GRADUATION SUMMER 2020
GENOPTRYK – A paper production and book publishing company in the Danish archipelago
Studio 2C: Building Culture and Tectonics
+45 28143638
alberte_jael@hotmail.com
This thesis is a reflection on the role of industrial production in a late modern western society. It explores the spaces needed for book- and paper fabrication as well as spaces for writers, spaces for planning and publishing.
My thesis is a reflection of the lack of awareness of the sensory aspects that we are losing touch with proportionally with the progress of technological advancement. It is alleged that in maintaining this awareness architecture can serve as a medium that helps translate the complex processes of creating books towards a perspective of the common good. Thus, the project aims to set a direction for a humanized experience of a (post) industrial production.
Aside from wishing to address the issue of the alienating institution of industry in society today, I hope to initiate a debate of the weary outskirts of the country – in this case Funen and the archipelago, and in that way constituting one example of how to organize projects in culturally and naturally rich, but left behind, rural districts.
It is thus the intention of the project to link a sustainable growth and use of resources, the craft, industry and poetry of bookmaking under one architectural narrative situated in the archipelago of Denmark.
Through spatial, organizational and material research the project investigates how to integrate marxist theory on alienation into the project in order to improve the coexistence of industry, art, nature and humanism.
Without any desire to move back to analogue or taxonomic states of civilization or to deny the eligibility of modern technology or digital tools, the brief is formulated as an attempt to propose a new perspective on this development. A perspective that speaks for a deeper coherence with our human conditions and aims to reinforce our understanding of natural ressources. The purpose has been to explore a design which is rooted in and anchored to a specific place and time, thus antagonizing the loss of the ’orientation’, that is an often recognized effect in the late modern society.
The purpose of the project is providing a reflection on a methodology in which architectural identity can serve as a medium for reinforcing the communication of the creation of the everyday objects we surround ourselves by.
Today, the Danish nature agency is planning expansions of sustainably managed forested areas on Funen and the islands accessible to the public. The future way-finding system will include storytelling on geographics and nature as well as narrations of poetry dedicated to the writers who lived in the area.
This is a perspective on natural administration that correlates to the overall scheme in this thesis. The project is situated in different locations along the trail of the archipelago, as it ensures an immediate relationship with the landscape.
My thesis is an investigation of a scenario, where the production steps needed for book making are downscaled, contextual and accessible to the public.
The project encapsulate functions connected to producing books: Space for writing practises, space for planning and publishing, space for learning about the natural source of paper production and space for exhibiting both examples of the craft of the industry and the writings printed in them – and finally space for individually reading books.
The goal of the brief has simultaneously been articulating the flow of water, as paper production demands large amounts of water. Because of these reflections, the orbit of collecting, using and purifying water will play a part in the project.
It is the ambition to enhance an understanding of modern production means by developing a typology of a factory coherent to the human and natural scale and letting the architectural expression help translate the processes that take place in it. Each building typology therefore represent an individual expression of the production step it contains while reflecting a specific approach for its placement in the landscape. Together the edifices pose as a collection of variations for designing contemporary architecture in timber.
Consequently the project contemplate an alternative outlook on the current industry of books and paper making; a collaborative, multi-programmed, downscaled, coherent, sustainable production space. A place that could potentially facilitate a focus, not merely on generating growth, but also providing space for local initiative and thus promoting common social, cultural and natural interests in its area.
Vildana Duzel