UC EVENTS

Speaker: Dr. Mo Michelsen Stochholm Krag

Date\Time: Thursday 27 February 2025, 12:30-13:30

Location: Building 1 Level A Room 1A21, University of Canberra (NB Room 1a21 is accessed from the foyer joining Building 1 and Mizzuna café); 

or Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/95029077504

Abstract

In contrast to classic restoration practices based on prolonging and upholding, this presentation revolves around a series of fulfilled, and on-going, temporary preservation attempts. These were developed and tested as radical preservation of abandoned buildings undertaken at full scale through a subtractive architectural practice. 

At first, the practice was initiated in Danish rural villages, testing temporary preservation strategies for the challenged rural built environment with emphasis on engagement with the local village communities. The intention was to re-activate obsolete buildings as material anchorage points of place-specific collective memories and thus, contribute to the rebuilding of the community cohesion and local identity. 

Since 2020, the preservation practice has engaged a larger scale. It now revolves around the on-going preservation of the entirety of a depopulating station town.  By expanding the scale, the involvement of the local community has increased. The local residents play a crucial role by taking part in the preservation practice and at the same time contribute with personal place-specific memories triggered in the process. 

All are welcome!

Bio

Mo Michelsen Stochholm Krag is an architect, educator and researcher born in Aarhus, Denmark in 1975. He earned his PhD in Architecture at the Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark in 2017. He holds a Master in Architecture. He has 17 years of experience in the private sector as a building architect. He was Co-Founder of architectural office Krag de Ridder ApS in 2006. He has been teaching and researching in the areas of adaptive reuse and radical preservation of the rural built environment since 2010.

The blue bathtub exposed as a result of a subtractive intervention in the former sexton’s home in the rural village Snedsted, Denmark. 

(Photograph by Mo Michelsen Stochholm Krag)

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