Kaleidoscope: Hidden in the Woods. New housing, in variations of the Nordic courtyard house, is built around the existing building. Shared spaces, such as laundries, storages, hobby rooms, work and guest spaces, are placed in the old building. The most remote of the new houses are intended to be retreat-like guest cabins. Illustration: Vegard Aarseth. Project: Kaleidoscope Team.

For architects, Europan represents one of the largest and perhaps also the most exciting competition organisations in the world. Directed at young professionals of the architectural and urban design under 40 years of age and with a European degree or working in Europe, the Europan competitions have gathered talent and enthusiasm since their formation in 1988. In this exclusive interview, architects Emmi Keskisarja and Miia-Liina Tommila, members of the Finnish-Norwegian team behind the winning proposal ‘Kaleidoscope’ for Europan 12 in Norway, discuss their project, their working methods and their future plans as young international architects.

Architecture between realism and surrealism

There are many who dream of winning an international architectural competition, but few throw themselves into producing a competition proposal as unreservedly as Emmi Keskisarja (b. 1984), who graduated from the school of architecture at Tampere University of Technology in 2012, and Miia-Liina Tommila (b. 1980), who graduated from the Bergen School of Architecture in Norway in 2011. They had no previous experience of architecture competitions, nor did they know each other prior to their Europan competition collaboration, which culminated in them winning the competition. “We didn’t know each other previously. We first met following on from an event at Aalto University for the launch of Add Lab’s ‘Metaphysics’ book. A mutual tango-enthusiast friend introduced one Argentinean tango-enthusiast architect to another”, explain the architects about their first meeting, as if it had been written in the stars.

TAMPERE, BERGEN, HELSINKI, SHANGHAI, PEKING, MOSKOW, ISTANBUL, ASKER

The architects describe the combination of realism and fantasy typical for Europan competitions as fascinating. “The Europan system has a good reputation in Norway. There are several young offices there that have their beginnings in a Europan victory. In Norway winning proposals have also been implemented and there is a good organisation behind the competitions”, explains Tommila. “In the competitions it is almost expected that new kinds of worlds are created, as well as new approaches and presentations”, adds Keskisarja. Both appreciate the opportunity that the architecture competition has provided to use their time freely on things that cannot always be justified in terms of their usefulness and productivity, unlike in the daily work of an architect.

The Kaleidoscope team: Tommila, Berge, Keskisarja and Klepsvik.

The competition team was formed together with Tommila’s friends from her student days, Tone Berge and Silje Klepsvik. Keskisarja, who works in different parts of the world, did not meet the Norwegians until June 2013. There was no internal work division among the team. They met weekly on Skype and shared image files via a dropbox folder. A couple of holiday cottage weekends were reserved for more intensely paced team work. “We had weekly tasks set out. For example, we could look for artistic references, write a story, carry out a building plot analysis or construct a visual map. One person continued from where the other left off. We used multistage processes and a variety of different methods through which the work evolved. The good ideas were retained and the bad ones weeded out”, says Keskisarja in describing the work process. Essential was a good, mutual democracy. The design team did not have a problem that often exists in such work, namely a leadership problem: “Ideas were shared, all material produced was shared.”

Keskisarja describes the team’s work methods as one of continuous editing: “We write each other’s texts, we edit the images. After a while it is impossible to say who wrote what or who was the originator of which idea.” According to Tommila, the Bergen education philosophy was helpful:“Bergen has a reputation as an alternative school of architecture. We were given very few guidelines. The objective of the education was that the students are forced to develop their own methods, and individuality is strongly supported.”

The resources that Tampere’s architecture education has provided were very different from those in Bergen. Tommila praises the agility in being able to jump into open cooperation that international experience has provided Keskisarja. Keskisarja feels that Finnish education is perhaps too practical, yet praises the strong research approach in Tampere that she has gained so much from. She also states that she has learnt that one should not be afraid of the unknown: “I have been involved also in other things than the daily practice of architecture; I have carried out research and held my own design and research workshops where one proceeds with crazy timetables, in completely alien surroundings and with complete strangers and unknown institutions. It was easy to throw oneself into yet another new organisation. I worked with the competition design team at the same time I was in Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai and Istanbul.”

Emmi Keskisarja’s international working method has its origins in the joint Dragon Skin pavilion project between Tampere University of Technology’s Edge Laboratory and the Hong Kong and Antwerp based office LEAD, which was carried out for the 2012 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in Hong Kong.

The buildings of the competition area date from the early 1900s.

NEW, WITH A LIGHT TOUCH, YET STRONGLY COHESIVE

Tommila and Keskisarja describe the premises of Norway’s Europan 12 competition as uniquely wonderful. The task was to develop new uses for a previously almost completely self-reliant psychiatric hospital area, Dikemark, the services of which are being transferred elsewhere. The buildings in the area were built in the early 1900s and are today protected. The challenge of the architects was to look behind the beautiful mysticism, because the old picturesque buildings on their own are insufficient to ensure that the area is interesting. “A new use relying on a single agent is not the solution. The area is presently in crisis because the activities have been based on a single agent, the psychiatric hospital. Only a truly multi-dimensional strategy can ensure a sustainable future”, says Keskisarja in describing the challenges of the planning. The site is situated in the outskirts of the municipality of Asker, and is part of the rapidly growing Greater Oslo Region.

The architects define the design team’s architectural concept as having its starting point in the location and context. The largest problems of the design task lie, in Keskisarja and Tommila’s opinion, in financing and in the complex land ownership relationships. “Investments are needed so that there will be funding for the repair of the protected buildings. Renovation that fulfils current housing standards can, however, be a risk to the unique character of the old buildings”, explains Keskisarja. As a solution, the architects developed models of owner-occupied development, where new construction is placed around an old building. “The idea is that the residents will invest in the renovation and in turn obtain the right to use a shared space in the old building.”...continue reading

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