MO DESIGNS CONTROLLED DECAY

07.11.2022

When we demolish, we also sever the connection to our past. Mo Michelsen Stochholm Krag has, however, no intention of letting our collective memory pass away unnoticed.

In Bedsted, a town in the Danish district of Thy, the neighbour is moving in. And the neighbour is a plantation. Associate Professor Mo Michelsen Stochholm Krag and his colleague, Associate Professor Stefan Darlan Boris, are in the process of introducing the forest into the town, allowing culture and nature to merge and transform Bedsted from a railway town into a “forest town”.

This transformation reflects the processes in the area in which Mo is a mainstay. It also aptly reflects his research. His research method is called research by design, signifying that the research actively intervenes in the world on which it focuses.

The unseen heritage

In Mo’s case, this heritage has often been buildings and places in Thy he visited during the first five years of his life. He now visits these places from his base in Aarhus, to implement what he calls controlled decay in places where the decay may sometimes appear uncontrolled and omnipresent.

‘There are plenty of ways and methods of preserving our heritage from the distant past. However, we lack both funds and methods for preserving buildings from the recent past – the majority. This is the unseen cultural heritage’, says Mo Michelsen Stochholm Krag.

Stretching time

But Mo sees it. And, what is more important, he works with it in new ways. His interventions are not necessarily big gestures that restore the buildings to the highest possible level. They may also be temporary.

‘In this case, the aim is to expose the historical layers that make up a building and boost them before the house disappears. It is about stretching or compressing time before it is entirely gone. It may be projects that run over ten years, where something transforms into nature through controlled decay, or it can be a one-off event.’

The interventions make the local residents aware of the place. And this provides an opportunity for exchanging personal memories. Which strengthens our collective memory.

In Denmark we demolish

To provide an example: Mo has been working with three buildings on the main street of Hurup, in Thy. Here he encapsulated an imprint of the gable of a building located there, in order to create a connection to the past.

The necessity of striking a blow for our collective memory does not least result from the Danish eagerness to tear down buildings rather than transform them.

‘Here in Denmark the tradition of transformation is weak. We are quick to tear down and construct new buildings. That is what our entire building industry is geared for. There is a marked contrast to South Africa, where I have been working on several occasions. Down there, labour is cheap, whereas materials are expensive. For this reason their approach to building transformation is more developed. In Denmark, the opposite is the case.’

From three to ten floors

Mo mainly works in Thy, where migration away from the area and lack of resources make renovating unprofitable. It is, however, also a big problem in the larger towns. Paradoxically, there it is the high value of the land that makes renovating unprofitable.

‘The municipalities may well sell properties for demolition, even if a preservation-worthy three-story building is located on it. For you can make more money tearing down a building and constructing ten stories on the same plot.’

Students can be an attraction

It is easy to see that Mo has great veneration for tiny, perhaps even neglected, places; the places that need love and attention. But what drives him is just as much the contact with people.

‘When we are out there messing around, someone always comes over for a chat. Especially if we bring students along – they are great mediators. It also gets the locals talking to each other and makes them exchange memories.’

His care for vulnerable places and people may have its origin in Mos’s childhood, when he, being the son of two priests, experienced that the home was a place that was open to others. For instance, his mother invited a group of Tamil refugees to dinner in the late eighties to help them become a part of the community.

Mo is someone who basically believes in the best in his fellow humans. And, he says, there are ‘not many people I don’t like’.

From Faaborg to Department X

When he was five, his parents had a divorce, and he moved to Faaborg with his mother. Here he finished school and his secondary education. Because he was very interested in drawing and painting, Mo began studying at Aarhus School of Architecture, from where, after a short detour to study biology, he graduated in 1999. From the then department of experimental architecture – “Department X”. At that time, he had developed a very strong interest in the discipline, after, he claims, having spent the first two years of his studies ‘being angry and in opposition to everything.’

As a recent graduate in architecture, he found his way into practice, accidentally landing him in Thy once again. His wife was doing her medical internship there, and Mo came along. At first, he worked in Niels Christoffersen’s architecture office and later at Sahl Arkitekter. And then again in Niels Christoffersen’s office, spending three days a week in the office in Thy. In parallel, he started his own company with a partner. But in 2010, he received a call from his former head of institute at Aarhus School of Architecture, offering him a position as part-time teacher. The rest, as they say, is history:

From 2006 onwards, he designed villas and small institutions in his company while also teaching at the school from 2010 onwards.

But in 2013, he was given an opportunity to start on his PhD dissertation, Transformation on Abandonment, and all of his attention was now devoted to the school.

Along the way, he has been a visiting researcher at, respectively, the University of Westminster, London, and Historic Preservation, Columbia University NYC. Today, he is an associate professor and teaches in Studio 1C – Transformation and Adaptive Re-use – a course he started up together with Associate Professor Leif Høgfeldt Hansen.

Radical preservation

In his research, he is, as mentioned, working on a radical preservation project: he is introducing the forest into Bedsted, alongside anthropologists and other people from Aalborg, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, and researchers from Moesgård Museum (MOMU).

‘We are bringing a 200-years-old plantation from the south into the city and allowing it to merge with reminiscences of the buildings that are being demolished. In some of the buildings it is, for instance, the foundation that is left to form a clearing in this new forest, transforming a railway town into a “forest town”. In terms of time, the scope of this project is at least 20 years’, Mo explains.

The approach is a way of adding architectural qualities to an irreversible process – and avoiding rapid demolition, which is a form of amputation. You might say that Mo instead strives to leave the scars in the town or landscape because they are specific reflections of the lives people have lived at the site.

‘My interest lies in the significance of these buildings, particularly in the small villages – and their absence. In the short term, people welcome demolishing buildings – it is a kind of government-approved way of buying absolution: you demolish and tidy up. But the buildings are also anchor points in our collective memory, which means we lose something when they are demolished: identity and local cohesion. This is why I work a lot with controlled decay as a form of conservation’, Mo explains.

And this is also why he attempts to include in his projects the response of the local residents to developments. In a former pastry shop on Hurup Hovedgade, the town’s main street, a building he transformed together with a theatre called Teater Nordkraft, they once served pastries and coffee in the courtyard. People would then drop by and talk about their connections with the site.

‘A father came in with his daughter. They discovered a board with the name Vagner Hansen on it. Your great-grandfather laid this floor, he then said.’

Development as a way of countering abandonment

If you take a quick glance at Mo’s resume you are left with the impression of a man who never stands still. New projects, travels or collaborations are always simmering just below the surface. So, although he is working to preserve our collective memory and prevent the tentacles of oblivion from entangling the field lab in Thy, his energies are also intensely directed at the now and the future. He emphasises the importance of spotting and grasping sudden opportunities, rather than following a detailed plan to the letter.

‘My worst enemy is when things become routine. I cannot go on in the same rut for the next 20 years. I need development.’

Development – surely that is just the right “herbicide” for a man who has dedicated his professional life to combating local and regional abandonment?