Gammel viden til nye bygninger: Traditionelle byggematerialer og håndværksteknik i nutidigt byggeri

Translated title of the contribution: Old Insights for New Buildings

Publications: Book / Anthology / Thesis / ReportPh.D. thesis

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Abstract

This PhD project investigates how material-specific knowledge from traditional building culture can inform contemporary building practices and contribute to solving current issues.

The underlying assumption is that pre-industrial building culture, contains a specific knowledge which links together materials, mate-rial processing and craftsmanship, and that this knowledge has not been transferred into contemporary industrialised building pracices. Furthermore, it is assumed that this knowledge can contribute to contemporary discourse on sustainability, building culture and social/local rootedness.

This dissertation inscribes itself into to the field of cultural history research, as it deals with traditional preindustrial building culture in the Nordic Region, but it also references to the research field of materials science. Thus, the dissertation assumes a holistic view of traditional building culture and customs. This holistic view has a technical side, which investigates how the inherent properties of various materials affect one another and are affected by the surrounding environment. And it has a culture-based side, which deals with tradition, customs and knowledge linked to craftmanship.

It is the aim of this dissertation to point out the potential contribution of traditional building practices to the creation of a sustained resilient building culture and practice that is capable of responding to current and future issues. In addition to the more quantifiable aspects of these potential contributions – such as investigations into which traditional materials and constructions that are particularly beneficial, i.e. in regards to greenhouse gas emissions – the current issues to be resolved also include more complex qualitative concerns, for instance in relation to social behaviour and the formation of human emotional attachment to buildings. Therefore, both quantitative and qualitative research paradigms are present in this holistic approach, which is essential to making sufficiently comprehensive observations regarding a resilient building culture.

Through studies of specific materials, carefully selected through observations of historical buildings, the dissertation is structured around a series of material narratives, each pointing to a potential that can possibly be unlocked within contemporary building by the traditional material. This methodical approach is based on the assumption that traditional building is entirely made up of just 25central materials that can all be considered generic materials. These material narratives, which constitute the core studies of the dissertation, are placed in the context of an overarching theoretical frame-work, containing the methodical and theoretical considerations that concern the material studies in their entirety. In conclusion, the findings of the dissertation regarding the investigated materials, processes and derived craft techniques, are put into operation through lectures and teaching of the graduate students at KADK School of Architecture.

The material narratives in the second part of the dissertation are constructed as independent chapters, in which each material is dis-cussed and put into the context of contemporary building practices. It is the intention that the dissertation can be read not only as a whole work, but also as a subject manual or reference work - thereby hopefully gaining a wider reach and application.
Translated title of the contributionOld Insights for New Buildings
Original languageDanish
Number of pages310
ISBN (Print)978-87-7830-942-6
Publication statusPublished - 2020

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