Monday 14 November 2016

Narrative Spaces Lecture 05: MASS [The Architecture of Sigurd Lewerentz]

Looking at Mass, Weight, Place, Connection, inmaterial, Tectonic, Tactile
[Scandinavian/Swedish Architecture] work documented by architectural photographer Helene Binet [Who only shoots in analogue]

Sigurd Lewerentz's work was associated with Swedish "Romanticism" and "Classicism". It was striped down and minimal by aesthetic but proportionally in line with the above era's. The Woodland Cemetery located in Stockholm Sweeden. The site is a mixture of dense forest, open landscape and a series of buildings [designed by both Sigurd Lewerentz and Erik Gunnar Asplund .



St Marks Church:  The space between "porch" and church are separate buildings that sits adjacent at an 88 degree angle. His work identifies and visually portrays "making through thinking" where architectural problems have been considered and approached in a very sensitive way. An aesthetic that Lewerentz played on was the "the dirty brick" where the facade would be constructed using oversized and non regular mortar joints alongside not being cleaned [meaning the facade is left with the traces of the building process. Not only does the building start to situate itself within the landscape with a mixture of white grey mortar alongside silver birch trees but from a construction point of view, the mortar plays as bigger role in load bearing as the bricks themselves. Other examples of his meticulous details are where outer elements are played with, being pulled out and away from the building revealing alternative spaces. 


 
St Peters Church: The church becomes part of the wider landscape [with smaller surrounding buildings] The church doesn't stand out to prove anything other than what it is and what it has to function as. Traditionally referred to as "old man architecture" the architectural ideas behind Lewerentz's work was not to create lavish "look this is a building designed by me". Another example of these extruded details were the guttering systems found on the buildings where the gutter becomes a projected element taking the water and distributing back out into the landscape. Windows are also projected outwards giving you a very different space internally where the windows become deep boxed reveal.


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