Research

Research conducted at the Tampere University of Technology and Aalto University in Finland, and case studies done in Germany.

DEARCHITECTURA
Type: Photoreportage
Client: Sektkellerei Höfer
Size: Photographs documenting the renewal process
Location: Würzburg, Germany
Status:: Research 2019-2024
Photographer: Juhani Karanka

Commisioned photoreportage of an old industrial building and its renewal process to new life at the Bürgerbräu Old Brewery. Interesting to develop further the ideas from Vitruvius and to redefine, what architecture could be in the future in Climate Emergency.

ANARCHITECTURE
Type: Photoreportage
Client: Pro bono
Size: Photographs documenting the anarchitecture
Location: Würzburg, Germany
Status:: Research 2019-
Photographer: Juhani Karanka

Research project into how birds do anarchitecture - architecture without architects. So far the species of mini-parrots (agapornis personata) have deconstructed LEGOs, ripped magazines, passports, travel documents, books, and build spiralling nests in several cardboard boxes. At the moment the research is conducted in the kitchen, where the Fantastic Four (Aino, Elissa, Neo and Noki) have invaded 60% of the kitchen upper cupboards as their cozying playground. Slowly these clever & cheecky feathered friends are taking over the whole home-laboratory.

MICRO-MIDI-MACRO
Type: Photoreportage with interviews
Client: Pro bono
Size: Photographs documenting the architecture offices in and around Würzburg
Location: Würzburg, Germany
Status:: Research 2019-
Photographer: Juhani Karanka

Research project into the creative spaces of architects in and around Würzburg. The results of the interviews and photo shoots will be published in a limited edition. Above photograph was taken at the Jäcklein Architekten in Volkach on 27 March 2019, and shows the loft in the main studio space with a grand view to the local vineyards.

JÜRGEN MAYER H.
Type: Interview
Client: Finnish Association of Architects SAFA / Arkkitehtiuutiset
Size: Interview text with photographs 
Location: Berlin, Germany
Status:: Published in Arkkitehtiuutiset 9/2011
Author: Juhani Karanka

The interview with German architect Jürgen Mayer H. conducted in his office in Berlin was published few weeks later in the Finnish Association of Architects publication Arkkitehtiuutiset 9/2011.

PLAY, CREATIVITY, ARCHITECTURE 1:1
Type: Master's Thesis for academic and professional degree in Science in Architecture
Size: A4-sized publication with text and hand-drawn images
Location: Tampere, Finland
Status:: Publicly presented and published at the Department of Architecture / Tampere University of Technology TUT on 25.08.1999
Author: Juhani Karanka

Master in Science of Architecture at the Department of Architecture. This thesis is a sketch for a theory of meta-architecture and search for the Beginning of Architecture. Architecture is approached from the aspects of play and creativity by using both scientific and artistic methods. Thesis contains six written essays about play, creativity and architecture, as well as three built architectural objects. Together they manifest how architecture is born in play. As a combination of art and science, architecture is a cultural phenomenon. The Culture of Architecture contains the possibility for infinitive subcultures - many architectures. The complexity of architecture is the combination of imagination and reality, chaos and order. form follows fun!

FLASH
Type: Study in Advanced Public Building Design
Size: Architectural drawings and model in scale 1:500
Location: Tampere, Finland
Status: Designed 1991
Design: Juhani Karanka

Conceptual study for a new School of Architecture in the city centre of Tampere. The buildings are designed with slowly curving walls made out of red brick that interact with the urban context through its open spaces. The construction engineering teacher really loved the idea of making these walls curvy as they would support the bearing loads better. The walls are also monolithic: the over one-meter thick red brick massive walls are sustainable and last time better than many other materials. To top it all the corner of the site was designed as the tip of the iceberg; a sculptural entrance lobby totally made out of amber. As always, also this design concept was "a little bit too much" for the professors at the Architecture School. 

CRASH
Type: Study in Public Building Design
Size: Architectural drawings and model in scale 1:200
Location: Tampere, Finland
Status: Designed 1990
Design: Juhani Karanka

Conceptual study of an exhibition pavilion at Keskustori Main Square in Tampere. The nose section is a VTOL aircraft for skytouring over the city, the main section is an all-glass exhibition pavilion transported to site by Sikorsky CH-54 heavy-lift transport helicopter, and the tail section is a multimedia 3D-cinema floating on air and moving around the square by using hovercraft technology. Also this design concept was "a little bit too much" for the professors at the Architecture School.

TRASH
Type: Study in Housing Design
Size: Architectural drawings and model in scale 1:50
Location: Tampere, Finland
Status: Designed 1988-1989
Design: Juhani Karanka

Conceptual study of a 2 meter wide gap and how it could be used for urban housing. Ground floor is an open public passage with stairs upstairs, first floor an upcycled submarine, second floor an old locomotive and third floor a vintage aeroplane. The whole composition is tipped off with a wooden sauna and a heliport. The inside courtyard behind the gap has a seven-story-high, star-shaped, tilted housing tower. Not bad for student living on the main street in City of Tampere - for 1 € / month.

TRASH
Type: Study in Advanced Urban Planning and Theory
Size: Deconstruction game with pieces out of paper, ceramics, wood, and metal, model landscape made out of aluminium
Location: Tampere, Finland
Status: Designed 1988-1989
Design: Juhani Karanka & Jukka Järvinen

Architectural game, a-game / a-peli, is an architectural game invented for Playing & De-Constructing Architecture. This is one of the few existing Polaroid photographs of the original a-game that received the Prize for Best Academic Work at the Tampere University of Technology in 1989.

POMO - Postmodern Housing
Type: Study in Housing Design
Size: Drawings
Location: Tampere, Finland
Status: Designed 1985
Design: Juhani Karanka

Flashback: Drawn with a pencil on classic Tervakoski sketching paper, this façade design for housing didn‘t impress the Professor for Housing at the University. Well, he was a good-old hardcore Modernist and really preferred to protect the honesty of architecture. No funny stuff, no curves or non-straight lines, no symmetry, no nothing, no, no, no,... Well, I think that the design is still unbeatable and reflects its time of creation.