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Paraply Workshop 2024 — Drift, The Everyday
Theme
Drift, The Everyday
Drift, The Everyday
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?
Image credit: National Geographic, Map from Topografisk Atlas Grønland, published by Det Kongeglige Danske Geografiske Selskab, 2000 (pg 171)
Workshop Leaders
Point Supreme
Comte/Meuwly
LLRRLLRR
Point Supreme
Comte/Meuwly
LLRRLLRR
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.
www.pointsupreme.com
@pointsupreme
info@pointsupreme.com
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.
www.comtemeuwly.com
@comte_meuwly
mail@comtemeuwly.com
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.
www.llrrllrr.com
@llrrllrr_studio
info@llrrllrr.com
Location
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.
Guest Lecturers
Bibliography
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
Public Exhibition