VOLA Rejselegat

Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering

Afgangsstuderende: Nicoline Heather Madsen
Afgangsprojekt: Sandflugtslandskab

Juryens motivation:
Nicolines ’Sandflugtslandskab kan sammenlignes det med et gigantisk men langsomt skuespil, hvor landskabet iscenesættes og forstærkes som et drama med naturhistoriske, kulturhistoriske, aktuelle og fremtidige scenarier.

Projektet er et proceslandskab, der nytolker natursynet og kulturlandskabets udvikling. Stedet er naturområdet nord for Esbjerg ud mod Vestkysten.

Pointen er at etablere en eksemplificeret strategi, der ikke opererer med et mål, men med en balance, der opstår mellem den naturlige påvirkning og de artificielle indgreb, der spænder fra flyvesand, vand, træ, jern og beton, der har den maksimale permanens.

Afgangsstuderende: Julien Nolin
Afgangsprojekt: AMAZONIA PIER

Juryens motivation:
Located in the heart of the Amazon region at the confluence of the Rio Negro and Solimões - forming the Amazon river - lies the city of Manaus. As capital of Amazonas, Brazil’s largest state, it is home to 1.9 million of the state’s 3.4 million inhabitants. From the prosperity of a rubber boom in the late 19th century to the creation of the free trade zone in the 1960s, it has seen its population grow from some 220,000 at the start of the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) to close to 2 million today, subjected to an infrastructure mostly dating from 1910. The city now relies on the free trade zone’s industrial belt which provide economic and political benefits, but at what cost to its inhabitants?

Amazonia Pier takes a fantastical approach to a critique of Manaus’s industrial presence in the Amazon. It intends to theoretically relocate the FTZ’s industrial sector by recomposing it functioning elements at the city’s main harbour, re-imagine it through the typology of the English and American pleasure pier (amusement parks on piers) juxtaposing themes of consumerism, manufacturing, tourism and pleasure, or the lack thereof, in Manaus.

The program presents a theoretical architecture with the intent of speculatively grafting the industrial zone onto the city’s limit, as an artificial appendage, reinterpreting the various mechanical manufacturing processes of industry in parallel with mechanics of traditional amusement park rides.

In its fantastical critique of the bizarre emporium that is Manaus and its free trade zone, Amazonia Pier proposes a speculative reinterpretation of the zone’s industrial belt to a pier of pleasure, forming a new industrial park, in the city’s harbour.

Arkitektskolen Aarhus

Afgangsstuderende: Mark Thomas Smith
Afgangsprojekt: The Utopian Food Vessel

Jurys motivation:
The Utopian Food Vessel offers a challenging invitation to peer deeper through an ambitious use of drawing as a form of research and graphic provocation. Touching on a number of pertinent, contemporary issues, the project relies on a narrative structure to expose the possibilities of an architecture of urban and social resilience in the city of Vejle. But beyond the obvious, rhetorical intensity of the drawings, the project holds together a number of concomitant, conceptual explorations that benefit from the support of intelligently resolved technical solutions to the needs of a 21st century urban food factory. By grounding the project in use of narrative and drawing research, it highlights the importance of looking beyond simple, pragmatic solutions for the future of post-industrial, coastal cities. While these are the project's strengths, the jury also recognizes the potential limits of this approach, being at risk of disconnecting from its context through self-referential logic and wobbly conceptual underpinnings. In other words, like all utopias, we face an enigmatic, yet productive, outcome: we are inspired to ask difficult questions yet content without easy answers. Congratulations on a great work!

Afgangsstuderende: Angus James Hardwick
Afgangsprojekt: Paradoxes of the Pellucid

Jurys motivation:
Ambitiously, the project interlaces writing, drawing and performance. Theoretically and methodologically it tackles relevant architectural preoccupations – the historical in the contemporary changing city, ownership of public space and the notional boundary. A provoking moment in the project is the elemental question that the author poses “To build or not to build?” within the historical framework of Lincoln Inn’s Field in London and in response to John Soane’s house and museum. Though his answer to the question is architecturally evasive – primarily underground with a minimal hovering section – it initiates a compelling series of questions and challenges. The jury believes that the work has shortcomings but shows careful consideration to its context and chosen framework, it is well done in its multiple formats and we are proud to nominate it for an award.