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 16 Hovedbad

Christine: Hovedbadet i 2. etasje er stort og lyst og har tre innganger. Når man ligger i badekaret, ser man opp i ett gammelt asketre. Før vi rev veggene, var denne delen av huset fylt opp av små rom. Her bodde hushjelpen med barna. Det fantes en mørk korridor, et rom for hushjelpen og et lite bad for barna. I korridoren var det montert en bjelle, som ringte hver gang noen i huset trengte hennes tjenester. Fra korridoren kunne hun sende barnas skitne klær fra 2. etasje via en skittentøyssjakt, forbi 1.etasje, ned til vaskerommet i kjelleren.

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