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ARCHITECTURE

KTH Sweden’s ‘worst’ architecture school

The lauded Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm has failed its architecture students, of whom 70 percent say parts of the course are either badly taught or non-existent. The school has now admitted failings.

KTH Sweden's 'worst' architecture school
Students at KTH's Architecture School. File photo: TT

Sweden's Association of Architects asked students at KTH's Arkitekturhögskolan to rank their education. Students at Chalmers in Gothenburg and at the equivalent in Lund were also invited to respond. The survey found that the education at KTH was considered the worst.

Sixty-six KTH students responded to the survey and about 70 percent said they were "not getting enough or any training at all in visualization and oral presentation". The same proportion of students also said the school was failing to teach them how to tie their architectural concepts together with actually erecting buildings.

"The school has for some time been aware that it isn't working," school spokesman Björn Hårsman told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper (DN) on Thursday. 

Hårsman was asked earlier this year by the dean, Stellan Lundström, to look into why the school was foundering. The school's internal review echoed the finding by the Architects Association. Many teachers are employed two days a week and have not received adequate teacher training, Hårsman's report found. Nor are they particularly good at pointing students in the right direction in practical matters.

"It isn't rare that student don't get answers to simple questions. The teachers don't know, they know too little about the school," Hårsman said.

The dean, meanwhile, admitted they now needed to have a proper look at why the students are so unhappy.

"We clearly haven't taken the situation seriously," Lundström told the paper. 

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ARCHITECTURE

Futuristic Gehry tower opens in World Heritage Arles

Rising high beyond an ancient Roman arena in Arles, a tall, twisted tower created by Frank Gehry shimmers in the sun, the latest futuristic addition to this southern French city known for its World Heritage sites.

Futuristic Gehry tower opens in World Heritage Arles
Gehry's Luma Tower opens in Arles, France. Photo: H I / Pixabay

The tower, which opens to the public on Saturday, is the flagship attraction of a new “creative campus” conceived by the Swiss Luma arts foundation that wants to offer artists a space to create, collaborate and showcase their work.

Gehry, the 92-year-old brain behind Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum and Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, wrapped 11,000 stainless steel panels around his tower above a huge glass round base.

It will house contemporary art exhibitions, a library, and offices, while the Luma Arles campus as a whole will host conferences and live performances.

From a distance, the structure reflects the changing lights of this town that inspired Van Gogh, capturing the whiteness of the limestone Alpilles mountain range nearby which glows a fierce orange when the sun sets.

Mustapha Bouhayati, the head of Luma Arles, says the town is no stranger to
imposing monuments; its ancient Roman arena and theatre have long drawn the
crowds.

The tower is just the latest addition, he says. “We’re building the heritage of tomorrow.”

Luma Arles spreads out over a huge former industrial wasteland.

Maja Hoffmann, a Swiss patron of the arts who created the foundation, says
the site took seven years to build and many more years to conceive.

Maja Hoffmann, founder and president of the Luma Foundation. Photo: Pascal GUYOT / AFP

Aside from the tower, Luma Arles also has exhibition and performance spaces in former industrial buildings, a phosphorescent skatepark created by South Korean artist Koo Jeong A and a sprawling public park conceived by Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets.

‘Arles chose me’

The wealthy great-granddaughter of a founder of Swiss drug giant Roche, Hoffmann has for years been involved in the world of contemporary art, like her grandmother before her.

A documentary producer and arts collector, she owns photos by Annie Leibovitz and Diane Arbus and says she hung out with Jean-Michel Basquiat in New York.

Her foundation’s stated aim is to promote artists and their work, with a special interest in environmental issues, human rights, education and culture.

She refuses to answer a question on how much the project in Arles cost. But as to why she chose the 53,000-strong town, Hoffmann responds: “I did not choose Arles, Arles chose me.”

She moved there as a baby when her father Luc Hoffmann, who co-founded WWF,
created a reserve to preserve the biodiversity of the Camargue, a region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Rhone river delta known for its pink flamingos.

The tower reflects that, with Camargue salt used as mural panels and the
delta’s algae as textile dye.

Hoffmann says she wants her project to attract more visitors in the winter, in a town where nearly a quarter of the population lives under the poverty line.

Some 190 people will be working at the Luma project over the summer, Bouhayati says, adding that Hoffman has created an “ecosystem for creation”.

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