Architecture without reference: Exemplifying non-referential architecture in a log house

Abstract

This thesis aims at understanding a recent contribution to the theoretical discourse on architectonic value in the seven principles of non-referential architecture and how architects can use them in the local context of Swedish log houses. Their ideator, Valerio Olgiati, has produced interesting examples of non-referential architecture, but none within a timber building tradition. Log houses are both similar and different to Olgiati’s architecture, making them capable to inform the investigation. Experience of space, Oneness, Newness, Construction, Contradiction, Order and Sensemaking are the seven non-referential principles which concretize how architectonic value is created by architects through Experience of space and their Sensemaking possibilities. In the discourse on log houses, material culture is noted to be an enduring source of information on building traditions. It emphasizes that the physical elements of architecture contain value within themselves and that intersecting values can be stored in the built. The methodology is centred around a nonreferential workflow identified in the theory: architectural idea, programme adaptation, architectonic order and context adaptation. Initially, a theoretical investigation and inventory of the two types of architecture are made through studies of Olgiati’s built nonreferential architecture, Fabel Arkitektur’s contemporary log houses and traditional log houses, as well as model studies and sketches. The thesis results in a residential log house designed through the non-referential workflow corresponding to the seven principles. It challenges the concepts of Oneness and how extra-architectural values can become architectonic, offering a reading of the theory that increases its accessibility to architects operating in Sweden today. The exploration shows that non-referential architecture can create architectonic value within a local building tradition, at least in log houses. The non-referential possibilities stretch beyond the similarities to Olgiati’s architecture, namely through its potential for Oneness, ordering of the logs and historical connection. As such it has expanded the ideas of how architects can employ the seven principles in their non-referential practice and contributed to the discourse on architectonic value.