Christine Petersen

1 PLACE 33 ROOMS

Architecture is a time-based art-form unfolding in different time scales; a building reveals itself by speaking to the senses as we progress through spaces, accentuated by the changing light and tactility of materials. Parallel to that experience, processes of decay expand beyond immediate sensation. They expose haptic aspects intrinsic to the materials’ properties and extrinsic to human use and interaction. These are all qualities at the core of advanced composition, yet Artistic Research in architecture is not very prevalent partly due to its lack of identification within the arts, in dialectical tension with its functional prerequisites. Christine Petersen has focused exactly on the alleged border between art and architecture: by blurring and weaving them together, she investigates architecture between its artistic and performative essence. The unique diversity of time scales inherent to materialization in architecture invokes a multilayered understanding of memory. Christine Petersen carefully dissects the identity of the house she inhabits, revealing traces of its history and transposing them into a contemporary art work, amalgamating architecture and visual arts. Her contribution opens up a diverse reading and understanding of architecture as a continuous process of solidifying memory.

Serge von Arx, Editorial committee

Biography

Christine Petersen is a practicing architect educated at the School of Architecture and Design in Oslo. In parallel with her own practice, she has been teaching at AHO since 2007 as an Assoisiate Professor with responsibility for developing basic education at the school and with supervision of diploma theses. In her work, she emphasizes exploring the subject's opportunities, tools and conditions.

Abstract: The project is based on a real place, a house in Oslo. I am interested in how our memory connects with places and houses, in expanding our understanding of what a house and a place are, seen from the perspective of our own cultural background, time and history – and in the perceptions and experiences that are associated with it. In the significance of how the rooms are organised in relation to each other and what happens if the room is freed from the context in which it stands. It is rare to experience an isolated room that doesn’t relate to anything else, torn from its place, time and spatial context. The neutral room simply doesn’t exist. A key aspect of architecture is the experience of going from one room to another. The way the rooms are organised in relation to each other affects the sense of what it is like to be in the house. From the starting point that architecture begins with a single room, I have explored what criteria a space has to fulfil to be called a room and how big it has to be. Everyone relates to rooms – whether it is a private room like a bedroom, kitchen, dining room, or a public space such as a café, library or railway station. The work comprises six physical installations, plus the book and archive “33 fortellinger” (33 stories).