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This coversheet template is made available by AU Library
Version 2.0, December 2017
Coversheet
This is the accepted manuscript (post-print version) of the article.
Contentwise, the accepted manuscript version is identical to the final published version, but there
may be differences in typography and layout.
How to cite this publication
Please cite the final published version:
Krag, M. M. S., & Keiding, T. B. (2018). 1:1 (dis)section - Learning through full-scale dissection and
transformations of abandoned buildings. The International Journal of Art & Design Education.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12184
Publication metadata
Title:
1:1 (dis)section - Learning through full-scale dissection and
transformations of abandoned buildings
Author(s):
Tina Bering Keiding & Mo Michelsen Stochholm Krag
Journal:
The International Journal of Art & Design Education
DOI/Link:
10.1111/jade.12184
Document version:
Accepted manuscript (post-print)
1
1:1 (Dis)section – Learning through Full-Scale Dissection and
Transformations of Abandoned Buildings
Mo Michelsen Stochholm Krag and Tina Bering Keiding
Abstract
The section is an essential tool for understanding, exploring, representing and communicating
spatial relations, structure and materiality in architecture, design and engineering, and
therefore a recurring topic in the curricula. The section itself is destructive of nature and
incompatible with a built environment in use or under construction. Hence, students
throughout their education meet the section in the form of diagrammatic representations, that
is, as forms of meaning emptied from scale, spatiality and materiality.
This article reports on a series of four workshops, held in the spring semesters from 2011 to
2014 for first-year students at Aarhus School of Architecture. The aim was to provide first-
year students with an experience of the relation between the section as a diagrammatic
representation and the materiality, structure and spatial relations of a concrete building. The
climax of each workshop was a full-scale dissection and transformation of an abandoned
house. As we shall see, the workshops fulfilled not only the intended learning goals, but
created an initially unforeseen and unique context for learning about the relations between
building and place and introduced the question regarding depopulation of rural areas as a
pertinent processional challenge. Beyond an educational value, the research project
‘Transformation on abandonment, a new critical practice?’ transpired from the workshops.
This research project and the interplay between teaching and research are discussed in the last
part of the article.
2
Keywords full-scale dissection, transformation, progressive education, research-based
teaching, hands-on, preservation
Dissection and environment
Due to its brutal nature, full-scale dissections must be carried out on buildings, which are
permanently emptied of function. Denmark witnesses a depopulation of rural areas and
villages in the so called ‘peripheral regions’. We find these regions mostly on the many small
islands and in what is known as the ‘rotten banana’. The latter refers, by virtue of the shape,
to the western regions of Denmark from Thisted in the North to Lolland in the South. Similar
to Denmark, the rural areas of many other countries experience severe demographical
changes. The population of the rural areas are abandoning their home villages and move to
the larger cities. Actually, the majority of the world’s population is now living in cities
(OECD, 2013; UN, 2014; Thorbeck, 2012; Woods, 2011). Rural depopulation is globally
contested in diverse ways (Versteegh and Meeres; 2015). In Denmark social migration
towards the cities is mainly caused by a decline in employment in food production based on
farming and the associated industries. Furthermore, a political tendency to centralize public
institutions has challenged the rural population during decades. The overall demography is
changing in the rural areas; the average age increases, as younger people seek educational or
occupational opportunities in the larger cities. The depopulation has led to a rapid drop in the
market value of houses, which causes solvency problems for property owners, as it is hard to
obtain loans to pay for even essential maintenance of buildings. One consequence of this
trend is an increasing number of abandoned houses, which gradually go from being
uninhabited to be uninhabitable. In some areas, the municipalities have taken initiative to tear
down some of the most decrepit and unsightly houses. A report by The Danish Town
3
Planning Institute estimated a volume of 60.000-100.0000 abandoned houses for demolition
in Denmark alone (The Danish Town Planning Institute, 2014).
This has given unique opportunities for the introduction of full-scale dissection in the
curriculum for first-year students at Aarhus School of Architecture (Figure 1). All workshops
and the research project take place in Thisted Municipality in the North Western, which
contains several small communities in varied stages of depopulation.
Figure 1. Students work, single-family house, Snedsted, 2014, work in progress; the horizontal intervention is
visible on the left, whereas the cross section is visible on the right.
Workshop design
The overall design was common to all of the four workshops, but was continuously
improved. All workshops extended over a period at five to six weeks. They were divided into
four phases: Introduction, iteration, dissection and reconstruction. The article focuses on the
dissection and reconstruction phase, but to give a better understanding of the context, all four
phases are briefly introduced.
4
Phase 1: Introduction
The opening lecture started with an introduction to the section as a tool for professional
investigation and communication of the structure of a building. To facilitate students
understanding of the section as a generic principle, the lecture drew parallels between the
section as a professional tool in architecture, design and engineering and dissection in the
world of medicine. The latter was illustrated with the baroque dissection theatre of the 17
th
century, because the upcoming public full-scale dissection of a building has several features
in common with the dissection theatre in the sense that concealed scale, materiality and
spatiality are exposed in front of an audience. Demolition processes from the built
environment exemplified the rare opportunities for professional real life experience of
sections at building scale, where full-scale sections occasionally occur as temporary
phenomena.
Besides exposing structures and materials, the dissection has the potential to reveal
the history and evolution of the building. The full-scale section can reveal a buildings private
history through stratification of the built layers. However, the section must be undertaken in
respect to the laws of structure. Therefore, the workshop included a number of smaller sub-
investigations in which the impact on structural and material matters was less critical. These
sub-investigations, called ‘probes of investigations’, could display the material history of the
building, e.g. layers of paint, wallpaper or flooring, were uncovered with surgical precision.
Many of the probes of investigation took the form of plots such as work plans, drawings and
description of procedures. Other probes included physical toolboxes designed to be used in
both the investigation and reconstruction phase.
The opening lecture illustrated the learning potential of these smaller investigations
by cut-outs from ice core drilling. Similar to the revealed layers in a building, the layers of an
