Find Thesis Booklet and weekly chronicle here!
The City is a theatre?
The city is a place of conflicts and togetherness, loneliness and spontaneous meetings…
The Malmö born author Hjalmar Gullberg wrote:
Om i ödslig skog
ångest dig betog,
kunde ett flyktigt möte
vara befrielse nog.
Giva om vägen besked,
därpå skiljas ifred:
sådant var främlingars möte
enligt uråldrig sed.
Byta ett ord eller två
gjorde det lätt att gå.
Alla människors möte
borde vara så.
What would the city be without its hidden alleys and forgotten gardens, like a theatre without surprises? A theatre you’ve seen before that never learns you anything new, like a city without new encounters.
Where is the city where a volatile meeting with a stranger makes it easier to continue your stroll? Where is the city without sexism, xenophobia and racism, where the architecture makes you happy and where new encounters learn you something…every day? The city where you find the time to encounter.
Well maybe it’s the future of old industrial area of Norra Sorgenfri in Malmö. Maybe this is where the utopian theatre finds its many shapes, real and imaginary.
With my Diploma Work I aim on investigating how the area of Norra Sorgenfri in Malmö can change over time and how the independent theatre groups (fria teatergrupper) in Malmö might inhabit the area.
Here at City as Theater I will post the process of my Diploma Work. Information about the Diploma Work can be found in the Thesis Booklet under “PORTFOLIO” to your left.
As background for my Diploma work I have made different researches which you find under the tag “WORK IN PROCESS – 5.APPENDIX” and also under PORTFOLIO where you can find Appendix 2 as well as videos and a a portfolio over various proposals I’ve made in school and elsewhere.
For the final semester in the architecture education I’ve asked myself, once again, why did I want to become an architect and why do I want to continue on this track? It all started with art school and art history studies but it never seemed enough. Since I thought architecture had to do with mathematics and boring drawings it was not an option, until a friend of mine started studying it and I realized that architecture was exactly what I wanted.
The great thing with architecture is that it combines art and logics, chaos and pragmatism. Architecture is multidisciplinary and enables a variety of different career alternatives; you might be an artist, researcher, designer, construction planner, work with civil dialogs, process systems, team leading, city planning, carpeting and surely a lot of other different stuff depending on what your interests are. You can work in an office, team or alone.
I choose architecture because it’s a field in the borderland between reality and fantasy. It has the means to create alternative utopias, real or fictional. And isn’t that what we all should strive for as architects; to explore spaces beyond the known, to present alternatives to boredom and misery; through design and planning? The utopias explored can be artistic as well as political, constructional as well as design-wise.
The City As Theater 