FICTIONAL FRIDAY: APOKALYPSE DA

Photo by Morgan Flament

This great picture suddenly showed up on my Facebook news feed this morning, and I immediately decided I had to put it on the blog. It's taken from a new theatre play called "Apokalypse da" (Engl: "Apocalypse then") by the duo REBEKKA/HUY at Black Box Theatre in Oslo, which deals with the Vietnam war, seen from present day by a generation of actors born in the eighties. (Norwegian description on the theatre's website.) Unfortunately, I did not see it, so I don't know exactly what kind of scene is depicted here.

Lighting design was done by the brilliant (heh) (no, but seriously) Norunn Standal, and reveals two important points to me: The first, of course, is how light in itself can create a feeling of space. The entire "room" visible in this picture is defined by the reach of the lamps, with blurry, bulging edges, but still well-defined. I'm a lover of shadow in architecture, and she uses it masterly. The second thing to notice here, is how amazing artificial light can be. Using the "fog effect", dispersion of white light in smoke makes the whole scene and people glow, and lets us see things in new ways.

I love natural light as much as the next architect, but many people around the world, especially in Northern areas, spend large parts of their lives under dark skies. In this situation, it is the role of the architect and designer to recognize the fact that windows look more or less like large black squares for most of the time we see them.

Therefore, it must be one of the basic tasks of our professions to think new thoughts about how to create artificial lighting which helps bring about environments of high quality, a necessity in replacing the function of natural light when that is absent.

PUMPKIN TUNNEL

Picture credit: Pinterest, I think

Today in outdoor architecture: A super cool tunnel made of steel and living pumpkin plants. The colour, the contrast between the geometry of the steel and the organic shapes of the plants, and the amazing filtering of the light all come together to make this an unusual and interesting space. Would love to put one of these in my garden, or even in the grounds of a school or public building.

LEAF CEILING

This amazing ceiling made of linden trees can be found at Blindernveien in Oslo, and creates a room as good as any.

The technique is called pollarding in English, and is an excellent way of renewing trees.

ARCHES

I've been thinking a lot about arches lately, especially in connection with building brick walls, an increasingly interesting construction method for new architecture. If you have an ideal of the true construction of a building being visible, as I do, you have you use either arches or lintels to cover any spans, for example for windows and doorways. You could of course, as many do, fake the whole thing by using hidden steel lintels, covered by the bricks, but that is in my opinion a cheap trick, unworthy of an architecture with ambitions beyond a certain wow-effect. A Norwegian example here, from the otherwise rather tasteful Bøler church, by Bjørndal/Hansen Architects A/S:

*Sigh* Back to the arches. There are many kinds of arches to be found, and they're all suitable for different situations.

Parable or catenary arches may be good for a gateway, or a building you want to look soaring and strange,

a semi-circular arch may be suitable for a solid and classic look,

the segmental arch is good for informal red-brick architecture,

the right-angled flat arch or jack arch (there's also a variant called french arch) can be used in architecture with a geometric or minimal expression,

and the four-centred ("tudor") arch may be fitting if you're a hardcore romantic, 

perhaps combined with some sort of pointed ("gothic") arch. 

Still, I think one of my favourites (What's your "favourite arch"? God, I'm such a geek.) is the three-centred arch. This gentle shape creates good vibrations all around, feels earthbound and yet poetic, and doesn't require great height. 

The first place I thought of that uses these, is my former school, the eminent Nansen Academy in Lillehammer.

The old school building, originally a private residence built in 1918, features three-centred arches in the ground floor windows of the entrance facade. There's also a tiny side building, connected to the main volume via a very short arcade made up of a couple three-sided arches. 

It seems this shape was very popular in early 20th Century Norwegian architecture, but it seems to have more or less vanished around 1925. Now, how do you construct this three-centred arches, you ask? You already love them that much? That's good. Here's a youtube video with a very simple explanation:

Now, go ahead and design your own!

(Picture credits:

Arcade with yellow arches - Wikipedia
Bøler church - Anne-Beth Jensen/bygg.no
Catenary arches in Gaudí's Casa Milà - Wikipedia
Marble Arch - Wikipedia
Insula with segmental arches - Wikipedia
Georgian row house facades with flat arches - PhotoEverywhere
King's College Chapel - Wikipedia
Hogwarts' Great Hall - Warner bros, I guess
Nansen Academy entrance facade - Nansen Academy Facebook page
Nansen Academy side shot with people holding flags - asylmarsj.no)

MAGICAL CONCRETE CAVE

I found this strange place in Stavanger not too long ago. Lying just up the hill from the train station, it's a sort of underground crossroads and not exactly a classical beauty. However, with the daylight flowing in from a circular hole in the ceiling, dark corners, strange yellow-greenish lamps and the sound of running water from the fountain and the underground brook, it has a very special atmosphere, and is definitely worth checking if you're in the neighbourhood.

THE HEADMISTRESS' SONG

Young Dreams from Young Dreams on Vimeo.

This weekend, I attended a seminar arranged by my alma mater, Bergen School of Architecture. The topic was the architect education of the future, and loads of interesting questions were raised. One of the moments I'll remember the best, however, was the opening, where our headmistress (principal/rector/leader whatever you prefer) Marianne Skjulhaug played this very cool and aesthetically pleasing music video from the band called Young Dreams.

The video was taped in a house called Planetveien 12, built by the great Norwegian architect Arne Korsmo for himself and his wife, the artist Grete Prytz Kittelsen. Architect  Ragnhild Jordtveit Kristiansen, who writes the blog "Mine venners hjem" says in her blog post about the house that "Planetveien is a dream of glass, concrete and teak, with specially designed and built-in furniture and surprising and original solutions". Read the blog post and watch the video (in full screen).

CHURCH IS GAY

I'm going away for a week, to the summercamp of the organisation Queer Youth in Norway. One of the topics of our discussions will be how the LGBT movement and the different religions can cooperate better and achieve more understanding, for the good of everyone.

This is St. Bridget's church in New Jersey. It turns out that churches can be a lot of things.