2009-01-26T22:40:00.000-08:00

Redrum in Alaska. A temple for oil. The floor is made out of 7.000 pounds of oyster shells. Outside smells like diesel, inside smells like sea.

Fireplace & 7000 pounds of oyster shells.

Alaska Railroad oil tansks cut in sections and raised up as a temple for oil.

"The work smells like diesel." People were complaining.
"Is this a slap against the face of Alaska, or a pice of fine-art?"

2008-12-09T22:29:00.000-08:00

Redrum (2003) is an architectonic installation in Anchorage Alaska by Finnish architects Casagrande & Rintala. The work is commissioned by Alaska Design Forum. [1]

3 Alaska Railroad oil tanks cut into total 12 pieces and turned into a tempel structure opposite the Federal Building of Anchorage in the crossing of C-Street and 7th Avenue. The interior is painted bright red in contrast to the rusty and brutal exterior. The floor is made of 3500 kg of oyster shells, the origin of all Alaskan oil. [2]

"Redrum" is "murder" backwards. The designers intended to comment on the connection of oil, war and environment. Local media described the piece as "a slap in the face to Alaskans".[3]

References

^ Alaska Design Forum

^ Camp for oppositional architecture 25.6.2004

^ Ditmars, Hadani (2003-06-21), Artfully pushing the boundaries in Anchorage, The Globe and Mail, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20030621.ANCHORAGE/TPStory/specialTravel, retrieved on 14 December 2007

Casagrande & Rintala

a + d

Georgian architecture magazine interview 1 / 2004.

Tamaz Giorgadze: As you once wrote, "Kindness is real reality"..."Urban planning must find a way to be connected into real things"...Don't you think that architecture cannot turn toward real reality independently? It can be a catalys, a medium - and this process requires crucial changes in mass consiousness itself...

Marco Casagrande: Architecture can be real reality. Construction nonsense is needed as well, but that has nothing to do with real architecture. Architecture, humanism, urban planning and art can find a way to reality by means comparable to the actions of a religious mysticism. One must be sensitive enough to feel the subconscious realities and interfaces and professional enough to find out the tools to work with them. One has first have to have something to say and then find out the methods how to say it.

Jamie Faria painting the Redrum.

T.G.: Real reality lies beyond the surface of life, but the surface itself is no less real. This "surface reality" is strong on its feet and will not give in so easily either...How, by what means can we push throught toward real reality?

M.C.: People sense the real reality. People know what is true in the end. Architecture is traumatized by building industry and other external dominances to react for it. Design has replaced reality. The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart. ARTCHITECTURE should be this heart.

Martin Ross, the Metalgod.

T.G.: RedRum opens up the usually inaccessible space, introducing freedom as the new quality of architecture. Is this how we should understand the RedRum?

M.C.: Redrum is a space articulated to open up possibilities to think, like a temple.

T.G.: Reality can be considered as teh balance between freedom and constraint. What does this balance - or reality, if you like - mean to you?

M.C.: Real reality is something that you can no longer speculate - like kindness. Kindness is just kindness. This is this, and this is nothing else, but this is this.

Redrum. Anchorage, Alaska. Drawing Marco Casagrande.