We are finished

Over the past months we have been hosting the Nordic pavilion. We have been open for 79 full days, during which our guests could see the workings of and communicate with in total some 75 architects associated with 12 different practices. Our daily updated blog has had visits from 78 countries. We like to think that this is in direct line with the general theme of this year's Venice biennale, "People meet in architecture", and hope that it will contribute to a broader understanding of how architecture could work. As a summary, you will find below one picture of each of the weeks At Work With has been open. After that, you will find all the blog posts in the regular reversed order, starting with the newest post, and ending with the oldest post.

Office party

The press and opening days were turned into an office party. We served cold beer from the fridge, played loud music, with occasional announcements, and sung some karaoke in the evenings.

Testbedstudio

Testbedstudio orchestrated a range of events, such as lectures, video screenings, live drawing and building a small city out of styrofoam. They also re-enacted other pavilions of the biennale. Here Dr. Wolfgang Kessling from Transsolar is visiting while remaking their and Tetsuo Kondo's "Cloudscapes" pavilion.

0047

During their week, 0047 devoted one day each to presenting their current projects, in the form of lectures and discussions, sometimes over air from other locations. They also introduced what became a recurring weekly event: the friday after work beer for the staff of all the national pavilions.

XYM

XYM worked on an edition of their PDF magazine. They also produced a series of fantastic multicolour styrofoam USB cases, which each hosts the whole collection of the magazine.

Svensk Standard

Frenzied work, with the table filled with oozing electronics, Svensk Standard made a model of Venice on the floor of the pavilion, including many findings from the city, paper gondolas and mechanical robots guised as urban debris.

Economy

In order to spark discussion, Economy directed their and the visitors' attention to the making of a film. A circular rotating disc was turned into a stage that was constantly filled with modelling paraphernalia, making one lapse a day and architecture into a party.

Conditions

Conditions magazine devoted their week to the topic of their upcoming issue: Competitions. They hosted seminars on competitions, they turned the neighbouring exhibition Stay in Touch into a competition with the visitors voting for the best project exhibited, awarded with the "Golden Reindeer" trophy, and they turned the design of the magazine cover into a competition for the pavilion visitors, spawning immense activity on the drawing tables.

Uglycute

Uglycute had a cool week (when the first autumn chill hit Venice, necessitating some very practical designs towards the heating issue). They worked on new projects (again, a sauna) and displayed finished ones. This included a woodworking film set up among the trees in the pavilion.

Schalk / Sustersic

This is Apolonija Sustersic and Meike Schalk in a seminar situation around their "rizomatic library", books and authors that are connected into a network. Most of their week, though, was devoted to a public workshop for making t-shirts. The visitors chose, edited and discussed motifs which in different ways made a statement on the practice of architecture, and which they could consequently print on their own t-shirt to be.

Byggstudio

Byggstudio made a kind of interactive garden, in which the visitors could rearrange different species of plants according to certain parameters. These would change daily, giving rise to the formation of graphs, fields, ranking lists, and associative combinations, all manifested within the greenery, demonstrating the social relationships between man and plants.

Rintala Eggertsson

This week At Work With turned into a building workshop, when Rintala Eggertsson entered the stage with a band of students. They focused all their effort on the construction of a four by four by four metre building out of wooden beams, structurally reminiscent of the Nordic pavilion, interiorly forming seats with a fireplace in the middle. The name of the work is Miilu, which is Finnish for charcoal kiln.

Boing Being

During the week, Boing Being carried out a continuous and improvised construction of a physical body out of scrap material, in parallel with the production of automatically translated poetry. In the same time, all visitors were invited to make their own drawings. In a final performance evening, all of this came together as a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk. A selection of the drawings was projected onto the physical construction, and the poetry was read aloud.

Fantastic Norway

Fantastic Norway ended the show with a week devoted to the "spikertelt" - the tent that is mounted in front of a caravan - a theme that was elaborated in models, drawings and text through the week. They ended their own show with a big waffle party.

Packed up

The pavilion is back to its original state again. It took just a day for our technician Markus Eberle and Swedish Museum of Architecture curator Karin Åberg Waern to dismantle the exhibition and make it ready for shipment back to the North.

Waiting to go home

The French Norwegian is waiting to go home.

Its getting late

Our visitors followed us into the Venice night... thanks! It was fun!

Little vistor

A little man delighted us with his company.

Waffles plus

We were lucky to have such nice guests.

Fest!

Yes!

Pop by, grab a waffle in 20 minutes!

Out party is starting in a couple of minutes. Pop by, grab a waffle, drink and chat with us!

Wafflemaking overview

The boys are cooking the traditional Norwegian WAFFLE. Hungry guests are approaching.

# 12 Flat pack

Most of the already mentioned prototypes be delivered flat packed to reduce transport costs. Local carpenters can gather the housing extentions.

The waffle boys

Fantastic Norway making waffles at the Venice biennale.

Hungry eyes

The party is on!

# 6 On rails

This is also a flexible sollution. The prototype can function as two separate "spikertelt"/housing extensions, but also as a separate cabin with no connection to a camper (it can this way be rented out as a separate unit).

Wine and waffles

Grasping waffles and wine.

Mmmmmm!

Antoine enjoys the company of visitors.

Prototype # 7, 8 and 9

THE HIGH RISE UNIT
A simple structure, based on placing the camper under the unit. The building becomes visible and beautiful and there is a view! The builing becomes a sculpture in the landscape, alone or as several units side by side. The buildings can have a facade that light up when the outlet is in used, just as a lamp plugged in the wall.

THE CAMUFLAGE GARAGE
This concept is based on the fact that a lot of people find campers and campsites ugly and disturbing. By placing the camper inside the unit one can achieve a more muted apperance that suits its surroundings.

THE COMMUNITY/ ATTACHED UNIT
This idea is based on several people camping together and connect their camper to a private room. This room again is connected to a shared/community building with shared kitchen and facilities.

# 10 The flower

This is a closed volume that opens as a flower when in use. Walls and roof folds out and include the outdoor space. When closed down for the season the volume is again closed.

# 11 Multi wall

This concept is a modulbased wall mounted as a snake between the different campers and housing extentions/spiketelt. The wall can be anything from a place to place flower pots, to buildt-in benches to clima shelter. Theese walls are also becoming the walls of the housing extentions/ spikertelt. This way a soft transition is created between the units, landscape and social zones.

Preparing the party

Alexander is fetching the wine. We are preparing a party in beetween the prototype development We are inviting the whole city of Venice to join in Saturday 16:00!

Authentic pattern # 3

We are constantly working on the graphical line to go with the new prototypes for camping life. This is the newest pattern to go with the analysis and project.

Atworkwith the Italian students

An italian class of students joined and helped us with the development of the "Spikertelt prototypes". The students made fantastic drawings and models.

A whole Italian class of students joined us today

An italian class joined in today and helped us with the development of the "Spikertelt prototypes" and discussed the floating boarders/ subjectivity of what is considered high/low culture.. The students made fantastic drawings and models.

Hard working

Irish helper.

Workshop

Alexander is conducting a workshop with italian schoolkids.

Camper extension module system developing

Plans showing some possibilities in the module system.

All the Fantastic Biennale photos can be viewed at Flickr

The complete selection of Fantastic Norway photos from the Biennale workshops can be viewed HERE

More new "spikertelt" prototypes

More and more prototypes are emerging from the drawing tables of the Venice Biennale.

# 5 The pathway / gallery prototype

This is a flexible sollution. It can work both as two separate housing extentions/spikertelt, but it can also function as separate cabins without campers attached. The pathway between the units can be used even if it´s raining. Shared units can be attached to the ends of the pathway/gallery (for example shared bathrooms or kitchens).

Coffee break

Ingeborg fetching coffees for the Fantastic Norwegians.

Tangram study

Tangram module study in the development of new prototypes.

The art of efficiency

A visitor elegantly combined work with nutrition at the modelworkshop.

Reversed landscape prototype

The workshop participants showed some talent!...We love the reversed landscape model.

# 4 The cluster prototype

This extended house /spikertelt is designed so it can be mounted together to a compact box for transport. In use the smaller volumes are scattered out around the camper so an open spece is formed in between the volumes - forming a shelter for surroundings and wind.

New prototypes emerging

It has been a productive day. We have produced 12 SPIKERTELT concepts.

# 3 The off road prototype

This concept is based on the idea of the housing extentions/spikertelt mission is to frame the landscape, while the campers are the social tool. The houses are not placed on a campsite, but on strategic and beautiful places scattered out in nature. A road leads to each unit, but the view from inside each unit is facing towards the landscape.

# 2 The worm / Trønderlån

This prototype is based on the Norwegian building tradition "Trønderlån": The house that expands as the family gets bigger. The housing extentions are mounted together so they create a public space on one of the sides. Each building is customized under some "rules" of the whole. The campers are mounted on the "private side" of the worm. This way the campsite is structured as well as the campers are hidden on the backside.

New prototypes beeing born

Fantastic early module-system idea for new prototype

# 1 The prototypes are ready! First one out:

The prototypes are ready and this is the first one showing "The storehouse-village". The concept is to establish a constructive gridsystem/platform that the "spikertelt"/camper housing extentions rest on. The houses can have a facade that lights up when the buildings are in use (when the outlet from the camper is activated/deactivated the facade lighting system is turned on/off). In addition to the housing extensions there will be social spaces, pathes, gardens, crops etc... This way you can double the number of campers compared to a campsite with a classic layout.