Travel - Scandinavia 2003
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Sustainability, Connectedness, and Place: Exploring the Sensuality of Nordic Design Like the Scandinavian countries, the province of Québec is a Nordic place. We are surrounded by four distinct seasons and each of them brings us into contact with the immediacy of the land and our sometimes tenuous existence upon it. How can contemporary design express our tactile connection to the land and bring us to the sense of place that roots and strengthens our lives together? ‘…other dimensions of architectural experience require empathy and interpretation, an understanding of cultural and social contexts, and a capacity for envisioning the temporal endurance of buildings beyond momentary fashions.’ (Pallasmaa) I will use my A.F. Dunlop Travelling Scholarship to examine how Nordic architecture is connected to the land and incorporates sustainable opportunities naturally into its design. This is what I want to continue to explore - the sensuality of sustainability or, as I said in my thesis, 'ecosensuality'. My goal is not to copy established Nordic traditions; rather, I want to learn about how Scandinavians have developed the cultural confidence to express a sense of place that is relevant to their collective experiences in the north of Europe. Finnish Architect, Juhani Pallasmaa writes that, ‘Aalto suppresses the dominance of a singular visual image. This is an architecture that is not dictated by a dominant conceptual idea right down to the last detail; it grows through separate architectural scenes, episodes, and detail elaborations.’ (RIBA Lecture, 1999) Pallasmaa spoke at the McGill School of Architecture in 2000. I am planning to travel through Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. I will also try to accomplish Norway if I have the time and money available. My voyage will be spent absorbing the cultures, visiting historically significant sites, and discovering their contemporary design. ‘It becomes clear that belonging, which is implicit in the term identity, means something more than feeling at one’s ease. Identity means living in a world that comprehends both the place and the community in which one lives.’ (Norberg-Schulz) The challenge is in finding a method that represents the architecture as more than an image. ‘every significant experience of architecture is multi-sensory; qualities of matter, space and scale are measured by the eye, ear, nose, skin, tongue, skeleton, and muscle.’ (Pallasmaa) Representation is
an ongoing exploration. I have been looking to the textures of the
materials themselves to help convey my ideas.
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