Programmatic booklet

Nele Bergmans Threshold conditions

investigating transition spaces in Dale, Norway spring 2016

transition spaces

You’re walking towards the house. You see the door and you feel familiarity, warmth. You walk towards the door, where you stand underneath the portico. You’re almost inside, your mind and thoughts allready are, just not your body. 2 minutes pass. Nobody’s home. The feeling of warmth and familiarity starts to fade. Your mind withdraws itself from the inside, and suddenly you’re just in this space in front of the door. This transition space lost his quality of transition. You can stay here for a while, think about what you will do now that nobody is home. Then you step outside this

threshold back into the real world.

You’re going towards your house. You are on your bicycle, but already jumping off it as the shadow of the portico reaches your front tire. You are home now anyway. Maybe not inside with your body, but home with your mind. In transition space, but more on the side of allready inside. Feeling home in the fullest sence of the word. You could almost not feel more home. Oh shit, you lost your key. What now? You don’t feel inside anymore. Just close to it. The outer side of the transition space. While time passes with waiting untill somebody else comes home, this treshold space becomes more and more

just outer space.

Is threshold space only valuable if your mind is already in the space behind it? Does it loses its qualtities the moment your lose the possiblity of going to the space

behind it?

4 | threshold conditions

WHERE

We are in Norway, in Sogn og Fjordane. The village is called Dale (valley). There are a lot of Dale’s, but this one is Dale i Sunnfjord. It’s part of the Fjaler municipallity. In the municipality Dale is the biggest village( 1.077 inhabitants) with a density of 970/km². The village is located at the mouth of the river Vassdalselva on the southern shore of the Dalsfjorden.

Aksvoll

Nele Bergmans | 5

WHERE

We are in Norway, in Sogn og Fjordane. The village is called Dale (valley). There are a lot of Dale’s, but this one is Dale i Sunnfjord. It’s part of the Fjaler municipallity. In the municipality Dale is the biggest village( 1.077 inhabitants) with a density of 970/km². The village is located at the mouth of the river Vassdalselva on the southern shore of the Dalsfjorden.

Gaular

Fjaler

Dalsfjorden

61°21’46.1”N 5°23’55.4”E


express boat : 3 h

HOW

Acces from Bergen to Dale. Other things you can see: There is a river running through Dale, she is called Dalselva. Dale is surrounded by mountains. The village shoreline is facing North.

Nele Bergmans | 7

bus: 4 h

drive to airport: 40 min

HOW

Acces from Bergen to Dale. Other things you can see: There is a river running through Dale, she is called Dalselva. Dale is surrounded by mountains. The village shoreline is facing North.

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CONTEXT : ART

Fjaler kummune wants to pro-file itself as an artistic creative, open community. They have international art-ists that are coming to Dale through : NKD (a), The ide-al lab in Transplant building (b), and the old municipalty building (c).

a

a

b

b

c

c


ed

c

b

b

a

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CONTEXT: CITY CENTER

There is some activity in Dale city cen-ter. People come togheter to go to the main buildings of the town: the church (a), the two cafe’s (b), the COOP (c), the shopping mal (d) and the kummune building with library (e). These buildings have a commercial or public function, but in both cases they are clearly a meeting point. If things are happening in town, most of the time it on the grass area in front of the allmuen cafe, around the Jacob Sande statue. It seems that this is a generous public space.


CONTEXT : DAILY LIFE

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a

b

a b

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c

c

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CONTEXT : THE PLACE AND THE HOUSE

This is the house I have chosen. It ap-peared to me as typical Norwegian. The co-lour, the pitched roof, the portico’s. I discovered a lot of protico’s. Above front door, above back door, in front of other portico in front of back door, on top of ventilation, for the mailboxes, for the windows, or sometimes just for fun?

This is the house i have chosen. It stands besides the coastline in Dale. The place is very interesting, because it has so much potential, but nothing’s happening there. It stands beside the Ideal lab , the trans-plant building. This is a ‘creative idea lab’ where they make theater plays and art installations. Because it’s not used the whole year, they rent out 2/3 of the build-ing for office space. By this action it los-es its potential as social actor. It seems that local people don’t feel need to come to this place. They have enough of their social onteracting by going to the COOP or the shopping mal. But this yellow house, wich marks some kind of entrance to this piece of land, could play a role in acti-vating this part of the city. I will look search for ways to aproach, for ways to enter. Maybe the way to is more important then the entering itself. The house and the place are analysed, though over and imagined different. Investigation is still going.

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Norwegian houses and ex-pansions

It rains a lot in Norway, especially in Dale. People want some shelter. People want their guest to have some shelter while wait-ing for them to open the door. Or for themselves still putting on their shoes but allready out-side. They made expansions and expansions, and every space gets an extra space that is just for entering the other space. Thresh-olds, transition spaces. From outise to inside (or would there also be some kind of space on the in-side for entering the out-side). In between. Some expansions are above win-dows, only sheltering the gaze from people looking outside. This transition space seems never to be the goal in itself. It’s usually not really spatial defined but more defined by feelings of home an famil-iarity. Could we prolong this space, just stay in it and make it the goal?


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Thresholds created.Picture one shows us the building in its purest form. Archetype of norwegian house. Strong in its lines, representing architecture, representing the house. Image 2 3 4 5 6 show us the thresholds they have made. In between the inside and the outside. Marking entanc-es or leading the way to entrances.

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treshold that leads to the space your were already in

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towards an entrance for your gaze. trapped inside or trapped outside? Or trapped in the threshold?


familiar elements leading towards entrances

entering, entering, e n t e r -ing, tran-s i t i o n to oth-er space, t h r e s h -old space, then real-ize there is no oth-er space then just this pro-l o n g e d threshold space.

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only thresholds, thresholds as spaces

familiar elements leading towards entrances

leading towards


familiar elements, marking an entrance, creating a threshold, indicating transition space

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familiar elements, marking an entrance, creating a threshold, indicating transition space


endless thresholds, endless transition spaces leading to entrances who lead to others entrances untill you’re back at the entrance

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endless thresholds, endless transition spaces leading to entrances who lead to others entrances untill you’re back at the entrance

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threshold conditions

Programmatic booklet

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