Unboxing the Monument of Frihamnen is an essayistic after study and MFA Design exam work about the Jubilee Park city building project in Gothenburg. It works as a platform for conversations about art in the city and assembles research and documentation done by the artists during the placebuilding. As a design method it uses speculation about an uprising of a monument in the park as a way to materially explore and revisit documentation.
The first episode of this project is done partly in collaboration with Muf-Architecture/Art. The result is a three dimensional extension built from their documents. This installation later worked as a backdrop for a panel talk in Gothenburg City Library at Design Week October 2019. At the event several of the art and architecture groups involved in the place building of the park participated.
The imagined monument is molded in soap – a questioning material connected to the bathing culture of the Jubilee Park. The site-inspired material fails to sustain, connects to cleanliness and has a clear connection to the human body. In the project the material works as a performative speaker opening up the view of classic themes in architecture as well as the pre-existing documentation to. The fragile monument works as a tool to trigger critical debate, for prototyping and remolding documentation.
MFA presentation reviewer feedback by Markus Miessen, professor in architecture, spatial designer, consultant and writer – https://studiomiessen.com/markus-miessen
”The project is being introduced as a set of spatial installations coupled with a documentary/artistic film production, which takes the viewer into the author’s core subject of “Unboxing the monument of Frihamnen”. Mobilizing historic as well as contemporary narratives loosely nestled around the subject of monuments, the project is presented as an ongoing investigation.
The author interrogates the production of monuments, asking: what would a monument be without its social, political, and physical support structure? The project, in this context, is being understood as a tool to trigger debate around the question of a sustainable city. The work has been carried out in collaboration with the art & architecture collective MUF.
The design question is clear, its resulting methods are clear. The essayistic approach is carefully and well chosen. The design tools are clearly being defined, explained and utilized. The project’s methods are presented in an animated way and the author’s reflection woven productively into the presentation. The entire presentation is organized as a central narrative, which is being mobilized by a series of support structures, physical and otherwise, which are scattered in the gallery space.
The two slides within the presentations that talk about the ticking-boxes of the academic brief should be removed as they kill the otherwise magic and poetic product, which is the essayistic narrative of the live presentation.
One of the key methodologies produced by this project is an understanding of chronologies, design moving back & forth, a tool to negotiate between different histories: every design project, which is about rethinking the present, is also about reframing the past.
Extremely well structured and presented.”
“Support Structure is an architectural interface. Support Structure aims to create a space which is continuously reinvented by its users in relation to its context. Support Structure houses artefacts as well as activities and aids reconsideration of existing spaces as an impulse for future change.” (Condorelli, 2009)
Related research on the subject, published by the Swedish goverment 9.04.2021 https://www.regeringen.se/rapporter/2021/04/den-hala-tvalen–verktyg-och-metoder-for-social-hallbar-i-fysisk-planering/
