Jorge Otero-Pailos, Erik Fenstad Langdalen, Thordis Arrhenius (eds.)

Experimental Preservation

Old things, historic things, smelly dirty things, all the things that were considered the very opposite of “contemporary,” have suddenly irrupted forcefully into architecture and art, blurring their boundaries. This book takes stock of the emerging generation behind this turn, and examines their experimental engagements with the preservation of culturally charged objects. Structured around a series of interdisciplinary dialogues among practitioners and thinkers, and illustrated with recent projects, the book provides a window into the unfolding intellectual frameworks, aesthetic modes, cultural ambitions, and political commitments that are the basis of experimental preservation.

Old things, historic things, smelly dirty things, all the things that were considered the very opposite of “contemporary,” have suddenly irrupted forcefully into architecture and art, blurring their boundaries. This book takes stock of the emerging generation behind this turn, and examines their experimental engagements with the preservation of culturally charged objects. Structured around a series of interdisciplinary dialogues among practitioners and thinkers, and illustrated with recent projects, the book provides a window into the unfolding intellectual frameworks, aesthetic modes, cultural ambitions, and political commitments that are the basis of experimental preservation.

Edited by Jorge Otero-Pailos, Erik Fenstad Langdalen, Thordis Arrhenius

Design: Integral Lars Müller

16,5 x 24 cm, 6 ½ x 9 ½ in

192 pages, 130 illustrations

paperback

2016, 978-3-03778-492-1, English
CHF 35.00

Jorge Otero-Pailos

Jorge Otero-Pailos is an associate professor and director of Historic Preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture in New York.

Erik Fenstad Langdalen

Erik Fenstad Langdalen is a practicing architect, a professor of architecture, and the head of the Institute of Form, Theory and History at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). At AHO he teaches experimental preservation master studios with a focus on post-war architecture involving urban transformation, concrete structures, systems, and political spaces. His architectural practice focusses on restauration and transformation of historic wood buildings, and he is the owner of a listed farm managed as a cultural and educational Erik Fenstad Langdalen (*1967) is a practicing architect, a professor of architecture, and the head of the Institute of Form, Theory and History at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). He holds a Diploma from The Oslo School of Architecture and a Master in Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University GSAPP. At AHO, he teaches experimental preservation master studios with a focus on post-war architecture involving urban transformation, concrete structures, systems, and political spaces. His publications include Experimental Preservation (2016) and Sverre Fehn, Nordic Pavilion, Venice (2021).

Thordis Arrhenius

Thordis Arrhenius is an architect and architectural researcher with a strong engagement in contemporary architectural and urban practice and their theories. She is a professor of culture heritage at the Department of Social Change and Culture (ISAK) of Linköping University and a founding member of OCCAS – the Oslo Centre for Critical Architectural Studies. Arrhenius’ research interests concern the exhibition of architecture in mass culture, the relation between architecture and the museum, and the curatorial aspects of preservation. She is the co-editor of Place and Displacement (2014) and Experimental Preservation (2016).