ANOTHER CRACK IN THE WALL

Aarhus School of Architecture wishes to expand the artistic ‘occupation’ of the public space – the green wedge – which runs along the old railway tracks between the school, the school’s gallery, Institut for X, and Godsbanen.

At the international architecture festival on Friday, September 20, we will inaugurate the permanent land art piece Another Crack In The Wall – a 22-meter-long wall made of ‘imperfect’, discarded Norwegian marble, which, through tectonics and architecture, connects fauna, flora, insects, and the many people who pass through the area daily. The work will permanently settle into its new surroundings when an intervention creates a giant CRACK. Join us at 13:00 – everyone is welcome.

The ecology and aesthetics of the quarry

The research project Ecologies of Stone, which explores quarry practices, aims to establish interdisciplinary project cases, stories, and research groups across natural sciences and the humanities. In collaboration with partners within quarry practices and building techniques, the goal is to ensure a more sustainable and responsible future use of stone in construction. The ambition is to view stone extraction as a cyclical process – from quarry to building design and back to quarry rehabilitation – and instead of today’s intensive extraction and high rejection rates, investigate the aesthetic value of natural stone in relation to architecture. An ecology that considers equally what is taken and what is left behind.

Bringing biodiversity back to the Green Wedge

The outdoor areas of the architecture school are already undergoing landscape transformation through the research project LAARCH, which began in 2022 with a large-scale performance in which 100 students with 100 wheelbarrows moved soil from the outer edge of the green wedge to the area in front of the school to reintroduce biodiversity and insect life to the site. Here, among emerging fauna and flora, we aim to establish a new ‘host’ for diversity – one that embraces not only insects, fauna, and flora but also the marginal figures, us, the humans.

Another Crack In The Wall is a site-specific piece that relates to the landscape and the school’s neighbors (LIDL and Godsbanen, student housing, residential areas, and Institut for X) and to the many people who pass by every day and form part of the community in Aarhus K. The area is regularly flooded, which will make the piece appear as a shared ‘lifeline’.

Idea and Concept

Concept and idea: Karen Kjaergaard
Architect and designer: Jonathan Foote
Research Group: Ecologies of Stone
Supplier: Fauske Marble

Another Crack In The Wall is supported by the Nykredit Foundation.