Browsing by Author "Vartola, Anni"
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- Alternative agency, observations of changing architecture and futures studies
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2021) Taivainen, AnniinaChanging circumstances has challenged and will continue to change the agency of architecture. Climate crisis, ageing population and technological developments are examples of the forces of change that impact architectural practice today and in the future. Futures studies is a field of research, which can provide a pool of knowledge about change. The gained insight can help to make well-informed decisions for the long run. Long time frames and significant resource investments in architecture are the reasons why understanding dynamics of change and future phenomena are important. Furthermore, designing is an activity requiring futures thinking. It involves a chain of planned actions which aim for a desired outcome yet to exist. Architecture has to be approached as a contingent, dependent and contextual discipline to apply futures studies principles. On the other hand, this assumption acknowledges that architecture is a political activity, because it impacts the lives of citizens. However, it also opens up a possibility to make conscious efforts to change something in society with architecture. This master’s thesis is studying the relationship between architecture and change. The theoretical framework, theories of change, stem from the principles of futures studies and future-oriented design theories. These theories introduce different approaches to understand dynamics of change and strategies of designing and visioning for a longer time frame holistically. Theoretical framework suggests three concept from futures studies relevant for architecture: time, alternative scenarios and choice. Transition design and speculative design are examples of design theories taking these aspects into account. The experimental nature of speculative design can provide new ideas, solutions and innovations, but also examine practice and position of a designer critically. In addition, this thesis explores the future phenomena suggested by futures research and how they impact architectural practice. The gained insight is compared to emerging phenomena in architecture. The future-oriented practices and projects challenge the existing practice in significant and unexpected ways and raise questions about the future of architectural agency. - Architecture's political landscape - Exploring architecture’s "political" through a post-critical lens
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2024) Kuusela, PihlaMy study explores the political landscape of architecture, examining how architects engage with societal challenges and reshape built environments, drawing from post-critical theory and recent developments in the field. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe's definition of politics as inherent antagonism, this study delves into critical theory and recent developments in the field of architecture. Each new architectural design or idea can be viewed as a proposal for an imagined future, challenging prevailing societal norms and fostering transformative thinking. The purpose of this research is to describe and map out the manifestations of political engagement shaping the current architectural landscape, with a particular focus on architectural collectives. By identifying and analysing these manifestations, the aim is to deepen understanding of the complex relationship between architecture and politics, highlighting the significance of political engagement in architectural discourse and its implications for the profession. Grounded in the post-critical discourse introduced in the early 21st century and its recent layers, the theoretical framework of this research provides a lens through which to explore the intersection of politics and architecture. However, the thesis does not aim to provide a comprehensive analysis of the political landscape but rather offers a perspective on the topic. Through a literature study, this research investigates the articulation of political dimensions within architectural practice. Subsequently, case studies are employed to elucidate how these political manifestations are demonstrated in architectural praxis. The analysis reveals the intricate connection between post-critical theory and political discourse, emphasising the importance of architects critically engaging with societal consequences and understanding architecture's function comprehensively. This understanding is particularly significant in a period of current societal transition, where conventional notions of autonomy are being reassessed, and architects are called upon to adapt and contribute to a sustainable built environment. - Arkkitehti johtajana - suomalaisten arkkitehtien näkemyksiä johtajuudesta
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2017) Kaasinen, HenrikTämän arkkitehtuurin diplomityön aihe on arkkitehtitoimistojen johtaminen. Tutkimus keskittyy tarkastelemaan keskikokoisten ja suurten arkkitehtitoimistojen johtamista tämän hetken Suomessa. Tutkimuksessa selvitetään, mihin ajatuksiin ja oppeihin nojautuen suomalaisia arkkitehtitoimistoja johdetaan, miten johtajuus näkyy yritysten arjessa ja mitkä ovat johtamiseen vaikuttavia sisäisiä ja ulkoisia tekijöitä. Teoreettisena lähdeaineistona toimii kirjallisuuskatsaus johtamisteoriaan ja arkkitehtisuunnittelun toimialaan. Työssä avataan johtamisteorian kehityskaari 1900-luvun alusta tähän päivään. Tarkastellaan Suomen erityispiirteitä johtamisympäristönä sekä keskeisimpiä toimialaan vaikuttaneita tekijöitä ja arkkitehdin ammattikuvan muutosta. Muodostetaan teoreettinen tausta, jota vasten arkkitehtialan nykyjohtamista käsitellään. Tarkoituksena on valottaa arkkitehtialaa toimintaympäristönä ja johtamiskontekstina. Empiirinen lähdeaineisto on arkkitehtitoimistojen johtajille tehdyt haastattelut, joilla sidotaan yleiset johtajuuskäsitykset arkkitehtisuunnittelun toimintaympäristöön. Haastatteluissa käsitellyt teemat peilataan teoreettiseen aineistoon. Haastattelujen perusteella saadaan yleiskäsitys arkkitehtialan johtamisesta. Johtajuuskäsityksissä korostuu esimerkillä johtaminen, luottamuksen rakentaminen ja pragmaattisuus. Suunnitteluorganisaation johtamisen erityispiirteiksi koetaan projektikeskeisyys, sekä tietynasteinen ennalta arvaamattomuus. Arkkitehtijohtaminen voidaan jakaa kahteen osaan: yrityksen ja suunnitteluprojektien johtamiseen. Johtamistaitoja on opittu käytännön kautta tai jatkokouluttautumalla. Henkilöstön kehittämiseen löytyy sekä vapaamuotoisempia että systemaattisempia rakenteita. Johtajien näkökulmasta arkkitehdit motivoituvat kiinnostavien projektien, urakehityksen ja työilmapiirin kautta. Arkkitehtialan työkulttuurin koetaan muuttuneen parempaan suuntaan viime vuosikymmenien aikana. Lähitulevaisuuden ratkaiseviksi arkkitehtitoimiston johtamiseen vaikuttaviksi trendeiksi nousee suunnitteluteknologian sekä hanke- ja organisaatiomallien muutokset. Diplomityön johtopäätöksissä käsitellään arkkitehtialan liiketoiminnan tulevaisuuden kannalta keskeisiä painotus- ja kehityskohtia. Johtamisen kehittämisessä on pohjimmiltaan kyse yrityksen tehokkuuden ja kilpailukyvyn parantamisesta. Tutkimuksen kautta esiin nousee kolme tärkeää aihetta liittyen arkkitehtitoimistojen johtamiseen ja kilpailukyvyn kehittämiseen: strateginen johtaminen, henkilöstön kehittäminen, sekä eettinen johtajuus. Arkkitehtitoimistojen tärkein resurssi on henkilöstö, jonka kehittäminen tulee nähdä oleellisena osana strategisia tavoitteita. Rakennushankkeiden monimutkaistumisen ja teknistymisen seurauksena myös johtamistaidot, erityisesti suunnittelujohtamisen näkökulmasta ovat korostuneet. Arkkitehtialan liiketoiminnan edistämiseksi tulisi alan keskeisten tahojen asettaa johtaminen yhteiseksi kehittämisen ja tutkimuksen aiheeksi. Liiketalous- ja johtamistaitojen edistäminen korkeatasoisen arkkitehtuurin rinnalla parantaisi arkkitehtitoimistojen kilpailukykyä ja asemaa sekä rakennusalan sisällä että kansainvälisesti. - Arkkitehtuuri epälineaarisena systeeminä - Asuntoarkkitehtuurin teoreettinen tarkastelu sekä ehdotus suunnittelumalliksi, esimerkkinä pientalon suunnittelutehtävä
Helsinki University of Technology | Master's thesis(1994) Vartola, Anni - At the construction of the Great Wall
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2021) Gu, MengxueThe Great Wall of China, the embodiment of humanity’s magnificent construction, has lost its defensive function and is no longer needed today. Much of the Great Wall in Ningxia in northern China is abandoned and disappearing. However, the Great Wall is still a powerful cultural phenomenon, and its social meaning has subtly influenced many people, gradually transferring it to a symbol more than preserving its original meaning. For instance, Franz Kafka analyses the Great Wall and its symbolic meaning in his short story At the Construction of the Great Wall of China (1930). Although the story of the Great Wall is highly personal and Kafka’s fantasy, his interpretation of the Wall is relevant to the physical Great Wall in Ningxia. This thesis takes Kafka’s social meaning of the Great Wall as a reference to reinterpret the symbolic meanings of the Great Wall and reveals how the symbolism influences people in contemporary society. To achieve these goals, this thesis conceives a story of a trip and a ceremony of the Great Wall as it is disappearing. As the characters K and I search for information about the ceremony by visiting the disappearing Great Wall in today’s Ningxia, they explore the stories and reflect on the construction and destruction of the Great Wall through dialogues during the trip. They conclude that the Great Wall symbolizes large-scale projects that need to be completed in different eras, but also a symbol of humanity’s desire for massive constructions, and that people are willing to gather to build and destroy the Wall to fulfil their needs in a collective behaviour. This process is constantly cyclical and repetitive in different contexts from different times. Moreover, through experiencing the collective behaviour about the Great Wall in the ceremony, K and I further describe and illustrate the participants’ confusions and reflections by their reconstruction process. They realize that even though the Great Wall will disappear, the reconstruction of the Great Wall will not stop; new Walls are being built continually. The thesis consists of a background introduction, an analysis of Franz Kafka’s short story, the imaginary narrative of K’s and I’s exploration through the trip and the ceremony of the Great Wall and a conclusion based on the findings. The story explores the life of architecture and considers the human life of the built community. It raises more profound thinking and reflection of the Wall’s connection and impact of the Great Wall on human spirituality. The physical Wall is destined to fade, but the stories and the connections will stay, and the new Great Wall will be built. - Between struggle & fantasy. Queer urban communality.
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2020) Borzecka, AleksandraThe departure point of the thesis is the public vs. private division of space, which has historically been rooted in the organization of production and reproduction under capitalist urbanization. I want to look at this binary through queer theory and politics, going deeper into the power dynamic of capital and heteronormativity. This means looking not only at the public vs. private, but especially at how it serves as the basis for determining space as valuable. Queer is used as a critical tool, way of reading the space and revealing heteronormative and other power relations, and also as a lived struggle or activism – attempting to produce space free from gender and sexual constraints. As a way to challenge heteronormativity, queer is also intersectional and deals with “race” and “class” as elements that are used to construct the power hierarchy. The hypothesis is that space cannot be “queer” or “straight” itself, but it is rather performed as such — or queered. It is a continuous negotiation of power, ownership, safety, visibility, etc. within power relation structures. The key questions are the following: how does social reproduction labour enable queering of space, and how does queering deconstruct the capitalist framing of social reproduction in urban space? How does this labour of care work as a support system or framework, allowing activism, organization, community building, or other forms of agency of queer bodies in the urban environment, and what is the spatial dimension in facilitating this labour? Finally, what is the future of queer in the city, and how will it continue to redefine its space, narrative, and futures under neoliberalism? The applied methods are theoretical studies, case study analysis consisting of interviews and empirical observations, as well as autoethnographic observations. The first part of the thesis opens up key concepts, positions the thesis within the architectural discourse and clarifies the position from which it is written. The second part consist of five essays about queer urban situations, which vary from domestic arrangements, through underground clubs organization, to displacements resulting from gentrification. - Building connection - contemplations of the emotional qualities of residential space
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2020) Tamminen, Hoi YeeThis thesis explores how the design of a home could enhance human well-being through the recognition of mental and emotional effects of home. Disengaging from the functional and visual approach to housing design, this work discusses human needs which are considered essential for human well-being and happiness. This thesis offers a set of principles -a frame of thinking for housing design- that is based on these needs: Need for Life, Need for Beauty, Need for Belonging and Need for Order. These principles are studied through literature of architecture, poetry and vernacular architecture. The second part of this thesis explores different design approaches based on the recognition of human needs. The first experiment wishes to create a space that is dedicated for experiencing and observing what it is to be alive in a human body. This experiment is an exploration of the themes presented in the chapter Need for Life. The second experiment is a manifesto for a community, which explores ways of expanding the concept of home in a way that would better meet our Need for Belonging. The last experiment is an atmospheric model, that attempts to communicate on the poetics of space, and is based on the ideas presented in the Need for Beauty. As a conclusion, the thesis suggests that the home has a significant role in the well-being of the the individual and the society, contributing to the sense of belongingness and strengthening desired values in the community. I argue that these impacts should be a recognized part in the design of a home. This thesis wishes to bring forth a culture of housing designing that is based on empathy for the human needs and aspires to well-being on individual and societal level. - Arkitektutbildingens nutidsideal - att utbilda kreativitet
School of Engineering | Master's thesis(2010) Louhi, JohannaThis Master's Thesis discusses the influence of architectural education on shaping the creativity of an architect. According to the Finnish architectural education history the original intent has been to produce architects who would serve the industry as it is - by providing it with assistants who could do basic outlines and draw accurate copies. Students had little possibility to influence the development of architecture as the intentions of the education were not to amplify the personal creativity of the architects to be. Yet, ever since architects separated their industry from the building contractors', creativity in particular has been the argument used to differentiate the two. In order to understand how creativity is treated, affected and developed through architectural education in our country, seven architects were interviewed for this Master's Thesis (Adlercreutz G., Ahlava A., Finne C., Lindgren T., Meikop I., Munsterhjelm L., Yanar A.), and one creativity-consultant (Wasenius R.). The aim was to get a broad spread of age, gender, occupation and experience. Within architectural education the defining elements in developing creativity of the future architect are: The relation to other industries, the pedagogy of the education, the balance between the student's work and private life, work methods, and the evaluating tradition. If these elements are not in harmony the learning process may be incomplete, or in the worst case have a negative impact on the creativity of the student. The question of attitudes is a key to education: All time spent dwelling on failures, shortcomings etc. distract from time that could be spent on developing, strengthening and refining the unique strengths of the student. Since most young people can not yet separate self-confidence (what we do) from self-esteem (who we are) critique is often perceived negatively, as one is indirectly judged for what one is, based on what one does. Therefore it would be vitally important to use uplifting expressions in all situations. The question of creativity concerns much bigger perspectives than our architectural education. We are in the middle of a transition period - globalisation, unsolved questions regarding environment, resource-handling and -distribution etc. This calls for creative solutions in networks, collaboration and global perspectives. Creativity is an economic force that increases the resources with which we may do well in the world. Architecture needs to build a better world. What we do and learn in school shapes us for the rest of our life. This is an enormous responsibility, but also an immense opportunity for the school: To teach students how to teach themselves, encourage and make them aware of their own strengths, and show how versatile their creative potential is. That kind of knowledge gives creativity significance and benefits society on every level. The intention of this Master's Thesis has been to inspire, stimulate and ignite thoughts - to induce a positive discussion about our architectural education and the role of creativity in our industry. We now have an extraordinary opportunity to be global originators and do something pioneering. Our school is full of potential: Highly qualified professors and teacher, and students bubbling with creative energy. The task of architectural education is to channel all this marvellous potential in a constructive way, thus ensuring that the architect has the best qualifications for maximising his/her creative ability. - Contemporary posthumanist discussions in architecture: a critical analysis
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2022) Heikkilä, EllenPosthumanist discussions are increasing in popularity in architecture, as suggested by the increase of treatment in papers, books, and lectures. This thesis is concerned with the ways posthumanism is discussed within architecture in the recent past. As architecture itself is not necessarily easily defined, and posthumanism has many definitions, the treatment of architecture through a posthumanist lens can take very diverse forms. This thesis aims to identify the ways in which posthumanism has been used in discussions around architecture in two architectural magazines, The Architectural Review (AR) and The Finnish Architectural Review (ARK), that both came out in early 2022. The question of why posthumanism, as a term or concept is used in these two magazines, is explored, and discussed in this thesis. This question is explored by analysing the two magazines as collections and the articles within using critical discourse analysis. The literary review explores definitions of posthumanism and the different ways it can be understood as, as well as how it has been used in relation to architecture. Past applications of posthumanism in architecture includes architecture of death, different architectural theories such as object-oriented ontology and capitalist critique, animal architecture, and survivalist architecture. Indeed, posthumanism in relation to architecture can be explored in many ways as shown, and the potential applications of posthumanist theories are not exhaustively explored. The two works explored are themed “Animals” (AR) and “Nature” (ARK), which gives them both a certain point of view into posthumanism. Overall, the utility of posthumanism is similar in both, where the term posthumanism is used as a descriptor for rethinking how we do certain things or as a descriptor for how some things already are, especially concerning climate change and colonialism. In AR, there is more of a thematic cohesion, visceral language use and clarity in stance. As AR represents a broader readership community, being published from London but featuring authors and projects from most continents, there is a broader spectrum of issues that can be included. ARK is conversely a decidedly Nordic publication, with an important role in the Finnish architectural discussion. As the posthumanist approach demands reflection, there was a lacking reflection on the Finnish nature-relationship, which was a focus of the issue. Posthumanism is the means to an end that is not agreed upon. In architecture this end could be sustainability, in all the meanings of the word. Posthumanism is not synonymous to sustainability, rather describing the methods for criticising the state of the world. Indeed, this criticism and reflection need not be named posthumanism, and similar work can be conducted without the epistemological context thereof. - Emotional attachment in architecture
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2024-12-30) Sjöholm, EmmaThis master thesis investigates how personal attachment in architecture can affect the individual’s view on caring for the built environment. The thesis explores an argument: the things we like we take care of, and the things we take care of last longer. It is an analysis which contributes to the field of architecture by providing the reader with a perspective on how we come to shape connections to our buildings and how this in turn creates a foundation for wanting to repair and maintain our environments. The thesis has a starting point in exploring artistic exercises to create autoethnographic research methods which together with three notions on finding meaning in architecture and a visit to the FIX: Care and Repair exhibition at he Museum of Finnish Architecture and the Design Museum (26.4.2024 – 5.1.2025) shape the main body of the thesis. The three notions: expression, personality traits, and memory triggers, are taken from the book The Architecture of Happiness (2006) by Alain de Botton. This discussion uses ideas from texts by Juhani Pallasmaa, Christopher Alexander, Peter Zumthor, Alvar Aalto, and Iida Kalakoski to explore how the three notions by de Botton come to affect our attitudes to maintenance and repair and how we see value in buildings and materials. The discussion includes analyses of paintings, sculpture, and furniture design which together with the autoethnographic research methods provide a better understanding on how art and architecture speak to us. The discussion explores themes such as how we perceive expression and how we want to express ourselves which in turn changes the value found in architecture, how we can find personality traits in materials and how these personality traits affect the value we see in the material, and how buildings evoke memories in us and can help us reconnect with ourselves, making us want to maintain these spaces. - Empower the student – Student evaluation on design studio courses
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2018) Laine, ThomasThis thesis tested the proposition that the prevalent model of evaluating student performances on architectural design studio courses – which includes reviewing the students’ works in an oral final review and providing one final grade – is needlessly vague and pedagogically unsubstantiated. One central argument was that this model enables an authoritative pedagogical model where teachers may unduly influence the students’ artistic and professional growth and muffle critical thinking. Other argued issues with the model included unnecessary student stress, loss of confidence and self, ineffective studying and teaching, prolonged studies, and lesser professional abilities. These criticisms of the model of evaluation are presented through a detailed account of the author’s own thoughts and experiences as a student. The following methods were used to test the author’s hypothesis: a literature review consisting of a look into the official guidelines on student evaluation and a reading of the subject discussion in the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) throughout its history; a student survey involving 33 Finnish and 30 exchange architecture students at Aalto University; and two teacher interviews. Results largely indicated support for the original hypothesis. Official Finnish guidelines on student evaluation provided no basis for the prevalent model of evaluation. Most articles in the JAE were critical with regards to the model of evaluation with particular emphasis being put on criticizing the final review or jury system. The student survey provided critical findings with the Finnish students’ results indicating particular dissatisfaction with the specificity and verifiability of the evaluation. The two teacher interviews brought up the difficulty of providing the students with impartial evaluations considering that the course topics are often broad and students tend to approach their tasks differently. Recommendations in the JAE included either terminating the practice of evaluating students in final reviews in favor of new practices or improving the overall model of evaluation by, for example, providing the students with written evaluations. This thesis concludes by elaborating on the idea of providing the students with written evaluations by demonstrating the use and functionalities of an evaluation form. - "Eräällä askeleella kerran, ymmärsin kaupungissa, että:" – Kaupunkitila uudenlaisten olemisen tapojen opettelun paikkana
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2023) Hänninen, SiiriDiplomityö “Eräällä askeleella kerran, ymmärsin kaupungissa, että:” on kokoelma pohdintoja, tekstipätkiä ja esseitä kaupunkitilasta. Työssäni tutkin kaupunkitilaa uudenlaisten olemisen tapojen opettelun paikkana, pohdin arkkitehtuurin poliittisuutta ja muutosvoimaisuutta sekä tiedostan rakennusteollisuuden roolin päästöjen lähteenä, materiaalien käyttäjänä, jätteiden tuottajana sekä myös muiden kuin ihmisten elinympäristöjen muokkaajana. Työssäni näen arkkitehtuurin aktiivisena tekijänä politiikan muodostumisessa, ja näin tiedostan arkkitehdin roolin poliittisena toimijana. Työni ehdottaa yhden tavan osallistua kaupunkitilan tuottamiseen Kuunnelmakävely-teoksen avulla, joka on osana Amos Rexin Generation 2023 -näyttelyä keväällä 2023. Kuunnelmakävelyn teemat kulkevat esseekokoelman muotoon kirjoitetun diplomityöni rungossa. Teoksen kautta pohdin erilaisia tapoja asettua uusiin asentoihin, herkistyä ympäristölle ja löytää uusia tapoja käyttää kaupunkitilaa. Diplomityöni jatkaa, syventyy ja täydentää ajatuksia, joita Kuunnelmakävely tarjoaa kaupungissa kulkijalle. Teos etsii tapoja asettua kaupunkitilaan ympäristön huomioimiseen herkistymällä. Kuunnelmakävelyn avulla syvennyn toiseuden kokemukseen, toimijuuteen ja queer-teoriaan. Näiden teemojen avulla kerron myös omakohtaisia kokemuksiani tarpeesta etsiä ja itse määrittää ammatti-identiteettiäni arkkitehtuurin, taiteen ja aktivismin rajapinnoilta. Pohdin sitä, miksi uudenlaisia olemisen tapoja tarvitaan muuttuvassa maailmassa ja minkälaisia mahdollisuuksia ja muutosvoimaisuutta niihin kiteytyy. Toisaalta tiedostan, että useimmat kriisit, kuten myös ilmastokriisi, uhkaavat vaikuttaa eniten valmiiksi heikossa asemassa oleviin ja marginalisoituihin ryhmiin. Tämän takia juuri nämä, usein yhteiskunnan toiseuttamat henkilöt, ovat työni keskiössä. Pohdin työssäni kaupunkitilan rakentumista muistin ja muistojen verkostona ja toisaalta sitä, kuinka ennalta määritettyjä reittejä voisi määritellä uudelleen. Pohdin vastustamista ja sen tärkeyttä muutoksen luomisessa. Sitä, miten helposti kaupungissa kulkiessa voi sokeutua ympäristölleen, jos ei välillä lempeästi häiritse tai herättele itseään ja kanssakulkijoita. Ohjaan työssäni tilallisiin muutoksiin liittyvää toimijuutta suunnittelijoilta kaupunkilaisille. Monet työni kappaleet kuvaavat kaupunkitilaa sen kokijan näkökulmasta. Näin työni pyrkii purkamaan suunnittelijalle kasautuvaa valtaa, ja etsimään keinoja, joilla kaupunkia käyttävät voisivat itse vaikuttaa siihen, millaisessa paikassa he elävät. - The Fiction of Order
Helsinki University of Technology | Licentiate thesis(1997) Vartola, Anni - First we took the streets. Urban storytelling for alternative futures.
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2019) Esquivel Velazquez, AndreaCities in the Global South have been undergoing stressful processes of rapid urbanization. In Latin America, urban development has followed global neoliberal, capitalistic, economic and political interests together with idealized western models of urbanization which led to misunderstanding and underestimating its own processes, challenges and urban dynamics. Specially in fast-growing cities in Mexico sprawl has become the urban dynamic. The city of Queretaro grew 17.6 times its size in the past 47 years. The urban dynamic of its urban sprawl was urban fragmentation and intensive privatization of urban spaces which have left 79.9% of its urban areas with no access to public spaces. One side effects of this unequal social process are the urban borders — ambiguous spaces between existing and new urban development. Urban borders exhibit a strong social agency as people rede ne their function by appropriating the space through informal practices. As cities continue to expand, former urban borders become contested spaces where several interests meet. Most im- portantly, empowered by their unique stories and urban narratives, urban borders have the capacity of becoming socially resilient spaces and withstand the pressure of privatization and gated communities. This thesis looks at urban borders as sites with a potential to develop social resilience, a capacity to maintain the social life of a space regardless of external forces. It approaches the topic through two case studies in Queretaro, Mexico, to understand how social production of space happens through non-official stories and shared narratives. It also looks at stories as a way to uncover the hidden political, economic and historical motives that affect the development of urban borders. This interplay between social production and social construction of space is analyzed in the work using Lefebvre’s spatial triad. The study demonstrates that for urban borders in growing cities, stories can become catalysts of change. In both of the case studies, non-official stories helped create social resilience, improve place attachment and crystalize spatial identity. Urban storytelling presented bring forward a richer understanding of the social and physical conception of borderline spaces appropriated through informal practices. While the first case study (San Pablo) shows a negative effect of discarding local narratives on new development, the second case (Hercules) highlights that it is possible to harness the power of social resilience by building on the shared stories and imaginaries. - Hauskan työn mahdollisuudesta arkkitehtina
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2023) Tuomisalo, MimmaTässä diplomityössä hahmotellaan sitä, mitä tarkoittaisi mahdollisuus tehdä hauskaa työtä arkkitehtina. Diplomityön aihe on työ, jota tarkastellaan hauskuuden näkökulmasta. Aihetta käsitellään kaunokirjallisin keinoin neljässä esseekokonaisuudessa. Tässä työssä hauskuus hyväksytään oleellisesti työhön liittyväksi tunteeksi ja relevantiksi näkökulmaksi tutkia työtä nykyisessä fossiili-intensiivisen finanssikapitalismin ajassa, jossa työn sairastuttavuus on yksi isoista yhteiskunnallisista ongelmista ja suomalaisten merkittävimmistä peloista. Työ pohjaa valikoitujen filosofien, kulttuuripsykologien ja taloustieteilijöiden kirjoituksiin työn kulttuuripolitiikasta ja arvomuutoksista. Diplomityössä on haastatteluosio, jossa näkökulmaa laajennetaan neljän arkkitehdin, Antti Auvisen, Juha Ilosen, Kaisa Karvisen ja Karita Rytivaaran, sekä kuvataiteilija Jan-Erik Anderssonin kokemustietoon. Haastatteluosio on jotakin elämäkerta-, teema- ja sisäpiirihaastattelun, sekä keskustelun väliltä. Kaunokirjallisilla ja taiteellisilla keinoilla työssä lähestytään laajemmin sitä kiteytymätöntä ja sumeaakin maastoa, joka kuuluu osaksi aihetta. Tarkoituksena työssä on jättää tilaa subjektiiviselle tulkinnalle, jakaa ajatuksia ennemmin kuin antaa vastauksia, kirjoittaa ennemmin ehdotuksen muodossa, kuin selittää vastaansanomattomasti argumentoiden. Muoto on perusteltu keskusteltaessa rakennusalasta, jota koskeva yhteiskunnallinen debatti on tynkää lukuarvojen vertailua ja teknokraattista toistelua. Käyttäen hauskuutta lähtökohtana, tavoitteena on nostaa keskusteluun enemmän epäilystä, epätäydellisyyttä, ihmetystä ja rentoutta, ei vain oikeassa olemista. Työssä puretaan auki sitä, miten nykymuotoisen palkkatyömme takana oleva arvonmuodostuksen ketju on muokannut työtapojamme. Työssä suhtaudutaan kriittisesti siihen, miten nämä arvot ja tavat vaikuttavat arkkitehtina toimimiseen rakennusteollisuudessa, ja millaista rakennettua ympäristöä näissä puitteissa vääjäämättä muodostuu. Lisäksi diplomityö avaa työnteon tunnemaastoja globaalin hyperkilpailun ajassa: miten pärjätä nuorena ammattilaisena vakiintumattomassa asemassa alalla, jonka henkisten umpikujien ja mahdottomuuksien aiheuttaman tunne-elämän kuorman kanssa joutuu selviämään individualistisessa maailmassa yksin. - Herttoniemen Pantheon - löytöretki polyvalentin arkkitehtuurin luomiseen
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2020) Vartiainen, JanneTutkin diplomityössäni polyvalenssin käsitettä arkkitehtuurin kontekstissa ja etsin tapoja polyvalentin arkkitehtuurin luomiseen. Polyvalenssi liittyy joustavuuteen ja sitä kautta laajempaan ajankohtaiseen keskusteluun kestävästä arkkitehtuurista. Käsitteenä se rinnastuu lähimmäksi monikäyttöisyyttä. Polyvalenssi käsittää kuitenkin arkkitehtuurin monitulkintaisuutta monikäyttöisyyttä laajemmin. Havaintojeni perusteella polyvalentti arkkitehtuuri mahdollistaa yksilöllisten käyttötapojen ja kokemus- ja merkityssisältöjen muodostumisen yhä uudelleen ja uudelleen. Tämä työ käsittelee arkkitehtuurin toiminnallista, merkityksellistä ja kokemuksellista mukautumiskykyä rakennusteknisten näkökohtien sijaan. Työn tavoitteena on liittää polyvalenssin käsite osaksi kestävän arkkitehtuurin keskustelua ja esitellä suunnittelutapa, jonka lähtökohtana on avoin tilaohjelma. Työ jakautuu kolmeen osaan: kirjalliseen tutkimusosaan, sekä kaksiosaiseen tapaustutkimus- ja suunnitteluosaan kohteessa, joka sijaitsee Herttoniemen teollisuusalueella Itä-Helsingissä. Kirjallisessa tutkimusosassa määrittelen polyvalenssin käsittettä arkkitehtuurin kontekstissa lähdekirjallisuutta reflektoiden. Tapaustutkimusosassa esittelen tarkastelualueeksi valitsemani vanhan vesisäiliön ja viereisen juurikasvaraston historiaa, tilallisia ominaisuuksia ja aikalaiskokemuksia rakennusten ja lähiympäristön kokemisesta. Suunnitteluosassa etsin tapoja luoda polyvalenttia, epävarmaan tulevaan sopeutuvaa arkkitehtuuria ilman suunnittelua ohjaavaa tilaohjelmaa. Tilaohjelman määrittämistä toimintojen tarpeista ammentava suunnittelumetodi ei tässä tapauksessa toimi, joten lähestyn suunnittelutyötä kokeellisesti taiteellisen tutkimuksen keinoin. Suunnitelmassa esitän käytöstä poistettujen vesisäiliön ja juurikasvaraston käyttöön ottamista ja kokonaisuuteen sopivaa täydennysrakentamista. Arkkitehtuurin kestävyys on tämän hetken suuri haaste. Rakennusten joustavuuteen ja kykyyn vastata tuleviin ennakoimattomiin muutoksiin kiinnitetään yhä enemmän huomiota. Kestävien rakennustapojen ja -materiaalien sekä toiminnallisen joustavuuden lisäksi alallemme tarvitaan keskustelunavauksia kestävyydestä arkkitehtuurissa itsessään. Diplomityöni on puheenvuoro juuri kestävän arkkitehtuurin sisällöstä ja polyvalenssin roolista siinä. Polyvalenssia on käsitelty arkkitehtuurissa pääosin teoreettisella ja abstraktilla tasolla. Työssäni tuon aiheesta käytävään keskusteluun tulkintani polyvalentin suunnittelufilosofian soveltamisesta myös käytännön tasolla. - Homes and houses, 4 rue du Nez-en-Vrac, 33800, Bordeaux embodied memory: Stories of inhabited souvenirs
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2023) Martin, AliceThis Master's Thesis analyses mechanisms and representations of weird and poetic architecture, more precisely in homes. The aim is to understand how depictions of such spaces take form and what they can reveal about us and the way we inhabit them. This Master's Thesis uses both experimental, artistic, and theoretical approaches. I employ a qualitative method and first gather readings and references on the subject. These materials include argumentative, philosophical, analytical, and theory-based texts, as well as poetry, cinema, paintings, and other artworks. In order to guide this research, I focus on my own ex-perience of homes. This research is framed by theoretical texts, such as Iris Marion Young's "House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme" from the essay Throwing like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality, Gaston Bachelard's La Poétique de l'Espace, and Juhani Pallasmaa's The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, as well as by design and artistic experimentation. This study intends to contribute to the field of architecture theory research as well as our current practice of spaces, whether it is from a designer's point of view or from an inhabitant's. Besides the theoretical study, this Master's Thesis takes the form of an artist book in which I experiment with a wide variety of mediums, such as wood, bundle dyeing, sewing, embroidery, book binding, letter press, gold gilding letters, bone china, risograph printing, paper pop-up making, and drawing. It embodies the whole theoretical research components and represents its dualities: home/house, mind/senses, theory/practice, professional/amateur, poetic/weird. The form and materials also reflect these dualities: the architect side, professional, heavily gendered as masculine, with the use of wood, architectural models and house; and the artist aspect, amateur, with the use of bone china, fabrics, the home, the dollhouse, and is gendered as feminine. Making this artist book is a way for me to put everything into practice, to do for the sake of doing, and to reflect on my own experiences of home as a dweller and as an architect. - Homo Ludens - facilitating freer play in the urban environment
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2020) Keskinen, VenlaIn my thesis, I study adult play in the everyday urban environment: play beyond childhood, the forms it takes and the meanings it carries. I define play as behaviour that principally contradicts our assumptions about the everyday functionality of the city. From this perspective, cities leave very little room for play to appear in all its diversity. The highly coded structure of the urban environment, which is predominantly planned to optimize work and other practical, rational, preconceived objectives, clearly limits and preempts spontaneous and freely emerging play activities. Simultaneously, the designed play structures institutionalize and formally establish play within demarcated spaces that are designated for specific activities. These spaces generally celebrate the structured forms of play such as games, sports and entertainment. This distorts our perception of play and highlights how we do not understand play’s role as an important aspect of our experience of the city. My thesis aims to highlight the problems that play activities face in the everyday urban environment and to reconstruct our perception of play. Accordingly, I focus on how design can offer alternative ways to enable play in the everyday urban environment. I construct my work around the following two open-ended research questions: How can we establish play in the midst of the everyday spaces, not as a demarcated activity, but in ways that accentuate play as a means to experience the urban setting, actively participate in it, and most importantly, feel like you belong in the city? How can we design play in ways that celebrate its full variety of different expressions and ways to appear and that recognize its fundamental character as a tactical improvisation of individuals, as a space for exploration, discovery and development? I discuss my topic through theoretical literature about play and urban architecture and construct a theoretical framework to define the structure of play. This framework is further developed into a special matrix that I utilize in the case study of nine urban projects. This comparative analysis reveals how rules and form are the two design elements that construct our experience of play. This result indicates how designing play in the urban environment in a way that it can appear in all of its diversity mainly requires a change in perspective rather than any new set of tools or concepts. Rules and form are also the elements of the urban environment that guide our movement in the cities at large. Thus, when we design spaces for play, instead of routinely following the predetermined objectives, we might want to change our focus to the player and ask: What is the experience that we want to create? - Is this an apocalypse? — the covid-19 pandemic and Its lessons for architecture
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis(2021) Schütze, KorbinianIn its biblical meaning, an apocalypse is a revelation, resulting in significant destruction or change. Since Covid-19 spread globally, voices from various fields have been speculating whether the world has entered into a new era and an ‘awakening’ is happening. The Covid-19 pandemic invites us to observe and rethink our current unsustainable systems and logics. As long as the pandemic is ongoing, a window of transition allows pursuing a profound overhaul of goals, values and economies. This Master’s Thesis aims at channelling the flow of information produced since the virus’ outbreak and evaluate the pandemic’s effects from the perspective of architecture and the built environment. The thesis analyses the impacts of the first pandemic year and sets them into a broader political, societal, cultural and historical context. In the first part, examining historical crises and their aftermath reveals transformative dynamics of these catastrophes and parallel developments in architecture and design. This review demonstrates that public health crises have always caused changes in the built environment. In the second part, the thesis maps out developments in the built environment and people’s daily lives since the Covid-19 outbreak. This overview reveals that the pandemic intensifies social inequality, interrupts the use of public spaces, changes political, psychological and ethical perceptions, and asks for a significant emphasis on healthy and ecologically protective environments. In the third part, the thesis integrates these developments into examining whether the pandemic can trigger long-lasting and radical changes. Clearly, this research can only remain speculative at this point; however, the interdependence of the Covid-19 pandemic and the 21st century’s major challenges underlines the need for a transformation towards a more sustainable and resilient future. For architects, this is a call to reinvent and re-evaluate the discipline and their work. - Julkiset kirjastot ja kirjastoarkkitehtuuri 1900-luvun jälkipuolella
J Muu elektroninen julkaisu(2019-11-28) Vartola, AnniJulkisten kirjastojen toimintaidea Suomessa pohjautuu länsimaiselle valistusaatteelle, jonka keskeisin ihanne on ihmisten tasavertainen oikeus tietoon ja sivistykseen. Kirjastot rakennetaan julkisin varoin, kirjastojen käyttö on maksutonta, ja kirjastoverkosto ulottuu koko maahan. Kirjastojen arkkitehtuuri ja rakennustavat ovat muuttuneet yhdessä kirjastolaitoksen kanssa. Kirjastojen sijainti, koko, ulkoasu, tilajärjestelyt, rakennusmateriaalit ja kalustus kertovat kirjastolaitoksen kehityksestä, palveluiden monipuolistumisesta ja tietotekniikan tuomasta muutoksesta. Artikkeliin nostetut kirjastoesimerkit havainnollistavat kehitystä.
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