Studio: Master Thesis
Type: Research and Feasibility study
Location: Oslo, Norway
Supervisor: Nina Haarsaker, Hanna Landfald Hanssen
Period: spring 2021
Excerpt from my master thesis Tales of Balconies - a study on exterior spaces in urban housing. The whole masters thesis can be read here.
The pandemic and repeating lockdowns has changed our behaviour patterns. During the last year many of us have worked from home or been in quarantine. The everyday life has been especially challenging for those inhabiting small dwellings in dense cities.
Facing the impossibility of escaping, the lucky ones owning a balcony are able to seek refuge in that privileged space. The balcony has thus become the protagonist of these sad times, the quarantine and the forced isolations. The liminal spaces on the edge of the domestic walls allow us to keep in touch with the outside, the other people and the barely existing street life, while staying inside our own home. From here, while standing still, immobile and confined, we participate in the voluntary work of the greatest challenge the world has faced since the Second World War.
How can we increase the quality of living by facilitating for direct access to private outdoor spaces from the urban housing units and at the same time elegantly contribute to densification of our cities?
How can we utilize and increase the potential of the balconies in future urban homes?
As a contribution to discussion about densification of Oslo, I have developed a feasibility study of three proposals for housing with balconies as the main protagonist within the same frameworks of a site in central Oslo. The whole thesis can be read and downloaded from the menu of this website.
Balconies are transitional spaces - at the same time inside and outside, public and private. It is a unique architectural element with an ambiguous status of being connected and at the same time detached. These semi-enclosed spaces create illusions as the dwellers are seen but not heard, among the people but separated and protected from them. They are faces of the buildings, a physical filter for the interior spaces and a social filter for the dwellers.
With the balcony as the main protagonist the following three proposals, Along, In Between and On Top, address different housing typologies and living arrangements within the same frameworks. The structures has their main focus on exploring different ways of how a balcony can deal with transition between the inside and the outside, and how it can affect the interior spaces. The proposals together form a typological study on how the element of the balcony can vary in its form and how one structure can obtain different meanings through layout and use.
ALONG
IN BETWEEN
ON TOP
