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Diploma Høst 2020

A workshop

Amalie Nævisdal Tønnesen

My diploma project is a workshop for wooden boats. It communicates feelings and experiences of an isolated architectural object in a landscape by the sea, as we could still find many in Norwegian coastal areas. But it has also a real architectural program, in spite that there is no immediate social or commercial necessity connected to it. I could call the project also a symbolic metaphor - a kind of balanced arrangement of imagination, materials, technique, and craftmanship, on the edge between reality, memory, and something utopian. In spite of being a subjective choice, based on my interest in the movement of boats and the static quality of architecture, my intention was in defining an archaic, universal space and giving it lasting significance. I did research to understand what kind of workshops, tools, rooms, light, and atmosphere is needed, and how they could be expressed in architecture. I visited workshops that still produce wooden boats, using traditional production methods. I measured spaces and architectural elements, and the placement of machines and tools, to study what kind of spatial qualities they produce. To set a concrete stage for the workshop, I selected a real type of boat to be produced, dimensions, space of production, specifications… I chose 5.5 meter international sailboat, which is a boat made in accordance with specific specifications. From measurements that include hull, sail, displacement, and keel weight, the formula gives a specific target number for an individual boat, called the rating. The architecture of my workshop is in some way precisely related to this boat.

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