Oskar Hansen

From Monoskop
Revision as of 12:55, 7 August 2013 by Dusan (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Born 1922 in Helsinki. Died 2005 in Warsaw. Polish architect, theorist, educator, painter, sculptor.

Russian mother and Norwegian father, with Polish roots, grandson of famous Norwegian millionaire and philanthropist Herman "Appelsin" Hansen. In 1923, he moved with his family in Vilnius, and three years later he received Polish citizenship.

Studied at the Faculty of Mechanical Technology at the University of Vilnius (graduated 1942). During World War II Hansen acted as partizan. As part of the repatriation came after the war to Poland in 1945, he began studies in Lublin in the Department of Architecture at the Warsaw University (prof. Romuald Gutt, graduated 1951). In years 1948-50 he received the scholarship was abroad on a scholarship from the French government in Paris, where he practiced in the studios of Fernand Leger and Pierre Jeanneret, Le Corbusier and cousin in London, where he studied at the International Summer School of Architecture. In Paris, Hansen had the opportunity to meet many prominent artists, including Pablo Picasso (via Zofia Syrkusowa). "Picasso taught me a lot more about spacetime than Le Corbusier," admitted years later in an interview.

This Parisian experience was for Hansen a point at which began its journey towards a form of the Open, ideas transmitted all its subsequent work. In 1949 he took part in the congress in Bergamo, where with the youthful passion he criticized the great Le Corbusier. After the end of the school in London, Hansen was offered a job as an assistant Ernest Nathan Rogers at the Royal Institute of British Architects. Did not accept it, because he felt that his responsibility is to contribute to the reconstruction of the country. Then returned to Poland to continue his studies at the Warsaw University of Technology, where he obtained a diploma (1951). Already at the third year he was responsible for designing housing "Debiec" near Poznan. However, Hansen was not able to implement the realities of the prevailing doctrine of socialist realism in his projects. One of them (designed interiors for a temporary seat of the Warsaw City Hall, prepared jointly with Lechosław Rosiński), caused him the lost of the rights to practice. Chief Architect of Warsaw, Józef Sigalin, after hearing of the project organized by the authors of "court under Blachą" (from the Blachą Palace, home of the Chief Architect of Warsaw), and only thanks to a favorable opinion of Simon Syrkusa ended only naganie(?). After that incident, Hansen closed the studio where he painted, and conducted various studies on the spatial arrangements (from "study direction" in 1950 - now lost series of paintings as a follow up studies on the impact of the image as a tool, the "active negative" from 1957) and performed, carried out abroad, projects exhibition pavilions. Hansen also ran a business teaching. Almost throughout all his life he was connected with the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts - have worked on it since 1950, ran from 1952 Laboratory solids and planes at its original program, initially at the Department of Interior Architecture, under the direction of George Solta, and from 1955 in the Department of Sculpture (since 1967 as a professor). Since 1981 he led Interfaculty Department of Intermedia Art at ASP, and two years later he retired.

was a member of the "Groupe d'Etude d'Architecture Mobile (GEAM).

His teaching theories and especially Open Form theory has had a huge influence on his students, among others, Gregory Kowalski, Zofia Kulik, Elizabeth Cieslar, Emil Cieslar, Victor Gutt and others. In 1957, solo exhibition. In 2005, the retrospective exhibition "Towards the open form" ("Ku formie otwartej") in National Gallery of Art (Warsaw).

Developed Open Form theory. Together with Svein Hatløy and Zofia Hansen developed the concept of urban development of cities the future ("The continuous linear system (LCD) and "Continuous Form"). His theories are used in the BAS (Bergen School of Architecture) in Bergen in Norway, founded in 1986 by his disciple Svein Hatløy.

The continuous linear system (LCD) originates in late 60s and early 70s. The idea was to change the country in a specific way to eliminate the city and build settlements in the four zones continuously from the sea to the mountains. All there would be reasonably organized. Equally to each other there would be the zones of human housing, nature, services and industry, which would have put a man on the one hand into contact with nature, on the other hand, would allow him to live near work. What's true in a remote neighborhood, people would be hundreds of kilometers apart, but the meeting would facilitate quick communication.

Hansen criticised so-called centralised city as a linear solution for people living in the traditional European city. These cities are a legacy of centuries of despotism, remainders after primitive towns, which can easily defend the enemy, but at the same time easy to control. Built around the center, consisting of network of narrow streets, forced to live in the noise and crowds. The city is the central prison of modern man.

Hansen raised several generations of Polish sculptors, which he tought about the space as both dynamically and socially conditioned. His work inspired artists such as: Grzegorz Kowalski, Krzysztof Bednarski, Zofia Kulik, Przemyslaw Kwiek, and indirectly also a lot of younger artists: Katarzyna Kozyra, Pawel Althamer or Artur Zmijewski.

Second place, outside the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, where students can see the theory of Open Form is the Norwegian BAS (Bergen School of Architecture). The university was founded in 1986 by Hansen's student - Svein Hatløy.

Literature

Books
  • Oskar Hansen, Towards Open Form / Ku formie otwartej. Frankfurt am Main: Revolver and Warsaw: Foksal, 2005, 256 pp. ISBN 83-89302-07-1 (in English/Polish) [1]. Review, review, review. Includes two interviews with Hansen by Joanna Mytkowska (conducted in spring 2003) and Hans Ulrich Obrist. "Hansen died on May 11, 2005, after work on this book had been completed and it had been sent to press. The book has been left unchanged."
Articles
Documentary films
  • Po Omacku, film by Piotr Andrejew.
  • A documentary on Oskar Hansen by Artur Zmijewski.

See also

External links

Retrieved from "https://monoskop.org/index.php?title=Oskar_Hansen&oldid=32197"