Ronja Norrelgen
SIDA 15 - 20
MELTING POINT
Ronja Norrelgen & Wojtek Scszepanik
Fall 2022
VINDEN (THE WIND/THE ATTIC)
Ronja Norrelgen
Spring 2021
MEGARON
Leonard Kümin, Ronja Norrelgen, Sevde Sekercigiller & Tilde Sääf
Fall 2020
ARTWORKS
Ronja Norrelgen
2016-2017
The building isn’t ideal for conventional apartments due to the noisy location. It is, however, centrally located with views of the TV-tower and a dramatic connection to the S-Bahn, and we thought it could be an exciting location for a more temporary living situation. We also felt there was a sort of tactile connection between the dark red brick material, the industrial expression of the building, and the characteristic triangular ventilation shafts and the art of glassblowing, with its heat, smoke and chimneys.
We organized the building vertically, with the heavy, physical work of glassblowing at the bottom, the slightly lighter coldworking in the middle, and theidea-based designing work on the top floor of the existing building. On top of this are private apartments, opening up towards the sky, framed by pillars of stacked glass. In a sense, the ideas and the work move downwards, while the heat of the hot shop at the bottomrises upwards and warms the rest of the building, while also functioning as the heart of the building – almost like a huge fireplace.
Site plan
Elevation east
Section C-C
Hot shop detail
Diagram of horizontal organization
Getting up on a height creates a sense of freedom, and because of this, openness, space and an upward focus were important in this project. The assignment was to create an extension on a courtyard in Lund, in connection with the bar Ariman. I also wanted to create something unexpected in Lund’s cityscape, and the hidden location of the courtyard was perfect for this. The fact that it can’t bee seen directly from the street means that visitors have a chance to discover it for themselves.
When you first enter, the courtyard is narrow and crooked, and surrounded by low-rise buildings. Further in it opens up more, but the surrounding houses also get taller. The result is that your gaze and focus are gradually directed upwards, towards the sky. I wanted to continue working with this movement, and bring it from feeling to form.
In the summer, it’s natural to sit down in a park, a square or the outdoor area of a bar to socialize. This creates living urban spaces, and gives people the opportunity to participate in public life. We wanted to create a place that would make this type of action possible for a much larger part of the year, even in Scandinavia.
Our goal was also to create a destination that people actively wanted to visit, that could also serve as an icon for the neighbourhood. Our choice to work with the old dry dock is about the inherent drama of the place, which creates a want to explore. We wanted to further develop this, and create an exciting room based on light, different movement patterns and focal points around fire places.
We decided to create relatively gentle, easily walkable stairs with wooden handrails, to allow as many people as possible to safely take in the dramatic space. At the same time, we also wanted to preserve the adventurous feeling of appropriating a place that was really meant for something else. Because of this, we also added scattered stone blocks, that fill the dual purpose of seating and primitive steps. Both of the staircase systems, as well as the rooms around the fireplaces have an expression that resembles that of the original dock: raw, geometric and with a focus on negative space.
The idea behind this piece was to evoke the idea of a body that didn’t exist, through a piece of clothing. It can either be worn by this imaginary, monstrous entity, or by a group of people acting as one.
Like a lot of my works at the time, it also explores what it means to exist within a body, where it begins and ends.
Using plastic scraps from delivery boxes, I tried to create a clothing collection that functioned as a confession. Clothing is usually seen as having a sort of concealing function, but here it it is instead showcasing thoughts and feelings on the skin.
It is the opposite of clothing as armor. The plastic wrapping, originally intended to protect, instead heightening the impression of fragility, and the see-through effect makes it part of the body, rather than a fully separate layer. The impression I wanted to give was that the writing was growing out of my skin.
The room is something that exists within you, but it is also a feeling of entrapment. Here, again, I wanted to focus on evoking the idea of something without actually creating it. This time, that was a physical space, where I tried to create the most basic possible shape and threshold, and then make that feel enclosed by limiting the senses. However, the physical installation is not really necessary – the room is the audio, and you can bring it with you wherever you go.
