CHART announces first prize recipient of architecture competition 2019

CHART is proud to announce the first prize recipient of Architecture 2019 is Sultan, developed by Anne Bea Høgh Mikkelsen, Katrine Kretzschmar Nielsen, Klara Lyshøj, and Josefine Østergaard Kallehave. Sultan repurposes the innards, the exterior, the wood, metal, foam, and fabric of disregarded IKEA mattresses to construct a pavilion.

Sultan sheds light on the possibilities for the detritus of mass consumption, and during CHART 2019 it houses a 1664 Blanc bar. An international jury has selected the pavilion out of five finalists, upon the selection of the first prize recipient, jury chairman, David Zahle from BIG, says: ‘The SULTAN project was a clear winner both because it is conceptually very strong and because it’s fabrication is very precise.

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The project allows you to play along and to imagine the presence of the people who have slept on these mattresses in the past. Sultan raises a very important concern about how hard it is to recycle things in a modern society, because of the complexity of the society we’ve come to live in.

Furthermore, it is a strong artistic idea to use dreams of past owners to create a pavilion that allows for repurposing the materials used. IKEA is one of the biggest players in the world, and if you want your idea to really make a difference, you need partners with a big reach. So I hope IKEA comes and visits the pavilion and takes up the idea of reusing as many of their products as possible.’

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Jury member and Senior Architectural Curator for Italy’s National Museum of Contemporary Art and Architecture, MAXXI, Pippo Ciorra, adds: ‘We were very pleased with all of the five proposals, but we were all really supporting this proposal because of it’s perfect integrity and their ability to turn these mattresses into a real construction, space and communication proposal.’

A Stepping Stone for Emerging Talents
In close collaboration with Arup and BLOXHUB, CHART Architecture targets graduate students and newly graduated architects in a 72-hour open architectural competition. The aim of CHART Architecture is to present young talents’ visions and innovative solutions, which challenge our understanding of form and materials.

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In a time when new technologically-based materials are being developed, where more up- and recycled materials see the light of day, and where traditional craft techniques and materials re-emerge, CHART has encouraged the participants to investigate how materiality, physicality and presence can be a starting point for reflections on how we shape the society for a more sustainable future.

CHART Director Nanna Hjortenberg explains: ‘This year the goal with our architectural competition was to give the young talents a possibility to create visionary and experimental constructions that challenges our perceptions of architectural materiality. The Sultan pavilion took a discarded everyday object and transformed it into a functional and aesthetic piece of architecture. That is the kind of idea the architecture, design, and art world need if we are to move forward to a sustainable future.’

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Rosa Bertoli, design editor at Wallpaper* magazine further explains:
‘The team managed to use all the elements of these sultan mattresses in their project, which is something that we in the jury really appreciated because it made recycling a key part of the concept, and that is a really important message. We are constantly producing things but we don’t quite know where they end up and I think that finding new purposes for objects has to become the future of architecture and design.’

In the lead up to CHART, the engineering and consultancy firm Arup has facilitated workshops for the five finalists to cement and qualify their projects, focusing on, among other things, sustainable design. BLOXHUB has also offered networking opportunities and guidance for the finalists. After CHART all five participants are offered a mentorship session at BLOXHUB, as part of CHART’s key ambition to develop innovative, young talent in the Nordic region. Source and photos Courtesy of CHART.

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