Erskine's Aula: Ralph Erskine and his colleagues continue their reinvention of the Stockholm University Frescati campus as a humane model for higher learning institutions.UNIVERSITY GREAT HALL, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN ARCHITECT RALPH ERSKINE Ralph Erskine is the name of:
The University of Stockholm's campus at Frescati is in many ways a disappointing place. This is a country that has a proper long-established European respect for education and scholarship; it has produced the wonderful ancient university at Uppsala, still setting the tone in its medieval and eighteenth-century Baltic city (founded in 1477-Stockholm is 400 years younger). So it was sad to see such a lot of '70s soulless soul·less adj. Lacking sensitivity or the capacity for deep feeling. soul  less·ly adv. contractor-dominated utilitarian construction at the new campus at Stockholm (like, to be fair, almost everywhere else in Western Europe Western EuropeThe countries of western Europe, especially those that are allied with the United States and Canada in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (established 1949 and usually known as NATO). at the time). It was a grim place until Erskine arrived. His Allhus (AR November 1981) gave the campus a social centre; his university library was full of humane invention, setting an example for the building type throughout the world. It offered an extraordinary range of experiences, from individual private brooding, to communal chatting, from smoking on balconies to delving in the stacks. All these are clearly quite different from the original mass of the campus - they are (to use Aldo van Eyck's terminology) full of individual places, rather than vacuous spaces. They have a proper sense of the importance of the particular, the nature of the small group, complex widening social inter-relationships and the simultaneous need to remain an individual - perhaps the most difficult challenges facing people of undergraduate age. All with prolific invention and a sense of fun: all at a time when Swedish architecture in general was in the ice-clammy grasp of a deadly alliance The Deadly Alliance is a faction in the Mortal Kombat video game series, making its debut in . About the Deadly Alliance The Deadly Alliance was a temporary alliance between two powerful sorcerers: Shang Tsung, advisor to Emperor Shao Kahn and host of the last between the bureacracy and the contracting industry (the Swedes This is a list of well known Swedes, ordered alphabetically within categories: Actors Main article: List of Swedish actors
PFI Private Finance Initiative PFI Private Finance Initiative (UK) PFI Prison Fellowship International PFI Port Fuel Injection (engines) ). How did Erskine do it? Partly at least through a profound understanding of the system, using prefabrication prefabrication, in architectural construction, a technique whereby large units of a building are produced in factories to be assembled, ready-made, on the building site. The technique permits the speedy erection of very large structures. and standardization on the whole and saving resources for special moments like light chutes and key elements you touch, like handrails. Erskine's latest contribution to the Frescati site is the Aula Magna, the university's main ceremonial space. Here, the usual constructive disciplines had to be relaxed to a degree because it would be impossible to make a hall for 1200 people with the building techniques so beloved by the Swedish building industry. The main volume is based on a Greek (or rather Roman) amphitheatre with steeply raked seating that offers good sight and sound lines. Strongly profiled wooden panelling is used on the walls and the ceiling is lined with timber as well. The hall's shape and the reflective and absorptive qualities of the panels make the space very responsive to speech - it is possible to give a speech without using the electronic amplification system amplification system Physiology A generic term for any group of proteins that function in coordinated sequences, forming positive feedback loops for expanding the response to a low intensity signal Amplification systems
The foyers take their outline partly from the magnificent oaks that scatter across the Frescati site (Erskine was equally respectful to existing trees in the neighbouring Allhus, and in parts of the university library). The upper foyer is entirely glazed glaze n. 1. A thin smooth shiny coating. 2. A thin glassy coating of ice. 3. a. A coating of colored, opaque, or transparent material applied to ceramics before firing. b. , offering views north over the park-like landscape. It is laid out so that it can be used for student study when it is not acting as gathering area before and after lectures. Because of the slope in the site, the lower foyer is partly cut into the rock, and has a more cave-like atmosphere. The foyers curve round the perimeter of the fan-like plan with genial genial /ge·ni·al/ (je-ni´al) mental (2). ge·ni·al or ge·ni·an adj. Of or relating to the chin. genial pertaining to the chin. and transparent openness. The sides and base of the plan (east, west and south) are impervious im·per·vi·ous adj. 1. Incapable of being penetrated: a material impervious to water. 2. Incapable of being affected: impervious to fear. and clad in patterned brickwork, an Erskine favourite for blank walls that dates at least as far back as the mighty face of the Byker housing estate in Newcastle (AR April 1985). Both in its expression and its splendid volume, the Aula Magna is a proper focus for the ceremonial life of the university. RELATED ARTICLE: Architect Ralph Erskine, Stockholm Project team Ralph Erskine with Lars Wilson (project leader), Jonas Claeson, Vernon Gracie, Dina Hermelin, Jan Liedstrom, Johannes Toavatt, Lena SjobergNilsson, Jorgen Wohlert, Ingemar Gustafson, Bo Berggren, Bo Olsson, Simon Scheiwiller, Per Nystrom, Ronnie Kristola, Hans Aberg Photographs Ake E: Son Lindman |
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