely preserved in the transformation.

The transformation focuses on smaller adjustments to the actual structure and facade, but big perforations in the floor slabs. The carrying beam and pillar structure is left almost completely intact, letting the pillars become part of the swimming pools, standing in the water. In the drawings. The structural elements will be mainly left out to increase the readability of the project.

The outer shell is transformed through simple means. The building is separated into two creating a passage between the street and the patio, simultaneously creating two new facades. A few pieces are also removed from the facade and the roof to make room for the project.

Northeast facade, showing the entrance and the café towards the street.

architecture portfolio 2023

Second floor. Main pools.

Third floor. Spa area.

Southern Facade.

Section B:B.

The cube shaped spa discloses the activities through its materials. The wood sauna is made of spruce tree, the light therapy room of polycarbonate and the steam sauna covered in tiles found on site.

Visualization of the outdoor pool.

Spa. Changing rooms. Pools. Stairs and connections. Technical installations. Entrance and café.

1. Restaurant kitchen and reception desk.

2. Restaurant.

3. Coffee shop.

4. Changing room diving pool.

5. Changing rooms plan 2 and 3.

6. Swimming pool for exercise.

7. Wading pool for children.

8. Bubble pool.

9. Deep pool for diving.

10. Wood sauna.

11. Light therapy room.

12. Steam sauna.

13. Warm outdoor pool and cold showers.

14. Room above diving tower.

Section A:A.

Visualization of the training pool.

LOCATION: Rukomo, Rwanda.

PROGRAM:

Chapel. Landscape design.

COURSE:

Competion YAC

”Rwanda Chapel”.

TEAM:

Maria Bjurenhed, Lukas Hammarskiöld, Elsa Schröder & Gustaf Sjöblom.

INNER CHAPEL

A modest chapel for a village in Rwanda. Fourth semester, 2019.

Inner Chapel is a suggestion made within the guidelines of a competition. The wish was a simple chapel for a small village in Rwanda to be used both by the local community and for pilgrimage. The proposal Inner Chapel is based upon these needs while creating a calm and nurturing space on the top of a hill.

The walk up to the chapel is part of an experience. The path leading from the convent lets visitors approach in a gentle pace, creating a gradual arrival by introducing independent building elements. The elements are combined slowly, bit by bit until they meet at the altar, creating the Inner Chapel.

Site plan: 1. Convent. 2. Path. 3. Inner Chapel.

Visualization of the path leading up to the chapel.

Axonometric drawing showing the materials in the chapel. The walls will be made of sandstone, the pillars of pine tree and the roof weaved out of dried plants.

The plan shows how the different elements surrounds and constitutes the Inner chapel.

The roof will be Inner Chapel’s most charachteristic feature but it is not decided how it will look. It will be made through local and traditional weaving techniques. The idea is that this roof can be changed continuously, bringing the community together and involving it in the construction. Inner Chapel simultaneously creates a space for two important while different aspects of a chapel: inner reflection and gathering.

Section through the chapel.