An archive for architectural drawings
SCHOOL: Aarhus School of Architecture
STUDIO: Studio 2A / Building Design and Technique
SUPERVISOR: Carolina Dayer, MArch, PhD cd@aarch.dk
CONTRIBUTION: Individual work
WORKING PERIOD: Feb. 2018 – Jun. 2018 (5 month)
LOCATION: Tilsvide, Denmark TYPE : Cultural Facility, Archive
The translations from drawing to building
The thesis seeks to reflect upon the meaning of memory in architecture. Departing from the Roman practice of ‘Damnatio Memoriae’ (condemned memory) the project works with the physical manifestation of spaces from forgotten architectural memories. Specifically, the project looks into the role of memory in architecture and its possible spatial translations in relation to Danish unbuilt projects and the analogue drawings that accompany them.
Furthermore, the thesis focuses in one unbuilt project, a church, by XX century Danish architect, Ib Lunding. From archival research to site visits, the investigation translates into a series of abstract models and drawings that employ the conceptual act of erasing (or condemning)as a way of thinking and making an architecture that both, remembers and forgets Lunding’s unbuilt design.
These abstractions are then used as a design tool for creating the new archives for architectural drawings in Denmark corresponding to the recent issue marked by the ‘burning of architectural drawings in the Copenhagen City Archive.’ The project explores the potentiality of oblivion and memory by honoring and condemning unbuilt projects as a process of design towards a mnemonic architecture.
Ib Lunding’s church projects 1931 / Unbuilt
During the thirties, Lunding participated in several competitions for the church of which all of the proposals have strong character regarding spatial features, shape and orientation of the building. The first church project appeared in 1931 with the competition of a new psychiatric hospital in Denmark which resulted in a gold medal. As part of the hospital, he designed a church with a chapel which appears as a flying vessel. The church ship is sinking and spreading like wings towards the northeast. The altar is located in the high narrow southwest part. The triangular building body has faceted extensions on the large volume. The diagonally sloping roof follows the sun’s rays from the high “stiffness” to the southwest. (Dahl, Torben, and Ola Wedebrunn. 1994. “Murvæk Og Mytologi”. Tegl, pp. 6-13, Copenhagen.)
Lunding’s enthusiasm and dedication to the church series seem to indicate that this was a seed project nurturing his architectural imagination. He carried on similar formal expression and explorations on time and space not only in his architecture but also in literature, industrial design and furniture.
Analysis of Ib Lunding’s church projects
Burning architectural drawings and Damnatio Memoriae
Since November, 2017, a public issue has been taking place regarding the burning of architectural drawings after digitisation in the Copenhagen City Archive. This issue became polemized with the article by Jes Fabricius Møller on ‘Arkitekten’ online media.16 After this, other media such as ‘P1’ and ‘Politiken’ published criticisms against the City of Copenhagen and the City Archive. Many citizens started to discuss what is the value of architectural drawings, and they also criticise the bureaucracy of Copenhagen Municipality.
Throughout history there have been thousands of cases of burning books, documents, drawings, etc. The oldest case happened in Qin Dynasty of ancient China in 213 BCE. The event caused the loss of many philosophical treatises of the Hundred Schools of Thought. In many other cases, iconoclasm is a clear example of condemned memory. Perhaps unintentionally, the recent burning of architectural drawings in Copenhagen represents an irresponsible condemnation of memory. In all the cases the act of erasing or forgetting triggers strong memories.
Design proposal: Columbarium of forgotten drawings
Do we need to keep old architectural drawings?
The drawings come from the 19th and 20th centuries, all analogue drawings containing the memory of a period in which thousands of lines from architect’s hand reflect the craftsmanship of construction skills of that time. The lines have remained on paper to allow us re-trace not only the memory of architects, but also the memory of skills, tools, actions and techniques. They constitute an architectural treasure crafted by recent ancestors.
My proposal is to respond positively to the above question: YES! The drawings must be kept. The project of this thesis is then an archive for architectural drawings. This archive should not only be a space for the past which fossilises the memory of our ancestors into latent art pieces, but should also provoke the architectural imagination of future architects.
The site for an archive / Tisvilde, Denmark
The site: memory of Ib Lunding’s church project and new archive
Proposal of an archive for architectural drawings
LEE DOO 