utzonia

Utzonia drawing 1

Utzonia drawing 3

Utzonia drawing 4

Utzonia drawing 5

Utzonia model 1

Utzonia model 2

Utzonia: From / To Denmark with Love
Angela Gigliotti and Troels Rugbjerg

Utzonia aims at contributing to contemporary investigations and discussions around Nordic Perspectives. It is a critical study concerning architectural history and theory and the significance of the legacy by the Danish architect Jørn Utzon (1918-2008). First, the book contributes to the decolonization of dominant and mythologic ex-cathedra historiographies introducing a model of research and teaching architecture that empowers students and faculties calling them to re-investigate known masters beyond their holiness. The investigation about labour and cross-border cultural and economic exchanges are thus meant to re-construct a series of scenarios able to introduce actors and conditions, so far neglected. Second, the book deploys the Utzonian legacy to contextualize Danish contemporary professionalism. In Denmark, in 2019 the architectural operation in foreign countries accounted, in fact, an impressive 58,6% of global revenue by Danish companies of the sector, through exports and foreign subsidiaries (Garver and Dorph Broager 2019, 39). However, today, as in the Utzon’s time, it is not clear what exporting of welfare principles has meant for receivers (e.g. non-democratic countries), as well as it is not yet explored what the import of foreign inputs has meant for Danish architecture. Inside the book, the reader will find a selection of fourteen buildings and building complexes built in the second half of the 20th century critically re-addressed through drawings, physical models, and academic essays developed alongside a series of teaching and research activities. Seven of these projects were selected due to their relationship with an import of architectural production to Denmark, while the remaining seven are significant due to an export of architectural production from Denmark, relating to the fact that a large part of Utzon's practice took place abroad.

Bio Angela Gigliotti is an architect, educator and researcher. She focuses on Architectural History and Theory, specifically History of Practices, Labour, and Welfare State. Her doctoral dissertation is titled “The Labourification of Work: the contemporary modes of architectural production under the Danish Welfare State” (Arkitektskolen Aarhus, 2020). She has been External Lecturer and Research Faculty at DIS - Study Abroad in Scandinavia in Copenhagen (2016,-) and she is currently the HM Queen Margrethe II’s Distinguished Postdoc Fellow at the Danish Academy in Rome (2021-23). Her research project “Unheard workers: behind a foreign diplomatic architecture of the 1960s in Rome” is awarded by Carlsberg Foundation and affiliated with the Institut für Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur, Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design at ETH Zürich and Aarhus Arkitektskolen. Beyond academia, she co-founded the research-based practice OFFICE U67 ApS (s. 2015), whose works have been awarded, published, and exhibited in international venues.

Troels Rugbjerg is a doctoral researcher at ASUTUT – the Sustainable Housing Design at Tampere University, Finland where he is studying: “100 years of historic ideals and realizations of sustainable architecture of the Nordic region”. He is affiliated with Teaching Program 3: Emerging Sustainable Architecture at the Aarhus Arkitektskolen, Denmark (AAA) where he is collaborating with the research group: Nordic Sustainable Architecture. He is involved in the education of undergraduate students in architectural design at AAA where he is contributing with an expertise into architectural history and theory. As an experienced teacher his pedagogy revolves around the possibilities of involving and imagining with representational techniques a process of designing. Troels Rugbjerg has also been teaching at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark from where he earned his degree as an architect.

Editors Angela Gigliotti and Troels Rugbjerg
Graphic Design OFFICE U67 ApS
Funded by Statens Kunstfond, DIS – Study Abroad in Scandinavia and the Arkitektskolen Aarhus
Published by List Lab
ISBN 978-8-83208-035-3