The Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers: Objective
How to Design a City:
City of the Morfar
Morfar translates to Grandfather in Swedish.
The City of the Morfar is designed from personal memories and exists as a catalogue of mere facts. These facts have been mistaken and misremembered reflecting the cities of Morfar’s past along with his extended lifespan. In other words, the Morfar cannot distinguish between truths and falsehoods as they actually happened and therefore tells a story/narrative to the best of his ability. This objectivity is the one which creates the drawings of the portfolio as a series of analogue marks assembled in a digital age. The City of the Morfar is imaginary as are all the cities we visit via tales of an experienced storyteller. The Morfar’s story constructs a city literally by drawing the spaces and characters as objectively as possible. This objectivity produces sixteen drawings both in oblique and elevation which opens a dialog between the characters and the readers of the portfolio as a document revealing Morfar’s cyclical visions.
The Morfar’s role is one that brings the city as a collective into sight through multi-generational points of view. The multi-generational view is created by a single character who assembles his memories into a series of thirty-three elevational profiles representing subject/object building types of which eleven of are paired with oblique representations. The subject/object relationships are established as the Morfar vacillates between these building types throughout the portfolio. The portfolio is therefore a family portrait of all the cities Morfar has visited throughout his lifetime. This family portrait is an act of archeology that uncovers and reconfigures iconic buildings into an old and new city, transcending visionary urban conditions into a mindset anyone can temporally inhabit.
How to Design a City:
- One character, many roles
- Subject/Object relationships
- All building is a matter of facts
City of the Morfar
Morfar translates to Grandfather in Swedish.
The City of the Morfar is designed from personal memories and exists as a catalogue of mere facts. These facts have been mistaken and misremembered reflecting the cities of Morfar’s past along with his extended lifespan. In other words, the Morfar cannot distinguish between truths and falsehoods as they actually happened and therefore tells a story/narrative to the best of his ability. This objectivity is the one which creates the drawings of the portfolio as a series of analogue marks assembled in a digital age. The City of the Morfar is imaginary as are all the cities we visit via tales of an experienced storyteller. The Morfar’s story constructs a city literally by drawing the spaces and characters as objectively as possible. This objectivity produces sixteen drawings both in oblique and elevation which opens a dialog between the characters and the readers of the portfolio as a document revealing Morfar’s cyclical visions.
The Morfar’s role is one that brings the city as a collective into sight through multi-generational points of view. The multi-generational view is created by a single character who assembles his memories into a series of thirty-three elevational profiles representing subject/object building types of which eleven of are paired with oblique representations. The subject/object relationships are established as the Morfar vacillates between these building types throughout the portfolio. The portfolio is therefore a family portrait of all the cities Morfar has visited throughout his lifetime. This family portrait is an act of archeology that uncovers and reconfigures iconic buildings into an old and new city, transcending visionary urban conditions into a mindset anyone can temporally inhabit.
Location: New York, New York
T. Joseph Surjan - design scientist & writer
S. Hjelte Fumanelli - project architect & digital modeling
T. Joseph Surjan - design scientist & writer
S. Hjelte Fumanelli - project architect & digital modeling