The Possibilities of an Island

Navn
Otto Lotz Lundberg
Uddannelsesgrad
Kandidat
Fagfelt
Arkitektur
Institut
Bygningskunst, By og Landskab
Program
Arkitektur & landskab
År
2023
Udmærkelser
VOLA

"Maybe, architecture doesn’t have to be
stupid after all. Liberated from the obligation
to construct, it can become a way of thinking
about anything—a discipline that represents
relationships, proportions, connections,
effects: the diagram of everything”
- Rem Koolhaas

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Possibilities of an Island is a re-telling of Lynetteholmen, a planned new islet in the Copenhagen harbor.

Lynetteholmens presentation and subsequent treatment in Danish Parliament is an event that can be read as a large-scale illustration of architectural and planning processes. In these processes, possibilities are continually created and used up as a project goes through the stages from conception to completion.

In the case of Lynetteholm, it suddenly becomes possible to mobilize a mega project, the scale of which rivals the nation's greatest historical achievements, and at the very same time, this colossal potential is used up. Spent.

Lynetteholmen was presented with built-in rationales and rationalizations. This made exploration of alternatives within the space of possibilities all but impossible.

Possibilities of an Island attempts a trick, that can technically be described as putting a pin in or freeze framing this process.

By sneaking into the narrow slit between cultivation and consumption of possibilties, the project opens up the space of possibilities in a non-linear, fluid dreamtime, within which that very space of possibilities can be scrutinized and mapped.

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 The project consists of three discrete elements:

 

- The Program, which outlines architectural, theoretical and artistic themes.

- The Model, which materializes the island as a rhizomatic machine.

- The Drawing, which illustrates a speculative SF narrative, situated on the site.

 

A comprehensive, linear walk-through of the project and its processes can be found in the PDF document "Presentation".

 

PROGRAM

The program is my primary reference work, containing various openings into the project: theoretical frameworks, motifs, intentions and so forth. During the process, it has offered useful and surprising strategies for tackling the problems I faced in developing Possibilities of an Island.

The openness and porosity of the program relates to the conceptual problem at the heart of Possibilities: unlike the static, completed city (or work), the program insists on keeping the space of possibilities open.

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In its totality, the program becomes a manual and a dictionary, a reference work for the development of the project.
Formal requirements of method, abstract and representation-forms are approached in both academic-style and prose writing.
The declared intention of the project: to scrutinize the past, present and future of Lynetteholm through a model-archive.
A dictionary of fascinations and theoretical references. Deleuzian philosophy, video game lore, quotes from litterary fiction...
By organizing the multifaceted material alphabetically, unforeseen connections become visible, e.g. Home followed by Hyperobject
Details from cinema, poetry, historical and contemporary painting, scenes from movie scripts...
Like the rest of the program, the visual material is organized as a Deleuzian rhizome.
By organizing the material in this manner, the problems, motifs and ideas become porous - open to containing new meanings.

MODEL

At scale 1:200, the model fills out a small auditorium to represent the complex situation that is Lynetteholm.

The model can be understood as a representation, but it can also be understood as an instrument or a machine for thinking, more akin to a sculpture or art installation than a traditional scale model.

By choosing to represent the island in the given materials and constellations, the model enables me to re-engage the Space of Possibilities even as the proposed island is undergoing construction.

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Installation view.
The brutality of the perimeters construction hides beneath the oceans surface
3D-filament prints show the presence and movement of my own body within the situation.
Underneath the ocean floor, the scale of the deeptime sediments contextualize the scale of the reclaimation project.
The perimeter itself is constructed by the recipe material > machine > repetition > landscape. What else could be constructed?
To negotiate the presence of the body and the scale of the reclaimation project, the 1:200 model becomes a spatial installation.
At scale 1:200, we are simultanously aware of our own human bodies and the presence of infrastructure, buildings, machines etc.
By altering the material, machinic and repetitive elements of landscape construction, the project suggests an alternate future.
After pumping it dry, the unearthed ocean floor is rearranged into a coral forest to maximize bioniches.
The weigh-bridge, the pump inside the pumpstation, the arm of the mobile 3D-printer and the ceremonial ship.
By exaggerating the depths in the Copenhagen Harbour, the brutal scale of the proposed island is made visible.
Installation view.
The perimeter of phase 1, already finished as of 2023, spans approximately 3 kilometers and is made of 850.000 tonnes of rock.
The choice of mirror-finished stainless steel as ocean floor underlines hidden brutality as well as hidden possibitlies.
Installation view.

DRAWING

At scale 1:500, the cartographic drawing measures 160 by 200 centimeters.

It illustrates the suggestion, which has taken the form of a Situated Fabulation in the spirit of Donna Haraway. 

The drawing combines elements from program and model with pointclouds, paintings, script-scenes and other media. The four-act narrative is inscribed in the sections, and further materialized in four brass casts that underline the projects primary motif: material > machine > repetition > landscape. 

A full-resolution version of the drawing is available for download along with the PDFs.

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The story starts in the summer of 2023, when a moratorium on new construction is passed into EU law.
Following the moratorium, construction of Lynetteholm is halted. The already finished perimeter of Phase 1 is left as it is.
About twenty years later, dispensation is given to pump the water out of the area, since it is already cut off from the ocean.
With the ocean floor laid bare towards the sky, 3D printers are set to work. They rearrange the sediments into a coral forest.
More than a century later, as the coral forest nears completion, the perimeter is slowly & ceremonially demolished, year by year
After centuries, the perimeters boulders are spread across the ocean floor. The valley floods - only traces of ceremony remain.

Det Kongelige Akademi understøtter FN’s verdensmål

Siden 2017 har Det Kongelige Akademi arbejdet med FN’s verdensmål. Det afspejler sig i forskning, undervisning og afgangsprojekter. Dette projekt har forholdt sig til følgende FN-mål
Legat

VOLA

Fra motivationen lyder det: "Hvad hvis Lynetteholm-projektet blev stoppet i morgen? Hvilke muligheder ville der være i den nøje konstruerede periferi, som tonsvis af Københavnsk jord og svenske sten danner ved indløbet til byens havn? ... På baggrund af et rigt teoretisk og kunstnerisk arkiv som projektets program udgør, fremskrives og fremtegnes fortællinger om ritualer, processer, fremtidige teknologier og en poesi, der vil noget andet end den ældgamle, urbane indvindingslogik. Fortællinger, hvorigennem der drømmes om landskaber der langsomt transformeres i takt med kollektive processer."