Islands

The following proposal falls within the abstract project category It addresses the UN development goal number 11 and 17
Recently Lynetteholmen was presented as not only a new neighborhood for our ever-increasing need for urban housing, but also an embankment to resist rising water levels. Paul Virilio’s warning that technology is predis- posed with its own potential accident1 is turned inside out:The solution is attempted built into the problem.This project acknowledges the need to nd such solutions, but suggests to go one step back in doing so. It simply asks,‘what is an island’ if understood as an artistic problem of combining technology and accident, intent and force.
Structures are in a constant state of ux, in an ever-changing symbiosis between accumulation and deterioration. Raimund Abraham has it “While you build the wall, you shall destroy the stones”2 and Willy Ørskov3 reminds
us that building up and breaking down are not just opposites but also necessary forces of creation. It seems ever-more relevant that architects work within these opposing, yet productive forces. As our climate changes and people need (or desire) to live more densely, fruitful ways of imagining new habitats could very well be to explore this condition.
Colonizing outer space is the focus of much research and investment currently. Large investments are made into getting there rst, and making uninhabitable places livable. But we have large, unexplored potentials much closer by. Imagine that we could nd sustainable ways of inhabiting the spaces of oceans, seas and harbors, making good living conditions for people. Islands of inhabitation, which produce energy, nurture civilization, culture and produce alternative forms of inhabitation.
The project is an artistic symbiosis between additive and subtractive fabrication logics, between solid casts and perforated plate structures. It combines digital fabrication with material craft.The process of making and negoti- ation is inseparable from its form and intent.
The artifact will be a large island (presented as a sculpture/model) and a series of colonies of islands (presented as the process of making the larger island).

Jacob S Bang, Anne Romme November 2018

1 Virilio, Paul,The Original Accident, Cambridge: Polity, 2007
2 Abraham Raimund, [Un]built, Wien, 1996
3 Ørskov, Willy, “A æsning af objekter”, Copenhagen, 1966

Se også vedhæftet dokument (WW2019_BANG_ROMME)