Portfolio 2011

My portfolio contains projects I did during my

bachelor studies at the Iceland Academy of the Arts.

I graduated with a bachelor's degree from there in

the spring of 2010.

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Flexibility in Contradictory landscape

Sequence of investigations to see, find and understand

flexibility in the Contradictory landscape in Nikel, and how

to adapt flexibility in this landscape.

By looking closer into every landscape I make an attempt to

grasp all of them as systems of information exchange,

understand the landscapes character, find enough information

to see and identify spaces in the landscapes to keep

them alive.

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Contradictory landscape

Sequence of investigations on the landscape in Nikel. The

first one takes on defining the landscape in Nikel. The

second concerns how the landscape is experienced from

different perspectives. In the third part we take a closer

look at how the these landscapes overlap over time from

different perspectives. These investigations are an attempt

to understand the “new hierarchies” as something that is

detachable, connectable, reversible and modifiable.

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Alienated Му́рманск

After a long trip through the north of Norway it was a special experience to cross the historical borders of Norway and Russia, where you immediately feel the huge culture difference in these two countries. Suddenly we were in Nikel, and all its cruel presence of industry touched every sense of my body. I even felt how the ground collapsed under my feet when I was walking around in this wasteland.

With my mind full of thoughts around the question of the embodied beauty of Nikel, we went into the bus and kept on driving to Murmansk…

When we were approaching Murmansk we drove with the view over the city for a long time, and I instantly felt like I was in a movie where machines had taken over the city. I was entering the Machineworld.

With every inhale I took I could feel the breeze of coal and the pollution hovering around in the air, I felt how my lungs filled up with toxic waste. Even the colours around me seemed diffused because of the pollution.

The sounds around me were not pleasant, but bursts and boom noises from the machines on the harbor. I can hardly remember hearing an animal sound, nor the sound of the sea that the people in the city should have access to. I felt like the machines had placed people and all living things in an “appropriate” place for them. Like tools in a toolbox. When looked over the city it looked like the railway and the trains where some kind of border or a barrier between where the machines live and where the people were placed.

“Sight isolates, whereas sound incorporates; vision is directional, whereas sound is omni-directional.”

-Juhani Pallasmaa

Emerging Arctic Landscapes

Emerging Arctic Landscapes is a master studio at Bergen Architecture School that I'm attending during the autumn 2011 by Gisle Løkken, Magdalena Haggärde and Tone Berge.

The objective of the studio is to create a platform for critical discussions on the changes currently taking place in the Arctic region. These are changes in climate, ecologies, landscapes, economy, societies and cultures - changes that by all accounts can be expected to accelerate in the close future.

The studio will arise along a road trip from Hammerfest to Murmansk - a slow journey in a cross section of remote arctic landscape and intrusive development: From the oil-driven growth of Hammerfest (from fish to oil – and the resurrection of the city after WWII), via the new urbanization of Alta, the barely surviving sami culture in Kautokeino and Karasjok, the decaying and mythical city of Vardø, and the abandoned fishing village of Hamningberg. The trip takes us to the pending economy in Kirkenes, the destructed landscapes of Bjørnevatn – crossing the Russian border into the remote and desolated landscapes, cities and settlements on the Kola-peninsula - via the extremely heavy polluted nature in Nikkel, the trip will end in Murmansk – a city in transformation, from a soviet military stronghold – to a modern and emerging economy, waiting for the oil to arrive.

There are numbers of possible points of departure, and issues wished focused on. In this studio we want to investigate a broad span of examples of landscape occupations and arctic urbanizations - and study the forces of growth and decline that are working in the Arctic.

~my expectations~