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- Frykholm, Hannes, 1982-
(författare)
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Building the city from the inside : architecture and urban transformation in Los Angeles, Porto, and Las Vegas
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Positioned in the research field of “interior urbanism” (Rice, 2016), this thesis considers entrance situations that occur between buildings and cities in order to develop new ways of investigating the relationship between architecture and urban transformation. From the main research question—How does architecture mediate urban transformation?—the thesis focuses on experience-driven narratives about the city (Pine & Gilmore, 2011). Looking at the means by which architecture situates the subject in an urban experience, the thesis asks how the experience contributes to a particular attention to the city. This approach intends to shed light on architecture’s role in both mediating and challenging neoliberal urbanism (Peck, Theodore, & Brenner, 2009; Fraser, 2019). The thesis argues for analyzing large-scale processes of urban transformation by placing a sharpened empirical focus on the built environment. This is tested by a transversal research method (Frichot, Gabrielsson, Havik, & Jobst, forthcoming) that intersects multiple investigative techniques. The three cases that are addressed—the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, the Casa da Música in Porto, and Wynn Casino in Las Vegas—each epitomize a particular discourse about architecture and urbanization. Through observations and the analysis of the three cases, the thesis unpacks three dimensions of architectural experience of the city: first, by highlighting the spatial logic of a stretched threshold; second, by considering temporality and ways of waiting; and third, by observing the labor that is necessary to keep the interior environment intact. A recurring narrative in these buildings lies in the suggestion that the process of urban redevelopment never ends. Together, the cases point to an oft-overlooked parallel between the refurbishment of building interiors and exterior urban transformations, adding empirical nuances to what has been labelled the “architecture of neoliberalism” (Spencer, 2016). The threshold between building and city is shown to be a fragile and unstable territory, which is under continuous negotiation and where the claims of multiple actors, conditions, and events come together. The thesis attempts to make a contribution in three ways: by developing transversal methods, by considering the threshold as knowledge device, and by exploring micro-scale investigations of urban transformation. The project points to how the stretched threshold of these projects speak of a transforming relationship between architecture and capitalism, where the city is reconfigured through the stretching of interiors out to adjacent sidewalks and squares. If the city is built from the expanding insides of architecture, the city is by definition an unfinished project. To think of the instability of architecture not as a shortcoming but as a virtue opens up for a continuous engagement with the city as the unfinished construction site of a democratic project.
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| 2. |
- Sällström, Pehr-Mikael, Tekn. Lic. 1966-
(författare)
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Intra-Representational Practice : An Inquiry into the Conditions for the Possibility of Interdisciplinary Imaginative Collaborative Architectural Modeling in Sustainable Urban Design
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A consequence of the concern for a sustainable future is that the number of experts needed to be included in the imaginative stage of architectural modeling is rising. This motivates a better understanding of the conditions for the possibility of transgressive collaborative plural imagination in architectural modeling. This dissertation is an argument for the thesis that the intermediation enacted by the materiality of the architectural representation of a project constitutes an underestimated condition for the possibility of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborative architectural modeling in complex projects. The thesis frame this as a process of mutual intermodal metaphorizing of a superimposed aggregate of ontologically incommensurable intra-representations projected on the situation by participants belonging to different practices. If the process of projective modeling is understood as mutual iterative appropriations of the aggregate that result in a sufficient set of shared material, discursive and experiential referents, the collaborative aspect of the modeling can be better understood. The thesis is grounded on a critical discussion of the ontological assumptions embedded in five previous practice theory discourses: Logical inferencing from first principles, Representation of the imaginary, Materialization of discourse, Performative materiality, and Intermediation of practices. To discloses those embodied biases those practice theory discourses are diffracted through a sustainable urban design project for a housing district. The hypothesis resulting from the critique is tested as a theorizing in the making with a practice experiment with plural imaginations for housing innovation with sharing of resources. The conclusion is that the understanding of collaborative modeling as a mutual process of intermodal metaphorizing intermediated by the architectural intra-representation can guide practice to become more transgressive.
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