Mineral #1
Disciplines
Post Planetary Design
Architectural Theory
Landscape Architecture
Sound Design
Experience Design
Collaborators
The New Centre for Research & Practice
Mentors:
Ed Keller & Carla Leitao
Status
Independent Research Project, 2023-2024
Location
Stockholm, Sweden
Exhibited at:
Romanian Architecture Biennale '24, Bucharest, "Visionary Projects"
An ensemble
moving across
flows of information, energy and life
"What sets human consciousness apart from other biologically evolved phenomena is that it makes a reality appear within itself. It creates inwardness. The life process has become aware of itself"
The Ego Tunnel, by Thomas Metzinger
At large, Rare Minerals is an album of urban experiences that explores what surrounds, envelops, inhabits and pulses life far from the “infinite depths, the depths where man is man no longer, where sounds waves, ether waves, rhythmic vibrations pulsate, shaping mountains, winds, marine currents, the animal and vegetable worlds” (The Life and Work of Giacinto Scelsi, by Robin Freeman) over the subtle touch of millions of light years and music.
Mineral #1 is a response coming after years of silence and reflection over the practice and agency of architecture and landscape architecture, particularly in the age of technological disruption. The album is an ongoing research design project trying to catch glimpses of common wondering and reflection. Far from a fairytale setup, nature in its distant entropy, in its constant becoming while transiting layers of porosity and abstraction is harsh and often violent, a journey form, in the end a life form.
Mineral #1 is a wondrous meditation on this deep time orchestra and on the elements of this ensemble moving across flows of information, energy and life. Where, in between, sentience occurs? Where does it fades?
The Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm, Sweden
a unique architectural heritage co-signed by Sigurd Lewerentz and Gunnar Asplund
Stockholm Map, Skogskyrkogården
The Woodland Cemetery
The Woodland Cemetery, or Skogskyrkogården in local language, is situated in Enskede area, southern Stockholm, and it was built between 1919 and 1940 by, then, young architects Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz, following an international competition that they won together.
On a ridge overgrown with pines, they created a sacred landscape with several small chapels arranged to interact with the natural surroundings, same as its crematorium blending into the landscape; a timeless reference for cemeteries around the world and for both architectural theory and practice.
Skogskyrkogården is a UNESCO World Heritage since 1994, and, today, even though it attracts many visitors, it manages to subtract any noise and convoy it into infinity. Mineral #1 is a conversation with this.
Mineral #1 is an experience designed for The Woodland Cemetery, a place reserved for collective memory, where life and its extensions become uncertain. M#1 is an architectural gesture with a shape of non-shape, but a continuous becoming, same as the intermediate dimensions bring life awareness of itself, and the other - a confusion that we may just witness together. The project proposes to create the conditions for a phenomenological exercise, a partiture dissolved in a landscape, designed for a short passage of alignment in front of questions none of us can answer.
M#1 is a sound design written exclusively for the 110 ha of urban landscape, a forest of tall pines surrounding gently grave stones and holding a silence that needs no words. This sound design is not a song in itself, but a simple manifest of acoustics and vibrations setting in motion an "acoustic fog", in tune the landscape and its topography - all set in act by a hybrid human-machine orchestra, spread throughout the field while being remotely conducted, in a late November evening, for All Saint's Eve.
The Architecture of an Experience
fog
Designing and orchestrating such an experience is an creative process at multiple levels:
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how to write a piece of sound design for a landscape?
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how to design with a human-machine orchestra?
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how to remotely conduct / which technologies to use?
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how to fine tune the sound/vibrations with the "acoustic fog"?
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how to move it across the the landscape, its topography and woodland?
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which frequency shall we use for the resident bats to feel safe and perhaps even enjoy?
As in the regular practice for the architecture of a building, there are blueprints for different aspects (layout blueprint, electricity blueprint, water & heating blueprints, etc. ) so that when they overlap, the whole architecture is connected, harmonised and it functions according to the plan.
The same can be explained for the architecture of an experience. Particularly for Mineral #1, as the blueprint show on the side, in order to function as written in the script, overlapping the blueprints of landscape, topography, sound, fog sourcing & tracing, it requires a coding concept that links and enacts them together.
landscape
sound
topography
Conceptual model -
Mineral #1 Blueprints Stack