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 The renovation of a Danish college teaches a lesson in design. May 2001
What's unusual is how much the renovation refiects Finsten's educational philosophy. For each construction project, he has set up collaborations between Danish architectural firms and artists and designers from the United States and Europe. The goal is the merging of disciplines, Finsten says, citing both the Bauhaus and the Renaissance ideal of the painter-builder-engineer. "Today we see a similar effort to merge art, architecture, and design, led primarily by artists," he says. Jorge Pardo--one of ten boundary breakers in the current traveling exhibition Against Design--is such an artist. For the most recent Krabbesholm installment he has designed a four-celled campus guest house, in which each cell accommodates one visitor and has its own garden. Pardo acknowledges that he's an unusual choice for this project. "To licensed architects, I'm like a folk artist," he says. Approaching structure as sculpture, Pardo draws upon the school's natural surroundings and climate: "A lot of the plants in the gardens were selected for how they look when they don't have any leaves on them--things like that." But the guest house itself will stand out: set in a deliberately skewed relationship to the other buildings, it will likely be painted in fioral colors to contrast with the usually gray environment. The first project in the renovation, a new photo studio that opened in October 1999, was designed by Fredrik Nilsson, a fourth-year architecture student at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. "It's inspiring for students to see another student designing," says Nilsson, who was fiown to Denmark midsemester to conduct lectures and participate in workshops for the students. The decoration of the school's dormitory rooms is ongoing; so far three artists have designed furniture and lighting for a suite of rooms. One of those artists, Yvette Brackman, an American who lives in Denmark, is also helping to plan the rearrangement of the extensive campus gardens. "They very much want to build up a school that integrates practice and education so that people who come and make projects are also teaching through their contributions," explains Brackman, who conducted an interdisciplinary workshop during her stay. Krabbesholm's renovation lacks a certain central coherency--most of the designers describe their work as autonomous--but that's the trade-off for this experimental process. The school is looking not for an immaculately finished campus but for an education through the making of one--the process is the point. "In all projects the designers have lived here for a while--some days, weeks, or even months," Finsten says, "using students as assistants and collaborators, giving lectures, chatting, eating, sleeping, getting drunk, and so on. That, of course, has been an extremely important experience for the students as well." |
