Client: Telemark County Council
Place and time: Skien High School, Klosterøya, Skien, 2017–under development
Team: Artist and landscape architect Elin T. Sørensen, Tabea Glahs, Mads Pålsrud, Astrid Fadnes, students and teachers at Skien High School, Laurie Vestøl, Steinar Moe Eiendom and others,
Delivery: Concept and feasibility study for a public outdoor area associated with the school. Consisting of workshops with students and teachers, visual communication, drawings, maps, concept and landscape model. The project is under development.
Photos: Growlab Oslo, Elin T. Sørensen and Kåre Høyer
Project website: www.uteklasserom.no
Develop an art project that contributes to planning and activating a living urban space for city residents, with the opportunity to participate through participatory processes rather than a role as users of pre-planned urban spaces.
"Pyrolab" is a concept for a future exploratory learning space for pyrotechnic experiments and a social gathering place around fire. “Pyrolab” is designed as a sculptural installation in Klosterhavna park.
The project looks at how Skien vgs. can use the local environment and the surrounding landscape as a learning arena. Learning which in turn is passed on to the people of Skien. The goal is to give park visitors and users the opportunity to reflect on the landscape we tread on - its geology, history, ecology, biology, and how we humans manage it. A prerequisite for the project is to dig down to the bare rock in the park, where the geological phenomena such as fossils, volcanic times and a dividing line between two different geological eras are unique to the site.
The project will be realized in 2021-22.
The project "Pyrolab" has been developed as an explorative art project. Through the process, close collaboration with teachers and students at the research line and the IT line at Skien high school has developed. The project has focused heavily on collaboration, where the aim has been to establish ownership of the area among the pupils and at the same time explore the use of the area as a learning arena.
The participatory part of the process consisted of workshops with students and teachers as well as ordering "assignments" that the students have solved as part of the teaching. Pupils have conducted measurements and records of geological phenomena, contributed ideas and desires to outdoor classrooms, website design and content and public park features as well. In particular, important data were needed to map the bedrock beneath the park and contributed to the artistic development of the project.
