My Manifesto
Architecture is everywhere, it comes in different
shapes and forms. I believe an opening is architecture and it can be the gap
that divides contrasts or the road that connects. An opening is often what
leads ones’ curiosity and defines the way both vertically and horizontally.
I had my first on-my-own travelling when I was 14
years old. My mom told me that it was very important to get new input from the
world in the early ages.
I went to NYC, London, Berlin, and Rome etc. Every
time I came home I told her about my experiences and showed her my pictures.
One day she turned to me and asked why I only took
pictures of buildings, different shapes, and forms. I didn’t even notice that
myself. I think I just liked the way they shaped themselves in the different
spaces.
I’ve always been fascinated with the geometrical
figures and especially cubism. A cube is a form you always know how to expect.
But cubes can create an extremely set of complexity and that’s what I’m
obsessed with.
Years later, I got more and more interested in
architecture and how human beings interact. I still think it’s amazing how architecture
can stand alone as a monument without the human scale like Pantheon in Rome
with it’s big bars at the entrance and then to open up for a huge room with only
one hole in the top of its’ dome. I realized that the scale has a lot to say
when you walk around in buildings or in open spaces. It’s interesting how some
buildings or some spaces can make you feel like a tiny meaningless person or
others where everything is scaled for every piece of the human body such as Antonio
Gaudi’s work in Casa Batlló, Barcelona I visited few years ago.
In the learning process of drawing I was taught how to
see the negative/positive in a drawing. It opened a whole new way of looking at
architecture. I do not only see what’s actually there, but I’m aware of what’s
‘not there’ – the negative. Last year at the school of architecture I worked a
lot with the contrast between inside/outside and negative/positive spaces in a
certain building. I’ve seen a lot of
architecture where it is used in open or urban spaces. But what I really fancy
is the invisible edge or the gap that represent the end of one contrast to the
start of a new.
Another important thing in the study of architecture
is the interaction between the artistic and the material. Architecture is often
build or shaped in a way that thrill your curiosity so much that you have to
touch and feel it.
All these things listed above, is what makes
architecture so fun and exciting to study and it’s why I’m here.
Julie Bertelsen
