I'm running a workshop with students at Arkitektskolen Aarhus.
Titled "4 Contexts", the workshop takes students to the west coast of Jylland where they will work in and around the WWII bunkers built for the German forces occupying Denmark at that time.
By placing and re-placing the same 4 elements in 4 different contexts, students will be made aware of the importance of and variations in context, even within a very small area. In this case, the site stretches barely 100 metres from land to sea yet encompasses dunes, bunkers, a beach and the water's edge.

The Danish student invasion of Sydney and Broken Hill ended well!  For more information, go to
http://www.terroir.com.au/articles/culture/aarhus-to-broken-hill and
http://www.terroir.com.au/articles/culture/the-opera-in-3-acts

On return to Aarhus, the high level of activity continued with a 2-week TERROIR Masterclass.  In the class, students were asked to explore the potential of the inner-outer condition in architecture to address a critical urban project in the city of Aarhus.  Having lectured often in Denmark about multiculturalism and the special issues of integration in this particularly tight and consistent cultural context, we set the project as a new mosque on the site adjacent to the oldest church in the city.  The siting was provocative but also inspired by a recent trip to Istanbul where of course various places of worship exist alongside each other as part of a continuous urban fabric.

The political, phenomenological and psychological potential of this project - in a city rife with debate over multiculturalism and from where the infamous Mohammed cartoons originated - was significant.  The students pushed themselves very hard, fighting always that Scandinavian need for a polite consensus on what was an impossible project to achieve such a thing.

In the middle of the masterclass, I was asked to perform in a play! Specifically, I was invited to give a speech on architecture as the centrepiece of a play "after Kakfa" - titled KAAKF (alias FKAAK, alias AAKKF) - at the Skuespilhuset in Copengagen.

The play was in two parts.  Part One, directed by Anders Paulin and featuring Maria Rossing, Jannie Faurschou and Anders Mossling, addresses themes in Kafka's work via a range of explorations into the concepts of fear, identity, foreignness, power and heirarchy.  The second half of the play has been shared by a range of creatives from Copenhagen - including architect Lene Mirdal - who were asked to explore these themes using techniques from their own discipline.

Lene's work, titled "Til Bords" (to the table) turns the stage into a giant dinner party with a 3 course perfume menu.  At the mid-point of the dinner, a specialist in a range of fields - from philosophy to architecture - give a speech which explores Kafka's themes in their own work.

I discussed Zizek, the Tasmanian dams debate and environmental and cultural sustainability as he moved through the themes of fear, identity, foreignness, power and hierarchy, concluding with a reference to the masterclass underway in Aarhus at the same time.

The next focus for me and TERROIR is a series of projects in Stockholm, but they can wait for the next post!

This posting is being written from Broken Hill.  The students will do a collaborative land art project out here to end the trip.  Its an amazing thing having taken over the Palace Hotel (of Priscilla fame) and turned it into a giant studio.  The session here started with a giant march to Silverton leaving at 6am, 120 Danes strung along a desert highway . . walking for 5 hours.
 
I'm then back to Denmark for the last 3 months of the appointment.  The first month will be focused on a TERROIR-masterclass also involving Richard and Scott, while the next 2 months will be on more of a roving brief having been so centrally involved with the student visit.

As per the previous post, February saw the commencement of my Visiting Professorship in Denmark (Arkitekskolen Aarhus).  The month involved an introductory lecture on TERROIR, 6 lectures by me on Utzon (expanded from the Utzon symposium in 2008), a small Utzon symposium (with Jan Utzon and Adrian Carter)Developing the assignments for the Sydney workshop with students and organising various pragmatic issues for the workshop.
 
Following this, 120 students and 10 teachers came to Australia to work on the Opera House alongside 120 UTS students.  This massive group of 240 students were treated to lectures by Richard Johnson, Richard Hough (ARUP) and a range of tours of the Opera House.  The project was based around getting young student to seriously focus on looking at buildings . . and doing so in a clear-minded way.  So, having been exposed to a lot of information on the Opera House the students were then asked to look at SOH in a variety of ways and to map the findings.  Finally, students were asked to make a reflection of some sort.  These activities were done in groups of 4, so there were 60 groups doing 3 different assignments each, so a total of 180 hand-ins.
 
In the middle of that was a tour of Sydney, winding our way to the Blue Mountains via a mosque, some key immigrant suburbs and a special McMansion extravanagza.  It was great to show the students that Australia is more than a harbour and some kangaroos.

The first week in Aarhus was really something - 150 enthusiastic students and a task of giving 7 lectures in 2 days!  On top of that, the architecture school was buried in snow!

Six of the seven lectures were a series I have been developing on Utzon's work, and the Opera House in particular.  Rather than relying on the stuff of myth and legend in trying to interpret the work, I have been suggesting that the next generation has no choice other than to make their own direct observations of the work and then to reflect on these in the context of their own practice.  Thus, the six lectures take different slices through Utzon's work, suggesting that defamiliarisation, importation, mimesis and other strategies can be observed.  By way of demonstration, these strategies are then reviewed in the context of TERROIR projects.

On the third day, we then held an Utzon symposium, featuring contributions from Jan Utzon, Adrian Carter and Michael Asgaard Andersen.  These three perspectives - from the recollections of Jan to the theoretical reflections from Michael - provided a perfect backdrop for the students to further consider the work before they visit it in a few weeks.  Yes, we are taking most of these students (120 in fact) to Sydney for a 2-week intensive with UTS where I am Adjunct Professor.

The end of the week bought me back to Copenhagen where I visited Thomas Bo Jensen at the Royal Danish Academy. Thomas wrote the brilliant book on PV Jensen Klint - a real master who is little known outside Scandinavia.  If you don't know the book, get it!

There has also been some time spent meeting with a range of people who might be future collaborators with TERROIR ApS which has now opened in Copenhagen.  It is worth mentioning 2plus1, an ideas agency working on a lot of cool stuff including BIG's Danish pavilion for the Shanghai expo. Speaking of BIG and Bjarke, seeing him for dinner next week, maybe we can get a photo of 2 "Adam and Eve Projects" artists in the same space!

This post finishes on a train crossing bridges between Denmark's islands, gazing at windmills in the sea and contemplating today's schedule at Aarhus.

2010 is a big year for TERROIR with a number of recently completed projects making way for some interesting diversions and digressions.
For me, the first 6 months will revolve around a rapid series of jumps back and forth between Australia and Denmark as I maintain my role in the practice while also working as Visiting Professor at the architecture school in Aarhus.
After an incredibly hot and sticky few weeks in January I have arrived here in Denmark to the coldest winter in 23 years.  The warmth of Bondi Icebergs has given way to a white abstract landscape bereft of the detail and nuance that is usually so engaging in Denmark.  Instead, wide open spaces and minimal landscapes abound.  Simple tasks such as going to dinner become adventures in -10 degrees as one cycles back and forth cross Copenhagen through snow and ice.  
Will post again soon to summarise the first week in Aarhus - a marathon of lectures and a symposium and a first meeting with 120 very keen and engaged students.  In the interim, enjoy some icy photos, including a black box in a white landscape by Anders Gammelgaard of the Aarhus school . .