1 place 33 rooms – Portrait of a house

Christine Petersen

1 place 33 rooms “Memory, including collective memory, is linked to houses. When we eradicate a place in the exterior world, we lose a major pathway into our own history.” Lena Lindgren, Morgenbladet, 2. November 2012 The project is based on a real place, a house in Oslo. I am interested in how our memory connects with places and houses, in expanding our understanding of what a house and a place are, seen from the perspective of our own cultural background, time and history – and in the perceptions and experiences that are associated with it. In the significance of how the rooms are organised in relation to each other and what happens if the room is freed from the context in which it stands. It is rare to experience an isolated room that doesn’t relate to anything else, torn from its place, time and spatial context. The neutral room simply doesn’t exist. A key aspect of architecture is the experience of going from one room to another. The way the rooms are organised in relation to each other affects the sense of what it is like to be in the house. From the starting point that architecture begins with a single room, I have explored what criteria a space has to fulfil to be called a room and how big it has to be. Everyone relates to rooms – whether it is a private room like a bedroom, kitchen, dining room, or a public space such as a café, library or railway station. The work comprises six physical installations, plus the book and archive “33 fortellinger” (33 stories).

NR 08 Frokoststue

Christine: Her spiste familien Nielsen frokost og alle sine måltider. Det er et rom skreddersydd for ett møbel: spisebordet. Vi trodde det var et klenodium, tegnet for rommet av arkitekten Jens Selmer. Etter en samtale med Tuva fant vi ut at bordet opprinnelig stod i verkstedet og ble brukt av hennes far til sjauearbeid. Da bordet skulle kastes, ble det flyttet inn i rommet av noen leieboere. Fordi overflaten er så røff, bruker vi alltid duk. Bordet ble stående igjen fordi Gaute syntes det var for tungt å bære ut.

Tuva: Vi hadde en helt annet type spisebord med nette bordben, som slapp lyset så fint inn i rommet gjennom to franske dører mot syd.

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