Led by environmental architect and anarchist, Marco Casagrande, representing the Aalto University Environmental Art Masters Program, students were to join in the creation of a nomadic city on the ice, both weathering and embracing the cold and wind, and alternating blizzards and slush over the course of ten days. There were twenty of them in total. In addition to Marco himself, his wife, Taiwanese journalist Nikita Wu, his long time friend Norwegian architect Hans-Petter Bjørnådal, Czech MA student and carpenter-extraordinaire Jan Tyrpekl, made up the organizational team. The Lapland native believes in an almost cruel method to his medium, where human intentions come naturally second to nature’s. It is with this in mind that one needs to approach his workshop on the frozen lake of Rössvatnet in subarctic Norway. More of the team’s description, by Guoda Bardauskaitė and Suzanne van Niekerk, on the workshop after the break.
A cross-disciplinary mix of environmental art, architecture, sociology and survival, The students were given a task to make a personal nomad shelter and collectively to build a movable Nomad Sauna on skies and an Aurora Observatory. Under the ice there were beautiful salmon related fishes – trout and arctic char. Local Knowledge was needed in order to get them up. The farmers around the lake were generous in helping the students and more than that curious to see if they could manage in the demanding Nordic winter conditions. For the course the survival was not enough – the students had to manage to construct in 1:1 scale and find beauty through their actions in the frozen environment.
