2024 — Paraply

2024

Drift

Being positioned in a former military building on the edge of the water in Copenhagen, this year’s workshop theme is titled DRIFT – a tribute to one of the extraordinary projects from the first edition of Paraply, and an invitation to delve into the complex exchange of ideas, cultures and materials overseas.

This year’s workshop theme delves into the theme of the Ocean and the travelling seas. The title of the theme is DRIFT. For one, it is a tribute to the extraordinary project by MacIver-Ek Chevroulet during the first edition of Paraply, for which a piece of a building was sliced off and floated across the canal to be re-configured on the other side. On the other hand, it is a contemplation on harbour as the gateway for exchange of ideas and cultures overseas, whereby goods and transport drift from continent to continent.

The sea and the Ocean connect this artificial harbour with every coastline of the world. The body of water moves in a molecular and atmospheric scale. Material drifting from one place to another makes visible this movement, raising awareness of our physical relationship to the waterways. This invisible bridge also opens a darker colonial history in which Denmark was responsible for colonising offshore regions and transporting slaves to the Americas. The navigational benefits of travelling on open water facilitated exploitative ambitions.

The encompassing nature of the Ocean prompted harbours to become centers for ethnicity, food and knowledge around which cities developed with great exchange. Copenhagen is a prime example of layered history. Its old harbour is no longer in use for marine trade, and the former military buildings have been repurposed. Remnants of its past remain in the built environment. Beyond the city centre, the old harbour and the former military grounds, artificially extended land was claimed to accommodate the high material demands of contemporary consumerism.

As we reflect on the greater systems and consequent architecture of the 21st century, how far have we drifted and where do we want to go? Do we drift with the forces of overproduction for the sake of speculative growth, or do we choose a different course? In a time of plastic islands and tyre deserts, what is our chosen relationship to the water?

The workshop took place in an old naval workshop where machinery and equipment was manufactured, repaired and maintained for the shipyard. The building is currently being used by the Danish Design School as an educational space.

Holmen was the main base for the Danish navy from 1690 to 1993 and was also the country’s biggest workplace for those 300 years. In the early 90s, the military started moving out of Holmen, and when the Copenhagen Naval Base closed down and became a Naval Station in 1993, it opened up the area for a complete transformation. In a place where once warships were built and repaired, a diverse community of architects, designers, artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs moved into the area. The raw character of Holmen’s industrial past has been transformed into a fertile ground for creativity.

The old naval shipyard’s machine workshop was originally constructed between 1915 and 1918 by engineers Christiani & Nielsen, working together with architect Olaf Schmidth, who also designed other buildings within the former military area. The building is one of the finest examples of early Danish reinforced concrete architecture. An adaptable and strong building material that has revolutionized construction by combining the strength of concrete with the tensile strength of steel bars.

From its beginnings as a shipyard machine workshop until 1993, the building’s destiny changed intensely in 2000 when architect Søren Robert Lund reimagined it as a commercial space. The building’s journey continued in 2011 when the Danish Design School moved in.

A building that over time drifts into something else, like factories morphing into apartments, churches becoming restaurants, hangars becoming nightclubs, can be seen as buildings capable of finding a new life within its old bones. Aligned with this year’s theme DRIFT, the former naval shipyard’s machine workshop showcases the dynamic nature of architecture, transforming over time to suit new purposes.

Point Supreme

With the ambition of making the participants reflect upon the dialogue between materials, Point Supreme set the task of creating a raft composed only with reuse materials and the question of how to tie these together. The first days were set with different assignments with the purpose of working with different material compositions. The participants made self-portraits composed solely out of materials. Thereafter the participants engaged themselves in creating totems focusing on creating a bond between the materials used for the totems.

The raft slowly took shape while constantly negotiating, not only with the other groups, but also with the materials themselves, on how to connect and compose. Materials were tied, knotted, braided, screwed and fitted together, until the materials no longer could be perceived as a single item. Finally, the week ended with the lauch of the raft into the harbour, solidifying it as a single object, composed by hundreds of objects.

Dafni Mesochoriti
Neofytos Christou
Aga Grzemski
Maria Malatara
Arne Felix Rüger
Stergios Georgios Tsarouchas
Bridget Buxton
Juliette Auer
Georgia Maniatakou
Sophia Rettl
Emma Bailly-Maitre
Kaya Liffler
Jules Esbjørn Hesd
Philippe Fleischmann
Joséphine Steyaert
Tobias Rasmussen

Point Supreme was founded by Konstantinos Pantazis and Marianna Rentzou in 2008 after living and working in Athens, London, Brussels, Tokyo and Rotterdam. They have won 1st prize in various international competitions including for a Social Housing in Trondheim, a Pier on the coast of Athens, a sheltered public space in Tel Aviv (built), a Firestation in Belgium (built), the New Architecture school in Marseille (built) and an Artists Centre in Genk (built). Their work has been published in three books: ‘Athens Projects’ (Graham Foundation 2015), ‘Radical Realities’ (Divisare, 2017) and a+u (Japan 2023). They have taught at architecture schools such as Columbia University in New York and EPFL in Lausanne.

Comte/Meuwly

Performing Places: To start the week and to set the tone for the workshop Comte/Meuwly decided to occupy a small concrete island in front of our site. With very simple means and only a few hours of work a way of passage was established, a ladder was mounted, and a flag was raised. After which the rest of the workshop was invited to the new republic. Minimum means, maximum impact. The rest of the workshop was divided into three acts:

Suburban Odyssey: The participants explored the area around our site, to look for potential sites for interventions. Documenting what they saw through text and photos.

Amplifying Conditions: On the basis of their respective fields of interests groups were formed and concepts were developed, while carefully studying the conditions of their chosen sites. Interventions were planned and prepared for execution.

Action-Reaction: Berries were gathered and processed, Found tender moments were given a voice, Collective isolation was achieved with floating devices and an old fishing net was given a new life.

Arina Tretiakova
Carolina Félix
Emma Yergat
Elisabet Valmas
Davida Zimmermann
Frieda Fischer
Ela Grasselli
Lenart Berdon
Catarina Ruweida Hanna-Amodio
Sam Leon Leuenberger
Dylan Wei
Mariia Liashchenko
Daniel Choconta
Victor Stasik
Constanza Sobejano Figuerola
Olga Sulek
Jakob Ravn Abildgaard

Comte/Meuwly cultivate their capacity to be surprised and fascinated by unexpected encounters and discoveries – through meticulous observations of everyday life, exciting experiments, productive failures, and enlightening prototypes. Based on these observations and experiences, projects are developed as narratives, without really knowing how or where it ends. They do not aim at revealing the grandiose, nor the sublime. They are assemblages of characters, scenes, objects, places, and phenomena: anchor points whose beauty emerges from their scrupulous combinations, from their reciprocal interactions. It is about making the most of what is already there, and highlighting opportunities: a subjective interpretation of the situations as found, by a careful selection of qualities and potentials.

It turns out that each project detaches from any formal or stylistic research, and becomes rather an experimentation on the world that surrounds us, the general frenzy, the formalities of the administration, the reality of the standards in force: a mean for questioning and reinventing. Everything produced is considered a project, regardless of scale or medium. They all come together in a non-hierarchical narrative, provoking unexpected encounters of fragments, producing new stories, and leading to future experiments.

The studio was founded by Adrien Comte and Adrien Meuwly in 2017, and is based between Zurich and Geneva.

LLRRLLRR

Getting 40 bricks across the canal and into the workshop space without touching them. That was the very simple, yet challenging, task LLRRLLRR gave their participants. Through initial exercises, the participants familiarised themselves with the bricks and worked with understanding how much they could carry, hold, reach and lift. Devices, contraptions and extensions of the bodies were constructed throughout the week. Tools of all sorts, which only were created with one purpose: moving bricks. In a performative and almost mechanical way, the participants concluded the workshop by dragging, floating, rolling and carrying the bricks to safety inside. Everything without touching a single brick.

Duy Pham
Isabel Painter
Euan Russell
Margaux Cooper
Defne Yuan Ozdenoren
Maria Romanosova
Christian James Harris
Josefina Leon
Mélanie Schroff
Elza Duka
Megan Lim
Alex Puerto
Jakub Wichtowski
Danaë Passarelli
Said Derkaoui
Leon Schade
Rebecca Stenz

LLRRLLRR was established in 2018 by Laura Linsi and Roland Reemaa, with the focus on exploring material-led, closely involved and situated construction techniques. They enjoy engaging in projects from start by defining briefs, key values, and resources. In 2019, the practice won the Estonian Young Architects Prize for fostering critical discourses in architecture. In 2023, they received the Estonian Academy of Arts Creative Prize. In 2018, with Tadeas Riha they curated the Estonian pavilion at the 16th Venice Biennale of Architecture, titled Weak Monument. They teach architecture studios at UAL Central Saint Martins and the Estonian Academy of Arts and actively participate in workshops and reviews across Europe.

Guest lectures by Jonathan Houser, Kim Lenschow, and SPACEGIRLS.

Wolfgang Tillmans, To Look Without Fear, 2022
Richard Wentworth, Making Do and Getting By, 2016
Ed. Rebecca Solnit & Thelma Young Lutunatabua, Not Too Late, 2023
Annette Hillebrandt, Petra Riegler-Floors, Anja Rosen, Johanna-Katharina Seggewies, Manual of Recycling: Buildings as sources of materials, 2019
Sandra Hofmeister, Architecture and Climate Change: 20 Interviews on the Future of Building, 2024
Eva Lootz, Making as if Wondering: So What Is This? (Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), 2024
Coastal Imaginaries, the Danish Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia, 2023
Akumanoshirushi, Carry In Project, 2008
Ursula Meier, Home, 2008
Ugo La Pietra, Repossessing the City, 1977
Michael Johansson, Recapturing a Contemporary Past, 2011
Theo Michael, The Mother Of Things, 2015
Olga Elliot, A Tale of Two Mermaids: Disrupting Narratives of
Danish Colonization, 2021

Bibliography

Image 1: Coastline maps carved in driftwood, from East Greenland, 1885.
Image 2: Institut for Visuelt Design
Image 3: Marianna Rentzou and Konstantinos Pantazis
Image 4: Adrien Comte and Adrien Meuwly
Image 5: Roland Reemaa and Laura Linsi