Maja Zander Fisker

Architecture is always related to its surroundings, and working with architectural creation as artistic practice has aesthetic, ethical and political implications. The interdependency between architecture as an aesthetic statement and our lifeworlds challenges architecture and its practices, and this thesis examines how translation between different media and expressive forms is of aesthetic importance for the statement and for the context that the statement co-creates.

The thesis thus thematises the phenomena of translation and modes of expression, mediality and meaning, place and communities. Translation is defined here as a transformative act that on one level is linked to modes of expression and articulation working with different media, in – and between – aesthetic disciplines. On another level, acts of translation affect our relations to each other, our habitats and the world's various lifeforms. These themes inform the project's practice investigations guided by the questions: how does architectural practice relate to other aesthetic practices, and how can exchanges between creative practices afford the meaning-making processes in different modes of expression?

Architectural creation demands knowledge of many different media and working methods. It is therefore essential that architectural education reflects on the encounter between different properties and possibilities of the media involved to valorise their potential in the architectural creation process. The thesis systematically examines how translation and interaction between different media affect the architectural articulation, starting from a selection of architectural media: text, drawing, photography, video montage and model. The enquiries are conducted through direct testing in targeted teaching situations at the Royal Danish Academy. The thesis contributes knowledge of how translation between media creates new meaning and new ways of working in the production of architecture. Accordingly, the thesis shows how this approach to the architectural process can be operationalised in an architectural educational practice.

Through critical reflection on the practice enquiries, the thesis finally directs attention to how the approach to the creative process, its media and materiality, has an affinity to the understanding of the contexts, places, and communities into which creation intervene – how aesthetic practices are community- and world-making.