A
Operations in a Wounded Landscape
Navn
Sophie Dorn
Uddannelsesgrad
Kandidat
Fagfelt
Arkitektur
Institut
Bygningskunst og Kultur
Program
Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability
År
2020
Operations in a Wounded Landscape
This project traces the destructive event of the First World War in the landscape of the Forest of Verdun (France). It attempts to re-think the built memorial by treating the landscape, with all its deformations, debris and vegetation, as a contemporary witness of the past.
The proposal responds to this landscape brutally shaped by humanity with a minimal invasive architecture that adapts to the deformed conditions instead of levelling them out and thereby fostering collaboration with other species to find possibilities of living on a damaged planet.
The objective is to get an insight into the complex entanglement of politics, culture and nature rather than telling a history of human exceptionalism.
Preliminary research for the project was informed by an archeologist, a geographer as well as biological studies of the area. A seminar held at the French National Forestry Office ONF with further discussions informed the process and scope of the project alongside with reading of environmental theorists like Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing.
Zone Rouge along the former Western Front in France
The layered story of the site explored through mapping
The historic village of Ornes transitioned from a peasant village to a scene of war and total devestation. In the post war period a forest was planted, partly from black spruce trees from Germany as reparation payments. This process initiated a fast transformation of the war torn site shaped massively by shell bombing, polluted with unexploded munition and toxins.
Declared as "Zone Rouge", a wasteland not suitable for human inhabitation, the area was left untouched while the forest conserved the specific topography inscribed by the war with its root system and canopy of leaves.
This resulted in a unique landscape assemblage where a history of human violence is layered with nature. The landscape is not only a contemporary witness of a 100 years past war but also bears a diverse ecosystem adapting to the toxic conditions.
Refugium
The Refugium, a place for visitors to stay overnight, challenges the notion of this landscape beeing exhausted for human inhabitation. Unlike a memorial that is imposing a strong architectural form onto a landscape, the building mediates between the site and the visitor, giving the possibility to relate to the history inscribed in the landscape in a haptic way.
The cast derives from the archeological method of casting as a way of conserving historic artefacts. Here the landscape itself is conserved at the current state compressing all the debris underneith. The cast builds the ground for humans to dwell on without levelling the site. The interior of the building has to adapt to this uneven condition and thus makes the historic event of destruction present in the daily routines.
The dead spruce trees on site are cut and debarked to stop the spread of the bark beetle, they are ‘replanted’ on the cast suspending the entire construction of the building.
The roof forms a funnel flooding the shell craters in the courtyard, conditioning the site for a new ecosystem to evolve.
Flooding Operation
A patch of forest is flooded by an aqueduct that re-establishes a historic connection of a public washing house with the river Ornes. The Operation makes the war caused destruction visible by creating water ponds in the shell holes that currently are overgrown with vegetation.
The river, one of the few features in the village that survived the war, traces the events that shaped the landscape over time. The flooded shell holes build ecological niches for rare amphibians observed by biologists.
A dependency between the ecosystems evolving with the flooding and the human realm of the shower house is established. Water as the connector of all living beings.
Crater Chapel
Digging trenches and tunnels was daily labour for soldiers during the war. Mining chambers were dug across the nomansland to reach the enemy in order to destroy the infrastructure.
By casting onto an exceptionally large crater and digging a void under it this process is reversed. A crater chapel, a place of reflection in the middle of the forest is created.
Testing Fields, Tree Nursery
The spruce trees planted after the war are currently dying due to the impact of the bark beetle. This threatens the heritage landscape and its ecosystems. In the Testing Fields plants are grown and trees are raised, new companion species for the future conservation of this wounded landscape.
Hyperaccumulators, plants that filter heavy metals and toxins are tested to decontaminate the soil. Sheep are grazing the thick layer of vegetation in order to keep the topography visible.
The labour involved in these processes reflects on the daily work in the former peasant village. Through the acts of sowing, planting and observing visitors are directly engaged in the conservation of the landscape. The goal is an active commemoration culture, a passing on of a multiplicit story of war, humans and other species told by the landscape itself.
Process
Materiality and tactility are one of my major focuses in the project. Model studies with organic matter like clay, leaves, natural fibres, moss and seeds informed the material choices in the project.
The main materials are wood (spruce planted as reparation payments from Germany that are now cut because of the bark beetle invasion). This is not only the obvious choice from a sustainable point of view but also a way of preserving their symbolic value of post war reconciliation and acknowleging their contribution to the conservation of the landscape over a period of 100 years.
Other materials are clay from excavation processes for walls and flax fibre reinforced concrete.
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
