Stjernetårn is a hyper temporal- and situation-specific intervention seeking to reconnect our human bodies, our communities and our perspectives with the greater universe.
For millennia, cultures have united through a qualitative understanding of the night sky: the phases of the moon indicated seasonal hunting and harvesting times and apparent figures in the stars guided travellers and explorers to new lands. We have lost this fundamental connection to the cosmos in our increasingly urbanised world, and Stjernetårn seeks to rekindle this forgotten human endeavour.
Expressed as a skewed conical tower, the form is suggestive of ancient religious buildings such as the Great Pyramids of Egypt, an ancient Mesopotamian ziggurat, or one of Jai Singh’s oversized medieval astronomical instruments in Jaipur. The incomplete nature of the cone appears to draw the eye up and to the north, and in fact the profile of the tapered walls points directly to the north star. Upon entering the pavilion by ascending a gently inclined spiral ramp, one becomes enveloped by the curved surface that gradually gets taller, erasing the nearby urban build-up from view.
In the centre, a round sunken communal bench invites visitors to sit and explore the sky. Several opening in the surface direct specific views from different sitting positions — the occulus above faces towards the north star; the cut-out to the west allows sunlight setting over Jægergårdsgade to stream into the space; and precisely located circular perforations shows the exact positions in the sky of the full moon, Jupiter and Saturn as they appear on the opening night of Aarhus Festuge. The inclined bench too is hyper specific to the site — when one sits to the north and leans back, their body is precisely aligned to the spinning axis of the Earth. Likewise, sitting opposite on the south end of the bench aligns ones eyes with this axis. Therefore, as a group is sitting and conversing on the bench, they are inexorably attuned with the planet upon which they occupy, and begin to sense its very movement through space and time.
Stjernetårn seeks to reconnect the visitors and occupants of Sydhavn with each other though the lens of our greater cosmos, and, in turn, connect closer to our own internal universe.
Stjernetarn was submitted as part of the
Aarhus Festuge 2020 pavilion competetion, where entrants had just 48 hours to design and submit their proposals to be built.
