PROJECTS

This online portfolio shows the work of Anouk Ahlborn and it is divided into 'all' and her 'selected' projects.
The 'full range of projects' bare witness to Anouk's creative development from the arts to architecture, whereas the 'selected range of projects' highlight her projects in architecture and urbanism.
Some larger projects are subdivided into 'unselected' and 'selected' subsections, of which the former contain extra text and images which are password protected.
At first glance this ''melting pot of ideas'' displayed in a grid layout exhibits a large quantity of work; quality certainly lies in the eyes of the beholder. (please view with Google Chrome!)

The portfolio challenges traditional assumptions about the role of the architect and argues for an interdisciplinary approach towards architecture.
To understand the persistent conceptual demands on contemporary artists and architects, Anouk has engaged with contemporary art and architectural theory in most of her projects.

Her aim is not to reproduce herself but to constantly interrogate modes of thinking about space and society which are feeding into unexpected forms of creativity.
Hence the earlier work breaks away from pure representation as shown in her former hyperrealist hand drawings and investigates the relationship between the 'analogue' and the 'digital'.
The initial six studio projects were essential in evaluating architectural ideas such as beauty, form, function or program, all whilst testing unfamiliar design techniques (such as CAD drawing, software modelling or digital fabrication). Anouk thus dealt with abstract notions such as copying in architecture, rethinking the concept of the void and nesting the 'big old box'. Within the process she would embrace the obscure, the absurd or opposite as part of testing the limitations of the projects. She eventually welcomed the idea that architecture could be formless and explored the invisible connections of hidden narratives as exemplified in her reenactment performance.

Her architectural education allowed her to experiment with projects of different scales, durations and teams. Most projects were research-driven and tried to introduce the gathered data into more speculative proposals. Graphic qualities could only ever complement but never replace intellectual design capacities. In the short term, the projects encouraged processes of making allowing for a certain conceptual spontaneity and results which sometimes exceeded their own expectations through revealing hidden qualities in collective discussions. On a long term, the academic and professional projects became points of reference which help her to prudently form a critical judgment on her own creative development and on architecture as a multifaceted practice, an architecture ''beside itself''. She is still elaborating her ideas with regard to the disciplinary and formal discourses on architecture.

Her life in the metropolis naturally encouraged her to bridge between the two-dimensional surface to multi-layered space. It stimulated an understanding for a green urbanism and social spaces as explored in the project 'Erased City'. This project still encourages her to work in sustainable architecture and masterplanning practices.
The work between her studies, which resulted from collaborations with artits and craftsmen, shows a return toward exploring formal and tactile qualities though making. This experience allowed for an academic independence which helped to balance out technical and intellectual skills. Furthermore Anouk learned to measure traditional, small-scale production against future, large-scale pre-fabrication techniques. She is currently speculating on that even though digital networks may obsolesce industrial labour, they may retrieve a closer cooperation between artisans. She values architectural and cultural heritage and wishes for a closer collaboration to improve our built environment and management of resources.

Throughout her academic and professional career, Anouk challenged conventional forms of project making and communication through different media, all whilst remaining critical towards the term itself. She questionned if the properties inherent to a particular medium or the properties culturally associated or assumed with different media were enough to justify a projects methodology or means to an end, i.e. the message of a project.
She eventually questioned the contradictions of the notion of the message in relation to an audience which is permanently exposed to digital communication and absorbing a constant flow of information yet desperate for final conclusions.
She ultimately realised that the demand for more 'content', challenging our concepts of identity and meaning, increasingly shifts our attention to 'formats', as a way of building contextuality and relations between objects.

Today, one of the architect's tasks is that of finding new forms of arrangement and understand their role in the creation of material and social contexts.
The framing of conversations, reshaping our perceptions of what knowledge is in the past, present and future, makes architecture a highly valued cultural practice which should be open to participation from anybody.
Consequently the later work tries to combine previous project intentions and turns toward setting up an experimental platform of debate for architects, urbanists, designers and all kind of thinkers during cultural festivals. At the same time Anouk started engaging in extracurricular projects such as AA Little Architect (architects leading workshops in UK primary schools), AA XX 100 (100 years women in architecture historical research project and retrospective) among other projects, with which she wishes to keep collaborating.

Anouk recently wrote all the code to craft her artistic vision in this online portfolio and is now focusing on qualifying as a fully licensed architect in the United Kingdom and Europe.
She mainly works in London but is open to participate in projects all around the world.