PhD student Elin Söderberg discusses her research into the history of timber construction technologies in Sweden and contributes new relational and ecologically conscious approaches to contemporary architectural design.
Tingskog – A Proposal to Reforest the Architectural Imagination of Things
We live in an era of unprecedented environmental change, motivating equally unprecedented actions to combat its consequences. Speculating on a reforestation of the contemporary architectural imagination, the objective of this research is to develop an alternative radical architectural response to how the discipline should engage in efforts to restore the boreal forest ecosystems in Sweden.
While Swedish timber buildings have long been used within the field of building restoration as sources of historical knowledge into human practice, the co-authorship of the forest within their designs has rarely been considered. Moreover, the interrelationship between forest, timber construction and the judicial assembly of the Scandinavian ting is not well-explored.
Through the restoration and propositional reconstruction of the 1873 Hälsinge timber building Oppigården as the site for a new local assembly, this study aims to provide an alternative way of looking at the history of timber construction technologies in Sweden and contributes new relational and ecologically conscious approaches to contemporary architectural design.
