The urban realm is a collage of ruin, artifact, and modern invention. Whole pieces and fragments linger untouched or prosthetized onto new constructions, creating a landscape of monsters. These creatures, beautiful or grotesque, metamorphose through time. The tendons that tie these body parts together tell the story of architecture. This thesis explores the joint between such members: the detail of the space between. / Master of Architecture

Changes in demogaphics, employment and shopping habits, triggered by urbanisation and increasing mobility are important factors influencing Swedish countryside. Answering the changing conditions is especially important in the northermost counties, with very low population density and large distances between settlements. Within the peripheries of V.sterbotten the availability of basic social and commercial services is decreasing, as the economic viability of such businesses is too low and the former commercial model became unsustainable. Most of the service functions are associated to local grocery stores, and when one is forced to close down, the village loses not only its access to basic services, but most of all a meeting point for the community. The supply of food and errands is not a problem for the inhabitants, but the need for social activities and access to a neutral ground to meet the neighbours remains unresolved. This thesis is investigating possible alternatives and proposing new models of hybrid service centres for rural communities of V.sterbotten, that are capable of uplifting the countryside by focusing on the most important aspect: the people.

At archaeological sites around the world, architectural interventions utilizing distinctly modern materials and designs have provided solutions for protection from environmental impacts, control of visitors’ access to ruins and presentation of historic remains to the public. In various contexts, reliance on the modern has resulted in educational opportunities and emotional experiences for visitors that would not have been possible using traditional modes of reconstruction. The incorporation of in situ archaeological remains into a modern building often enhances the phenomenological potential of the ruins while sacrificing positivist presentations of them. Many European countries have seen different examples of creative applications of modern architecture for the presentation of excavated sites. My thesis focuses on several European prototypes of the modern architecture–archaeological remains hybrid type, surveying how contrast in materials and stylistic breaks between new and old enhance visitor’s experiences. The prevalence and promise of modern architectural design at archaeological sites calls for the clear identification of the emerging type in order to promote it as a bona fide option for meeting preservation challenges. The classification requires the intervention rely on distinctly modern materials and construction methods, offer a stark contrast between new and old fabric, enhance the archaeology and foster understanding of the remains. The prototype studies point to the following benefits of enveloping ruins in a modern structure: nontraditional materials often lead to less literal, more open-ended presentations that promote discovery, transparency and spanning potential provide a broad range of possibilities for protection and interpretation, a dialogue between past and present allows for creative expressions about temporal relationships, and the appearance of decay enhances the phenomenological impact of the site. / text

In the last decade we have witnessed the strengthening of an international network of higher education all over the world. The need to educate and develop our contemporary society is a machine in continuous work and progress. Being a student is a condition that makes individuals, enriches culture and often crosses boundaries. Students are a necessary piece in the capitalist economy, which makes them a valuable and essential resource in order to sustain its markets. Therefore, countries and institutions compete to hold more and more students within their society but what are the consequences of the internationalisation of higher education (and its market(s) that is taking place on a global scale? The globalisation and internationalisation of education promote a migration of students always on the rise. In some cities such as Umeå, it implies consequent urban growth, the need to develop facilities, services and accommodations. Such patterns of immigration make students actors in the real estate market of the country they move to but they do not always find adequate conditions for their integration. The current economic crisis has debilitated many markets including that of real estate, and in that context, the thesis explores alternative ways of approaching affordable accommodation for students, as well as a different understanding of urban planning that aims at enabling diverse coexistences of students and other inhabitants and the progressive transformation and hybridisation of otherwise very homogenous areas of the city.

Food is something that we all have in common. We need it to survive and although we don’t always notice it, it has structured our relationships, homes, communities, countryside and cities for as long as humans have been around. The invention of farming led to the first static settlements, thus, enabling the evolution of cities.  In Sweden, the way people live and eat has changed drastically over the last fifty years. A society that was previously made up of clusters of small self-sufficient family-run farms has urbanised rapidly becoming one of the least self-sufficient, supermarket-dominated countries in Europe. Current housing developments such as Tavleliden (described by the municipality as a ‘nature-oriented’ area) on the outskirts of Umeå are designed and marketed in a way that encourages its residents to do little else but drive to the shops and consume.   In order to reach optimistic population and economic growth goals, politicians in Umeå hope that the rapid rate of urbanisation will continue. Many decisions, such as building new roads, covering up valuable agricultural land, subsidising large out-of-town retail centres and cutting down on services in surrounding villages are being justified because of these expectations. The landscape is not only becoming defined by cars and places to shop, but it seems the only people being catered for are those with money to spend.   The favouritism towards large corporations has not only made life almost impossible for independent businesses in the city to survive, (the number of independent food shops in the city centre has gone from thirty-six in 1950 to just one upmarket delicatessen in 20142), but according to Bjorn Forsberg they are also making it difficult for small food shops and farms outside Umeå - and the communities that rely on them to survive. While many middle-class families with jobs in the city are choosing to move to the suburbian developments outof- town, people whose livelihoods may have depended on the land are being forced to move into the town.  Some of us may find the experience of visiting a supermarket bland. Others may find the permanent and predictable choice of products from all over the world thrilling. Whatever our differing opinions, the fact is that, as there is very little else to choose from, whether we want to or not, in Umeå we all rely on them.   If we start trying to imagine the length of roads, train lines, airports, food-distribution centres and ferries that need to work faultlessly day in and day out delivering enough food for almost 300,000 meals a day to Umeå alone, we realise how important, but also how dependent the current food network is. If this system failed in Sweden, unlike many other counties who stock reserves, there would be a food crisis in only two days.   By emphasising the benifits of organic and offering connections to the production process Swedish food businesses such as Minfarm, Älvåkern and phone applications like ‘Bonde På Köpet’ are working to increase the appeal of locally produced food, though still cater for a largely middle-class market. Other producers in Västerbotten such as Hallnås or Baggböle Gård, are either relient on the neo-liberal supermarket system to sell their products or if they do sell directly to clients currently lack the resources to make themselves known.   You may wonder why I think that this matters and why it has any relation to architecture. If there’s food on the shelves, what’s wrong with continuing with business as usual?   If ‘we are what we eat’, I would also argue that the design of our cities, homes (and of course, the hinterland that we rely on!) are also a result of ‘what we eat’. But, as the English architect Carolyn Steel points out in her book Hungry City “No government, including our own, has ever wanted to admit its dependency on others for sustenance.” Arne Lindström, the regional manager for The Federation of Swedish Farmers (LRF) has similar concerns. In a recent article in Västerbotten’s Kuriren he exclaims: “The reason why we have to farm seems to have been lost during an era of abundance. That food is essential is actually no longer obvious, and it is even less obvious that agriculture’s primary task is precisely to produce our food.”   So, it seems that as a city we care very little about our food. We are happy to exchange valuable arable land for a large shop that sells cheap mass-produced furniture. We are happy to drain our hinterlands of the people and expertise that know how to produce food. We are happy to keep building more supermarkets and ordering catalogue houses that require more cars and more oil.  What if instead, there was an architecture that allowed another kind of living? One that was less dependent on cars and imported food. One that encouraged residents to be producers as well as consumers. Maybe an alternative to the secluded suburbs and souless supermarkets that are being planned all around the city. An architecture that allows communities develop that are more connected to the land and the food that it eats. This thesis will explore these ideas.

This is about acting from a situation, a place, its conditions and its actors. It is an attempt to understand the ongoing transformations of the city of Umeå, to grasp how it functions and gain the knowledge to be able to act within and suggest new possible futures. By looking at Umeå and the current situation with the parking lot as an index, a tool, a laboratory, and a possible new common, new ways of building the city while living within it will be suggested. The non place of the parking lot with its singular purpose is part of the mechanisms that makes our city, at the same time it is the effect of this city making and it is also a great place to start a change of such system. The 2.5x5 meters that makes a parking lot is small in comparison with the city, and even more so in comparison with the country or the world, but the size also makes it possible to grasp, touch and inhabit. The smallness makes it seem rather innocent and without much importance but the power lies within its multiplicity. A change within a parking lot might not be much, but the possibility of spreading throughout the city and the world makes the parking lot a very powerful place. Since humans can sometimes be creatures of habit, I believe that it is extremely important to keep on questioning the way we inhabit the world together. Widely spread and accepted habits can start acting like dysfunctional natural laws steering us in a direction we might not have chosen if alternatives were presented to us. By investigating and testing the possibilities of such a bland and unquestioned place as the parking lot, I am looking to find glimpses of alternative ways of making the world while living it.

Parking, a seemingly mundane topic, have a huge impact on peoples right to the city. This thesis aims to explore the effects of the regulatory space created by parking norms and policies within the urban landscape. Parking is in this thesis identified as an active form, drawing from the work of Keller Easterling. Being controlled and regulated at the municipal level, parking is a question of local politics. This opens up possibilities for reorganizing parking as a tool for planning and place-making. By rewiring the organization of parking, from an individual property into a cooperative infrastructure, parking becomes a platform for generating local communities in the mid-sized Swedish city.

The intention of this dissertation is to reprogramme dead or underused urban space in order to create an interactive economic and educational facility. This is achieved by the use of food and architecture acts as the catalysts which activates the dead or underused space. The growth and expansion of cities are uncontrollable, the border between urban and landscape becomes increasingly unclear. Architecture becomes an exhibition of the proposed interventions, between urban and landscape. An existing parking lot in the Pretoria CBD is used to prove that, if an architectural intervention is attached to the existing urban fabric, a space were people can interact and experience the city can be activated. This is a place where the ritual of food and of architecture can be explored. This project revolves around the debate over the impact of the ritual of eating and how architecture is an ingredient in the ritual of eating. The design borrows from the predominant principles of the chef to satisfy the hunger of consumers. The project responds to the context, the conscious and the subconscious. Like a meal, a poem, or a piece of music, it aims to create a feast for the senses. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Architecture / unrestricted

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O trabalho consiste na análise dos projetos de Lina Bo Bardi que incorporam construções preexistentes, mais especificamente a obra do Sesc Fábrica da Pompeia (1977 - 1986), em que a arquiteta reúne as reflexões que a levaram a manter antigas estruturas, a partir de um processo projetual que, apesar de suas referências, mostra-se autônomo. As ideias sobre \"presente histórico\" e cultura popular, e suas vivências, tanto na Itália como no Brasil, determinam uma postura aparentemente independente do Movimento Moderno e, em especial, da arquitetura da Escola Paulista. Apesar de compartilhar ideais próximos aos dessa escola, os princípios morfológicos adotados por Lina Bo Bardi para atingi-los são opostos, justamente por considerarem a preexistência. Faz-se uma analise comparativa entre esses procedimentos projetuais, levando-se em conta que, no período da construção do Sesc Pompeia, novas visões acerca da relação entre projeto e cidade começavam a ser levantadas. / The work consists of the analysis of the projects of Lina Bo Bardi that incorporate constructions The works of the SESC Pompeii Factory (1977 - 1986), in That the architect brings together the reflections that have led her to maintain old structures, from a Design process that, despite its references, shows itself to be autonomous. The ideas about \"Historical present\" and popular culture, and their experiences, both in Italy and in Brazil, An apparently independent stance of the Modern Movement, and in Architecture of the Escola Paulista. Despite sharing ideals close to those of School, the morphological principles adopted by Lina Bo Bardi to reach them are opposites, Precisely because they consider the preexistence. A comparative analysis is made between these Procedures, taking into account that, during the period of construction of the Sesc Pompeii, new visions about the relationship between project and city were beginning to be raised