New Aarhus architecture School
When we begin to develop a project the questions are always similar. On this occasion much more complex because its obviousness and much more difficult to unveil. A SA (School of Architecture) is a place for knowledge and a place for interchange ideas, a place for design and to relate to people, to think and learn. A PLACE in any case. There is a seminal question. ¿What density of architecture must contain/express a SA?Namely. Ought a SA be an unusual building? Odd or extraordinary.
We openly think; NO. A SA must be a work space. Non presumptuous. Precise. Open complex, multiple, flexible, comfortable. Spacious, roomy and well lighted. Close to the city and the citizens. The way the good architecture must be. Nothing more, nothing less.
Let’s go back to another basic question. How to create a PLACE? Rather, How to create A PLACE FOR ARCHITECTURE? It’s obvious that the main activity of the architect (Alas!), and even more, of the students of architecture, is to design. That’s why the beating core of the ASA (Aarhus School of Architecture) will be a great hall for designing, where to live architecture; draw, think, argue, chat and talk, do models, meet. This will be a place where all the students will develop together, into a common space, the learning of architecture. (BA and MA programme). Is also clear that a site to meditate or think about is needed into a place to create and investigate. We define two specific programme areas; the working area (architectural design, construct models, etc.) and the area for studying, reading, meditation and thinking.
We aim to create an architecture vouching the challenges the fourth industrial revolution poses. Nowadays we have great quantity of interconnected technological breakthroughs (robots, drones, intelligent cities, artificial intelligence, and so on), which means a system revolution more than a product revolution. That’s why, in a world ruled by technology, architecture should be, like the new society; human, tactile. We do exist, because our brain, our soul, because our feelings, due to passion. The ensemble for the new ASA searches for the splendor of space and light, as part of human architecture, searches for a conceptual and sensitive experience of architecture, rather than formal.
LIGHT AND SHADOW. The design for the new ASA is linked to Light, to light and shadow. We are concerned on the plastic or visual values of architecture, on the entangled path between architecture and light. Talk on light is also talk about it’s hollowing, the voiding or emptying of light: which is the shadow. We (the architects) don´t create light, we produce shadows and atmospheres. We are into the architecture that receives, spreads light and creates atmospheres.
NEGATIVE SPACES. Light IS Space, and our work tries to create quality spaces. To create the space we, architects, are used to design interiors, to empty masses, to void, and then we think in the interior. We are changing or improving this point of view, we are into what we call the NEGATIVE SPACES, they are the inverse or reverse. They can also be named as convex spaces. We are interested on what is the OUTSIDE of the interior. This is what we also call mirror spaces.
IMAGE AND SIGN. To summarize this idea, difficult task, we can say that architecture moves between two topics; image and sign. Image means the duplicate, the view, the representation of the object; Sign means an associated idea, concept. This is the difference between visual and conceptual perception. We are talking about the purely optic, visual understanding of architecture or the conceptual, abstract, linked to ideas, full of relations understanding of our work. We try to play both games; create architectural images and signs, deal with objects and ideas.
