086_New Aahrus School of Architecture
A New Signal Generator
A mass media channel is a transmission medium, a system in which information travels between a transmitter and a receiver. The broadcast media are film, radio or television and the digital media comprises Internet and mobile comunications. In this “places” , people interact and participated, the opinions are exchanged, critical thinking is built, previous knowledge is transmitted and visual and textual contents are distributed. Mass media are able to represent and reflect on the world in which we live and the people who inhabit it.
That is why, when designing the new School of Architecture in Aarhus our intention, beyond creating a building, has been to build a new media channel. A space for exchange designed to transmit and produce content, reflection and thought. A place where transit is like zapping or surfing the Internet, opening windows and links, jumping back and forth , where the narrative of knowledge is fragmented and distributed beyond different space. We will learn and teach with a conversation at the cafeteria, discovering a book in the greenhouse or attending a spontaneous conference in the hallway. The idea is to avoid predictability, to be able to project ourselves into the unexpected and the unfinished that each user (student, teacher, citizen) must discover.
Therefore our building functions as a kind of test pattern, a fixed sign that was displayed when the transmitter was active but waiting to broadcast a new program. The New Aarch functions as an open structure, pending for beeing programmed. Our School will be a new media channel. A place waiting to load content and capable of supporting rolling upgrades.
Throughout this process the main variable we work with is the reality of an uncertain future. In order to incorporate this unexpected material, we focus on one type of neutral architecture, stripped of the tyranny of the present. The idea was working on concepts such as “unstable identity” or “scheduled imperfection”, that allow us to work on an “on going building” whose actual construction will start on opening day.
Thus the New School will be an antidote to the monotony, to the inaction, to “comfort zones”. The New School will be a catalyst that promotes proactive, critical and nonconformist attitudes. New Aarch will be an environment where nothing is as it is expected to be, where to think and to do differently, where being a student, teacher or neighbor implies participating and take colective and individual decissions. In New Aarch the prevailing heterogeneity will be able to accommodate any outreach strategy, any dissemination of discipline, and also will promote transversality with other artistic and knowledge areas. New Aarch will be a new signal generator, a new media waiting for uploading, broadcasting, streaming, living and share what it is architecture nowdays.
Year: 2016 / Location: Aahrus, Denmark / Program: Educational / Type: International Competition / Client: A. P. Møller Fonden - Aarhus School of Architecture / Size: 13.000m2