PRESENTATION

Today was my first presentation about architecture at BAS without drawings or models. I was presenting my essay concerning sustainability and the use of local materials, showing mostly pictures and telling about my findings and my views, and the response was good. I've done loads of presentations before, but this one was the first about architecture in a theoretical perspective, so I was a bit nervous. All the more rewarding when people came up to me afterwards and told me that it was exciting and focused!

The picture is of the village of Rocamadour in France, a great example of how the use of local materials (in this case limestone from the cliff on which the village itself stands) can result in "an unrestrained harmony", to quote the essay. (Ha ha, I'm so pretentious!) Picture credits: Wikimedia Commons.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: KITCHEN CLIMBING

I want this!

(Thanks to my classmate Mats Børseth Østang (who by the way is very talented and nice), for showing me this video.)

DESKTOP/NYKIRKEN TOWER

This is my current desktop background picture, taken with the "starry sky" function on my camera, which spends 30 seconds taking in the light, and then 30 seconds putting it together to form a picture. It was taken inside the tower of Nykirken, Bergen, in the room behind the clocks. The colours are not adjusted, it's really that blue. One of the most beautiful rooms I've ever seen.

PS. Wondering about what all that concrete is doing inside a 17th Century church? The roof and tower were reconstructed in the fifties after having been bombed in the WWII.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: LIFE ON MARS?

For reasons unknown, I've been listening quite a lot to this amazing song lately. However, as it has the the most boring music video in the history of the planet Earth (with no architeture whatsoever, except for a white void which I'm sure Le Corbusier would have loved), I'm throwing in a couple of pictures with designs for a Martian city, made by the brilliant visual artist Thomas Denmark:

CRADLE TO CRADLE

A riddle: Why is Palau Güell (1888) like Siljustøl (1939)?
Hint: It has to do with the origin of the materials.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: PUSHWAGNER'S SOFT CITY

In the early 1970s, the Norwegian artist Hariton Pushwagner created a dystopian vision of the modern city, with cars, monotony and soulless architecture, called Soft City. In this amazing series of drawings, he showed a day in this horrible society where identity is history, variation is fault and likeness the prime virtue. In many ways, this was probably nor only a reflection of Pushwagner's political views, but just as much a reaction to how Norwegian architecture was developing at the time.

One example can be found in Fantoft student hostel in Bergen, where repetition, uniformity, lack og scale and boring and ugle materials are combined with boring setting to create something that could easily have inspired Pushwagner.

The artist kept returning to Soft City, and not all of these drawing come from the original series. A book with the first edition of Soft city was published some years ago. I own a copy, but I'm not sure if it can be bought online. The ISBN number is 9788291187785, and the book is very much recommended.

Finally, a short film version of Soft City:

THOMAS AND THE GOAT WILLOWS

My former classmate Thomas is the definition of sympathetic, and a rather clever tree-bender. At the beginning of our secound year, we joined forces in attacking a couple of goat willows with our braiding abilities and our sharp scissors, creating, as you can see, something looks like a rather nice tree, out of what used to be just a mess.

Last week, we followed up by not only re-pruning the first trees, but also making sense of several other bushy things of the kind which keep popping up around our school. I completely forgot to do a before-shot, but above, the reader may see what it looked like afterwards. Another shot below, with the sunset, Thomas, yours truly and the tree, in that order.

To find out more about creative bending, braiding an dpruning of living trees, check out Ivan Hicks' book Tricks with trees, of which I own a much-loved copy.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: THE GRIFFIN'S CAVE

From my favourite live action version of the classic Alice in Wonderland, a strange and beautiful little scene, set in a piece of gravity- and proportion-defying classical architecture, in the form of a cave. (No point in going to richardland.com, by the way.)

WES AND MATILDA

Today, while sitting at the desk in our classroom with my brilliant fellow student Matilda, who makes the world's most beautiful ink drawings, I suddenly felt like I was part of a Wes Anderson film. It may have had something to do with the amount of symmetry, an element which he uses a lot in his movies. At one point, I felt I was Bill Murray, but now I'm much better, thank you very much.

MOVING THE PASSIVE HOUSE

Earlier today, I passed while this installation was being removed from one of the public places in the centre of Bergen. It's a passive house (basically a very energy efficient kind of building) that has been exhibited for some time now, and a few weeks ago, I went with my friend Vegar, who is also an architecture student, to see it. There is a huge debate about passive houses in Norway these days, because, although they spend very little energy, they are also very high-tech, and the techo-optimists and the eco-architects do not agree as to whether the quality of air inside a passive house is good enough.

This one is very small, but was fully equipped, and thus still interesting to see. However, the design was awful, with a door and the inside walls made out of a sort of cardboard (which can be really cool, but in this case was used for) imitating wood, and cheap, ugly moulding. Also, the air inside smelled of fart. Needless to say, we were not quite convinced, and I can't say I'll be missing it.

EVENING SCHOOLYARD

I had actually forgotten how good I feel when spending my nights at school.

FICTIONAL FRIDAY: THE HOBBIT

For all lovers of fantasy architecture: This will be great. Get ready to return to pointed arches in Lórien, grass-covered walls and round doors in the Shire, lighweight Art Nouveau in Rivendell and heavy underground Dwarf walls of solid stone. I simply can't wait.