GRADUATION VINTER 2020
Simon Strøyer Glarborg
GRADUATION PROJECT:
At the edge of the shadow – A house for dark tourism in Chernobyl
PROGRAMME:
Studio 2A: Building Design and Techniques
CONTACT:
+45 2514 1918
simonglarborg@gmail.com
@simonstroeyer
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Tourism to sites associated with tragic events, so-called dark tourism is a growing trend. 30 years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the Exclusion Zone is about to be opened up for official tourism which call for tools for facilitating this complicated tourist exploration. If the experience is framed in the right way, The Zone can become the epicentre of not only global trauma, but also healing and making sense of the vast and abstract danger that is nuclear failure.
The project started as a live-changing journey through The Zone and developed into an investigation of architectures capacity to unfold memories or abstract concepts like ionising radiation in order to strengthen the tourist experience.
The project is a hotel in the epicentre of the accident. Its purpose is to establish a link between the physical exploration of the landscape and the mental explorations of trauma. The hotel is a spiritual journey towards healing. A space for reflection on a land like no other, where sublime beauty and horror exists simultaneously. The architecture embraces this duality as acts and counteracts, inviting the guest to explore both sides of the spectrum in order to reach a bodily understanding of the accident.
Scenes of trauma
Starting with an analysis of the physical scars in the landscape, the project explore how the trauma of uninhabitable space is manifested spatially.
Design criteria
Through speculative models the project explores how the architecture can become an indicator of the unique conditions in The Zone.
A house for dark tourism
As the building collide with the landscape it compresses and releases, bends and breaks. It reacts to forces in its surroundings to become an indicator of the invisible dangers of radiation.
