Studio talk
Studio Talk
at CINEArchitecture (Transkriberat)
Welcome
everyone to this studio talk at CINEArchitecture
Let me
present Agneta – Founder at CINEAchitecture and the person who coordinates all
the work here. She’s been a practicing architect for some 25 years now and has
driven projects in many different countries and won several awards for her
work.
She is also
an artist educated at Konstfack in Stockholm and throughout her life as an
artist she’s had two main recurring studies – La Modulor and Odd Realism, that
we will touch upon during our talk. She is also a publisher of books such as
Villa Spies and Bengt Edman “complete works”, whom she worked close with.
My name is
Wim Wiklund and I’m a trainee here at CINEArchitecture. My job is to assist
Agneta in several different projects ranging from publishing to working with
buildings.
The project
we’re presenting now – Analog/Digital is a development project and
collaboration between me and Agneta. It’s a study of time and space and an
exercise in
feministic practice.
Wim: To
begin with, Agneta, are development projects important parts of architectural
practice and in that case, why?
Agneta: I
think it’s very important to develop your view of architecture and
architectures role in the society all the time because one part of our role in
the society as architects is to develop the society. So we have to do some
developing work on the office to proceed all the time. And I think you have to
putt hat in between your ordinary work all the time because otherwise you get
stuck in something. You stop doing research in yourself and then you stop
developing your architecture.
Wim: The
whole project is generated by drawings made by you in the early nineties. Only
a couple of years after you graduated from the royal institute of Technology in
Stockholm. Back then, what was your motivation, what made you start this
investigation about the glass, the urban landscape and the concept of chaos for
example?
Agneta: It
was a post modernistic time and I think that I thought that the view on
architecture was too much on the surface. I wanted a deeper view on it and i
also wanted to do my research on a feministic practice so it’s a theoretical
part of my work so I started to get deeper and deeper and transform ordinary
historical architecture into my own point of view and feministic view.
Wim: This
is a feministic project. Tell us more about your pursuit in finding a narrative
in female art and architecture history. Do you feel like you have found a theme
or common thread? Or that you can place your work in a feministic context?
Agneta:
Yes, it’s absolutely classical. I’m interested in how everything started and
I’ve been interested in the classical since I was a young girl. I was
interested in Rome and Athens. The buildings and the society and everything and
also in gymnastics. It’s a part of the classical movement in society. It’s not
so common nowadays but I am interested in a classical view. That’s because I
think we have a base there and if i want to do have a feministic practice I
have to have the base we have in common. Use that base.
Wim: Your
art study La Modulor links to this subject. Would you tell us about the study
and your findings there?
Agneta: La
Modulor is a figure. It’s about how females can express themselves from their
body and soul. Express themselves as a subject in architecture, not as an
object or defined as an object in architecture. Express themselves . I think
that’s very important and absolutely necessary because otherwise in the future
we will create empty rooms in society. Females have to express their own rooms.
Wim: Was it
a way for you to get in touch with that part of yourself that has this spatial
empathy or ability?
Agneta: Yes
absolutely, I use my own body for this you know. I absolutely use my own body.
That’s the only method I have you know. You use your senses you use your body
you use your arms, legs and also your soul and I was trained to do that when I
was a young gymnast in Sophia-girls so for me it was natural to do the same in
architecture. To develop a kind of language in feministic architecture. I think
that’s wats in it. You have to use yourself for it because I can’t go to the
books with this subject. I can’t really go to the history. I have to just trial
and error and find out things in my own experience.
Wim: You
identify yourself as a doer. A person who concretize ideas, in this case
feministic views. Do you work with a lot of other people who share your
feministic worldview?
Agneta: I
don’t work professionally with other people doing this because you know, my
mentor was Bengt Edman and he’s was a very willful architect and that’s what I’m
interested in because that’s something holistic in the architect. And there
must be something holistic in the architect but it’s not so common with
feministic practice within architecture it’s more in the academics and
philosophy. I share my experience more with younger architects actually. They
are more interested in this.
Wim: I’m
moving back to the images and models now – We made this project together, but
how was it for you to give away the material to me for interpretation? Was it
frustrating?
Agneta: It’s
been no problems at all. I look at it sometimes. I just took it out and we
started the project. I have no problems at all. I’m curious about what happens.
I can’t know from the beginning. I think it’s very good for me to give it away
because that’s something that artists often have a problem with.
Wim: Could
you let the audience in on our working method?
Agneta:
When I did the sketches in the nineties. When you melt down the knowledge about
something. Like doing a poetry sketch more than doing something concrete. It’s
more like poetry. Wim copied some parts of this and transformed it. And also
transformed this into CAD. AutoCad . She followed some lines, made some of her
own and did a new view on it and then I also developed that digital. After we
had the analogue version and the digital version, we started to build models in
3d. And they were also free from the first parts of this study. That is three
parts; the analogue, the digital and the models. They are free from each other
but they also connect somehow in a poetical way.
Wim: What
is the link between the originals, the digital readings and the models? How do
you think they work together?
Agneta: It
has to do with 2d and 3d of course. If you do a sketch you also have in your
mind a 3d vision. It sounds very simple but it isn’t really simple you know. 3d
is something very special for a painter.
Because we work in 2d for many years of our life and we explore in 2d.
You have to have a big content to make that step. For an artist.
Wim: I
completely agree. From working with illusion of space to actual space, it’s a
different language.
Wim: We all
go through phases in careers as creators would you tell us a little about
different phases of interests that you’ve been through? Where you’ve been
acquired to do further reading to better understand and better transform your
own world of symbols so to speak.
Agneta: When
I was in architecture school and I was interested in les beau arts style of
education. I wasn’t so interested in the polytechnic school that KTH is and I
wanted to go to Konstfack and I got the opportunity to be there but I left them
to go to France. I wanted to dig deep in architecture and what makes the
changes in modernism. I was such a fan of early modern architecture. Bauhaus,
Tristan Sara, Le Corbusier, and that’s how I started to read about Le Corbusier
and Le Modulor. When I was sitting there in Marais in the Centre Culturel de
Suedoise for a year, from early in the morning to late at night. I was
thinking; what’s me in this? What is my part as a woman in this? And then I
decided to transform, as I had done int the gymnastics. Transform Le Corbusiers
idea about Le Modulor into La Modulor. So I did that transformation for 25
years. It makes sense to me.
And when
you make a study like La Modulor, you can’t reach all the way. You just can’t.
You have to be glad if you sometimes reach some goals. But you can’t reach them
all. That will happen in the future. Many female architects are going to
express themselves in the future. I think women overall, are gonna become
stronger subjects in the future.
Wim: Last
question; Throughout your life you’ve lived in cities, metropoles like Paris
and the suburbs. Nowadays you live in the archipelago, a sort of rural
landscape. How do you think the new environment affects your work?
Agneta: It
was absolutely necessary. To tell the truth I was affected about my deep study.
It was tough for the soul and the body to work with constant transformation.
When you use yourself in a study, every artist do, they use themselves as a
base in their studies. I felt that I had to go out to the nature and to the sea
and the sky and the woods. But also I had the opportunity to rent a house,
where the forest meets the sea.
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