On April 6-8th all 8th graders were visited by the architects Madeléne Beckman and Sara Sandell from the governmental organization ArkDes (Swedish centre for architecture and design) in Stockholm. This happened as part of the school’s Creative School project, underpinned by the National Arts Council.
Beforehand the students had worked a bit with sustainble architecture. They had read articles about it from the student magazine Schoastic art starting from the basic with ”5 architectural works to know” and then ”Design for a greener world” and ”Building from nature”. After that, they had gotten the chance to discuss, write and imagine what sustainable architecture can be like. They also got an assignment to bring 5 recycling items each to the workshop in architecture.
Madeléne and Sara did a 2.5h workshop with each class in grade 8. Madeléne started off through introducing the students to Japanese architecture. She showed some different examples of houses and talked about their functions, for example:
- Long houses. They look similar in Japan and Sweden. They give shield for weather and wind.
- Store houses. They look similar in Japan and Sweden. They are built on poles to protect from rats, bears and other animals.
- Museum of Värmland.
- Landskrona art hall.
- Japanese tea house.
The difference between Japanese and Chinese architecture is mostly that Japan is using wood, paper, reeds and more while China is using stone, Madeléne told. A difference between Swedish and Japanese architecture is that Sweden is directing houses towards the sun while Japan is rather valuing shadow.
In Japanese architecture there is a fluidity between inside and out. For example, strawmats are used, pagodas with curved roofs, hidden roofs and verandas surrounding buildings. They are also talented at building small spaces, because in Japan, the Japanese live in only four square meters per person.
Madeléne gave some examples of some famous, contemporary Japanese architects:
- Shigeru Ban, that is trendy in Europe at the moment. He is specialized in making delimited spaces, for example privacy tubes for refugees, with layers of fabrics between each tube. He is also making symmetrical or irregular patterns symmetrical He is also playing with shadow and light.
- Kengo Kuma is focusin on ceiling contures for verandas, so that verandas build relationship to gardens.
- Sanaa (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) working with wind shaped hoes.
As a warm up exercise, the students got to experiencing space. They went for “a mirror walk” looking up in the roof and at the same time had to trust the person in front of them to lead them the right path.
When the student returned from the mirror walk, they got an exercise by Sara; to build a house in groups of 3-4 students relating to:
- Japanese architecture (details, walls, roof, paper, rice paper, sliding formations or other).
- Use 3 geometric shapes (squares, triangles, rectangles or other).
- Sustainability (both environmental, with recycling, nature, farming or other and socially with the house being inclusive).
After the workshop the students cleaned up, before each group was presenting their houses to the whole class. They then needed to tell about elements of Japanese architecture, geometric shapes used and how the house was sustainable, environmentally and socially. Each group also got some extra questions from Sara.
For examples the students had created storage spaces of various kinds, mostly for food, windmills, colorful houses to give hope, solar panels, isolation to keep warmth, defence, a sense that everyboday would be welcome, wells and other water sources, an interior that was corresponding to an exterior. There were a lot of towers and concave roofs, pillars, verandas and more.
After the workshop, there is an exhibition with all sustainable houses inspired by Japanese architecture in the corridor at the 4th floor. Please come and have a look!
ISGR Götaberg Library 