Structural Moves in Norrland

Carless, Tonia; Benedict Brown, James

Abstract

Based in Umeå, Northern Sweden, this project looks at the phenomena of moving whole houses and other buildings. This practice occurs throughout Sweden, in the USA, New Zealand and other territories. Moving structures this way has occurred for over a hundred years. This research picks up the practice, initially through the potential spectacle of the event of moving structures, and then focuses on a more material and poetic aspect of the practice. It has not been researched in depth and much of what seems to be understood as a normal, if infrequent phenomena, raises questions about the use of resources, spatial planning and conceptions and representations of space and artefacts. There is also an appreciation of the substantial immediacy of process of moving a particular house, the aquired skills and knowledge of the mover, of materials and substances in the process and also how it stands in contrast to the production and representation of architecture and spatial plans framed through the conceptual and other? lens of digital screens.

The process of moving a particular house became the subject of documentation, from stages of preparation to the uplift, the unsettling, moving and settling. Through repeated visits to the sites of the house moves , it became possible to develop awareness of the history and extent of this practice. The house mover Magnus Mårtensson has more than forty years of experience of the history of house and building moving.

Part of the research was to re-visit original sites and the new location of the house after several months. This was a photographic and video documentation and material for re-thinking the process. The form of this was further photographic and video work, to record and project the mid-summer move, along with historic materials from the public library history collection and regional museums onto and into sites, buildings and surfaces

This chapter has four parts. There are inserted transcripts of comments from a video interview with Magnus Mårtensson and his son Andreas Märtensson (who had worked with Magnus on house moving). There is an historic overview of the practices of moving houses by James Benedict Brown. There is also a theoretical frame to the process of moving houses and the fourth section is a description of some of the creative and potentially speculative re-presentation of the process and practice of moving buildings.

• Online Publication Date: Dec 1, 2023
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2023
• Deposit Date: Dec 20, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 20, 2024
• Book Title: Relate North: Possible Futures
• ISBN: 9789895360086
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.24981/2023-RNPF
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11533410
• Contract Date: Jun 1, 2023