The Wooden Gown of Stavanger

Transcription

1 The Wooden Gown of Stavanger A presentation of Stavanger as a European Capital of Culture at the Town and Gown Conference in Sibiu, Romania October Ib Omland & LeRoy Tonning, Urban Development and Urban Design Research Group, University of Stavanger, Norway Introduction to the Stavanger2008 project. Stavanger a short introduction. The development of Stavanger. Materiality and atmosphere. Wood as a building material. The influence of wooden architecture in creating open spaces in Stavanger. Norwegian Wood Conclusion

2 STAVANGER 2008 Stavanger 2008 Open Port open reflects the openness of the population to ideas and possibilities the core values for being the Cultural Capital: 1) Tolerance and freedom of expression, 2) Hospitality and accessibility, 3) Cultural heritage and development, 4) Innovation and quality, and 5) Environment, aesthetics and architecture.

3 What can be expected in 2008? Norway A brief introduction to Stavanger.

4 Stavanger Areal km² Stavanger Areal km² Sandnes, Stavanger, Sola og Randaberg Areal km² the region of Stavanger Population Stavanger Population Sandnes, Stavanger, Sola og Randaberg Population Stavanger region 71,2 km² 466,3 km² 907,1 km²

5 Norway is sparsely populated STAVANGER Stavanger - a rather small, but growing city

6 The city is related to the sea. Fjords and mountains surround the city.

7 Also dramatic terrain

8 The area has a long history. Norway was united after a battle in the year 872 in Hafrsfjord in Stavanger

9 Reconstructed Bronze age dwellings show historic lifestyle and the building techniques. The urban fabric of Stavanger reflected the dependency of the sea.

10 Contact with the sea is still a valuable asset. 500 years development as a maritime wooden city.

11 Stavanger continued to grow as a wooden city. Compelling redevelopment after the fire in 1860.

12 The waterfront warehouses have been a connection between the city and the sea,and have been called the face of Stavanger. 240 buildings lined the waterfront at one time. Many have been demolished.

13 Stavanger the city of wooden houses. Old Stavanger

14 Våland the expansion in the 19th century with wooden houses. Materiality and atmosphere. Wood as a building material.

15 Michael Benedikt: Architecture of Reality real architecture = architecture in which the quality of realness is paramount. realness containing four components: presence, significance, materiality and emptiness. A building with presence has a shine, a sensuousness, - its presence is experienced not only visually, but also by coherent appeal to other senses: to touch, movement, sound, smells. Edges are distinct just as contours are distinctive. Articulated parts are not so much adjacent or linked as mutually poised, just as the whole does not shamble, fill, and butt, but stands precisely where it needs to be and ends there. Every material and texture is fully itself and revealed. Frode Nyeng: To be in the landscape of real architecture is to be in a world that:.imposes something on us pain, sudden fear.. or.. joy. We are not the source of the world, suddenly being filled with horror or pleasure. reality is always charged. We cannot choose to be emotionally present or not. The choice that we many times can experience is a choice between letting our reasoning or emotions win this is always based on an emotional involvement in the world: a motion already existent. The most precise would be to say that this is about the atmosphere /mood - about not being able to be disconnected emotionally, but always think, judge and act in the light of a mood.

16 Frank Lloyd Wright: if men are aware of it or not; they become tranquillity and energy from the atmosphere coming out of the things in their living surroundings. The atmospheres put down roots in them like plants in the earth in which they were planted. Otto Friedrich Bollnow: The room has its defined atmosphere... It can be beautiful, light, gloomy, sober, cheerful, etc., and these moods are transferred to the person in the room. The situation caused by the atmosphere is especially noticeable when things are glorious, depressing, etc. on the person.

17 Carles Landry: Materials matter. Buildings speak to you in different ways through their materials. We notice this especially when they are made just from one material, like the largely unpainted wooden town of Koprivshtitsa in Bulgaria, the cement-clad towns of the former Soviet block, the mud buildings of Yemen (as in the astonishing Shibam, called the Manhattan in the desert), the grey limestone of the Cotswold towns, the red bricks of industrial Lowell, USA, or the sandcoloured building in Fez. Then the material speaks to you in its full glory. Wood ages well; it fades, but does not crumble; it feels animate, a reminder that it was once a tree. Cement by contrast, has a deadening patina; it absorbs light back into itself, and its deceptive evenness gives a place a musty feel; the dust in the air. Chr. Norberg-Schulz: (W)ood still means something to us. the application of wooden material seems to satisfy a need which is not easily met in other ways. Hardly any other material, natural or synthetic, is so rich as wood. wood is a warm material. It s surface is never monotonous, as are modern synthetic products: it has endless variations. Eidsborg Stave Church, Telemark ca. 1250

18 Fredrik Wulz: Fasaden & stadsrummet (The Facade and the Urban Space) on defining wallscape: The theory of the three main forms of leitmotif in architectural aesthetics: 1) architecture as the triumph of structure, 2) architecture as sophisticated simplicity, and 3) architecture as puzzling complexity No building represents a completely pure leitmotiv one may be dominant, while one or two others are recessive. triumph of structure. Stave church Alhambra Stavanger Culture Centre Lincoln Cathedral

19 sophisticated simplicity.. Kindergarten Sandnes Norman Foster Willis Faber Office i Ipswich, England puzzling complexity.. Rudolph Steiner School Stavanger Sagrada Familia church Antonio Gaudi Casa Batllo

20 the leitmotif of the wall structure as motif simplicity as motif puzzling complexity as motif simple puzzling structural puzzling structural simple massive wall wall as a membrane autonomic wall Historical cases a.) Sølvberget square - Arneageren - a central urban place in the historic part of down town Stavanger, b.) Nytorget - a semi central place an entrance to the centre from the eastern part of the city - periodically used as an open market Stavanger 2008 Norwegian wood cases c.) Sandnes Amphi Scene - a project for the design of a new stage for performances in the centre of Sandnes d.) Siriskjaeret - a competition for new housing on a former reef off the shoreline in the eastern part of the city.

21 Sølvberget square - Arneageren The densely developed area around the rock Sølvberget. The square today, adjacent to the new house of culture.

22 The house of culture is a large, demanding building, broken downin scale. Public buildings dominate.

23 The wooden buildings create a backdrop, linking the new buildings to the atmosphere of the city.

24 Nytorget

25 Nytorget the new marketplace of the 1860s Flere bilder av nytorget.

26 Stavanger 2008 Norwegian wood case Sandnes Amphi Scene

27 Stavanger 2008 Norwegian wood case SIRISKJAER - STAVANGER 1. PRIZE 2. PRIZE 3. PRIZE Quo vadis, Stavanger?

28 Will the renaissance of modernism deviate the development of recent years? Will new development in the sensitive city centre dominate?

29 Will new development along the coastline bring in a new scale? What will the future trends be?

30 Perhaps the Cultural Capital Year projects will point out a conceivable trend in the future development of Stavanger and Sandnes as wooden cities, giving lasting results. Thank you!