ariana zilliacus
practice in intermediate places / 2022
Lynetteholm is Denmark’s largest ever urban development project, but when represented, the time between now and its “final” completion date (2070) is largely ignored. How does one engage with the indefinite number of changing “nows” in this projected 50-year process?
In the core of this thesis lies a search for alternative methods of and relationships to practicing architecture. This is provoked by the logics behind project-Lynetteholm: of scalability, competition, control and growth-economy.
How could one resist categorisation of practice (can I engage with a huge urban development plan through a small series of situations?), expectations of control (can I propose logics and events that are left open-ended? How far does my responsibility extend? And where should it end, for others to begin to appropriate an idea?), and abstraction (what can't I represent?), without disengaging with the overwhelming urban development trends of Copenhagen and other cities? How can one carve out spaces of hopeful architecture, within such conditions?
This is a practice, in terms of attempting, trying, testing, and is therefore simply evidence of a process rather than a finished result. It is a field of translations, including an audio-walk, a map, a calendar of events, building strategies, and writing, that intend to spark democratic potential around common concerns relating to Copenhagen's urban development. Architecture as a mediating agency.
Practicing in intermediate places means practicing in tension between supporting and subverting the dominating realities we find ourselves in.
