Meanings and Materialities
Meanings and Materialities
Exhibition 6–15 June
Open every day 12:00-18:00Irina Garnets
The conference takes place in the historical setting of Cable factory. The transition of the building from industrial use into cultural hub includes means of activism, negotiation, toleration, offering and self-development. After the occupation by cultural activists the city ended up supporting their plans to develop the property for cultural use. The agreement could be seen as an act of gifting with obligations for the future maintenance of cultural activity. The reciprocal relationship between the officials and the property management has surprisingly well secured the porous nature of socio-spatial structure inside of the building. The Cable factory has become stage that mediates the abrasion of function, culture and aesthetics: offering countergifts for the urban scene of the city.
Spaces of the porous system can host several users in turns or simultaneously. It forces to the temporality of practice and negotiation in space. As a result, space obtains several meanings as for each user or a group, these places signify different things. The theoretical characteristics of porosity could be elaborated in terms of boundary object theory by Star and Griesemer (1989). In this context I would like to analyse spatial network of Cable factory as a series of boundary objects that define the intersection of different realms. The resulting consolidation is not a merging act but an active bridging tool that discovers the abstract premises of meanings and values, which results in the concrete processes of transaction and cooperation, the formation of coexistence (Star and Griesemer 1989). The architectural setting and it’s spatial hierarchy are key enablers and shapers of interaction and offer permanent soil for the fruits of cooperation.
Irina Garnets is an architect based in Helsinki. Her work has focused on studies and reuse of existing buildings and social housing design. In her professional practice and diploma thesis, she has analysed the concept of otherness and the role of emptiness in its occurrence from the perspective of architectural theory and spatial design. With the intersection of social and spatial aspects in mind, she looks for the multiplicity in ambiguous moments of minimised dogmatics in space, where a variety of conditions are allowed to contribute to the complexity of the spatial network.
The context of Cable Factory is familiar through her work experience with ILO architects whose professional foundation lies in the initial occupation of Cable Factory.