Today we wrapped up the design studio of the semester. Some really interesting projects were produced through the semester. I went early yesterday and were the 2nd to present. All in all I think I got to touch onto some interesting points around the distribution of public space and communication between program nodes within a limited site. Everything were wrapped in a study of environmentally conscious if not friendly building that let me look at some basic principles of energy efficient building physics.

On Tuesday we have an exam in building physics. After that the whole year is done and a holiday break waits. I might try to get the portfolio section up and running sometime over summer. The intention is to get up a some projects starting with recent once, but I’ll try to backtrack a bit too. First of all I have to figure out how I want the design to be.

A few days ago Juan Herreros answered public questions at Dagbladet.no about his 1st price winning proposal for the new Munch/Stenersen museum in Bjørvika in Oslo.

(Photo:haveiendom.no)

Several of the questions seemed to me like they were trying to him on the basis of the aesthetics of the building. I think the public debate could gain a lot if participants would approach it with a more personal stance, referring to what they themselves have explicit knowledge about as some of the questions did.

The interdisciplinary nature of architecture and being a very public topic makes input from a lot of directions seem smart. It could be great to have debates like this where anyone can get through. However it seems like the setting falls short as the architect ends up spending most of his time fending off complaints about the first impression from the pictures. This does not result in anything except the architect returning back to the official consultants to get a better structured and constructive dialogue.

I am not familiar with how many open meetings ther have been about this project prior to the competition going out or in the aftermath. There should be room to hear a lot of different sides in an architectural process and I hope there will be fruitful debates through the Internet as well. Politicians have embraced the net as a media to rapidly reach out and communicate broadly and I expect that architects will follow.

Finally I’ve handed in my essay. I wish we had been working more actively with this along our design studio over the semester as much of what I find in my essay could have come to good use this year. I’ll take it along for next semester however and hope I get to write more over the years. I think this is the first essay I write where I feel that I’m getting a lot back from the writing process myself.

Spring is time for traveling. Over Easter I went to London with Sabrina and tried to negotiate a bit of Architecture, culture and mandatory shopping. It was really great to get out of Oslo and away from studio for a while even if it had a bit of an impact on the work flow.

We split the stay into two by living in Lambeth for 2 nights and Kings Cross 3 nights. We switched between moving around by foot and by tube every other day to get a combination of rest for the legs and fresh air. This little alleyway here is right around the corner from the Barbican Cantre where they had a great exhibition of Le Corbusier’s work as well as a cool experimental rapid prototyping exhibition in the Curve. Well worth a trip.

On Easter Sunday we went to morning mass in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The acoustics were amazing while the choir sang, but the sound technician who put up the speakers for the preacher didn’t do his sound test before he left I think. It was a really nice experience to see such a great religious building in use and not just full of people being told to turn off their cameras.

This week I’m wrapping up my essay on the use of diagrams in contemporary architecture and the main focus has been on UN Studio and the Design Model. It is very interesting to think of what a design process means and how knowledge is carried on and expanded upon in each project.

On Sunday I’m off to Paris to combine business and pleasure as I go on a school trip and meet up with Sabrina half way through the week to get some time with her as I’m down there anyways.

Over the weekend a few Danes encountered some bizarre things starting to happen on the site in Nordhavnen.