SESSION 3: Wide Load - The Wholesale moving of buildings in Norrlands (PANEL 1)

DAY ONE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 27

10:15-11:15 UTC -7 | 19:15-20:15 UTC +2

Moderator: Tonia Carless

ZOOM LINK


Wide Load: The wholesale moving of buildings in Norrlands

[Husflyttningar] as culture and an architecture of de-growth
Tonia Carless and Robin Serjeant

Moving Materials and Ways of Life
James Benedict Brown

400 Moves in Norrlands
Magnus Martensson

James Benedict Brown will analyse the historic context through Moving Materials and Ways of Life. This will develop into a dialogue exchange between Tonia Carless and Robin Serjeant on the notion of the moving of houses in Northern Hemispheres as a possible reframing of a future architecture of de-growth, an architecture of resistance, closely tied into the notion of physical displacement. 

The panel will question how a visual, spatial research, might uncover the implications of technological and social change in Norrlands. It will consider how political narratives of the region might be embedded in the space and propose new readings of cause, effect and values associated with relocation. 

The subject matter has been selected as an extra-ordinary moment of socio-spatial displacement, through capital investments, where multiple cultural layers are shifted across a landscape through the action of Husflyttningar (House relocation).

3 short dialogue exchanges will consider, 

the wider location and context of the global periphery (Arctic region), 

the construction and interior of the house and 

the connection between this and the demolition of traditional timber cottages (stuga)

Magnus Martensson of Nya Töre Husflyttningar will provide an overview of 400 moves in Norrlands. This will be introduced as one man’s house moving project, a proposed documentation, as a visual map and legend, to analyse a spatial reconfiguration of the region through house relocation. It will also raise questions about forms of knowledge production through a technical analysis of the traditional process of house moving.

The panel aims to bring together the interdisciplinary, architectural historical, art and the visual and a technical analysis to investigate this specific process. It will also discuss a proposal to make a model of the space beneath a house move, using sloyd craft practices and to transport this as part of a public event.

Dr Tonia Carless, Associate Professor of Architecture at Umeå University School of Architecture presentation as recipient of collaborative UMArts research award 2022

Dr James Benedict Brown, Associate Professor of Architecture at Umeå University

Magnus Martensson, AB Töre Husflyttningar 

Robin Serjeant, Independent Researcher