Bartlett Research Conversations: Elin Söderberg

Tingskog – A Proposal to Reforest the Architectural Imagination of Things

Speaker: Elin Söderberg
Supervisors: Prof. Jonathan Hill and Prof. Tim Waterman
Guest panellist: Prof. Peg Rawes and Prof. Nat Chard

Abstract

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.

About The Bartlett Research Conversations

The Bartlett School of Architecture’s Research Conversations seminars comprise work-in-progress and upgrade presentations by students undertaking the Architectural Design MPhil/PhD and Architectural and Urban History and Theory MPhil/PhD. All current UCL staff and students are welcome to attend.

Held regularly throughout the academic year, the seminars are attended by the programme directors, Professor Jonathan Hill and Professor Sophia Psarra, PhD Coordinators, Dr. Nina Vollenbröker and Dr Sophie Read, and other PhD supervisors.

Image: Assembly Hall interior at the Tingskog - Elin Söderberg, 2022