50% PhD Seminar - Sebastian Gatz

The Agency of a Half-Finished Building: An Active Ruin

Currently I am constructing a building which functions as an artist studio, a greenhouse, an energy accumulator and an architectural test site. The building is part of my PhD in artistic research at Konstfack University in Stockholm. My PhD and the building’s current state is “half finished”. What does that mean? Is there something to be learned from Romanticism and its obsession with ruins? Is there such a thing as an “active ruin” – a planned ruin? A ruin exposed to the weathering agents of nature but also not forgotten and still in the control grip of its creator.

Respondent: Isabelle Doucet