Beata Hemer is an architect who investigates architecture at different scales. She has studied carpentry, art, and storytelling and has worked on projects in India, Palestine, and Bangladesh focused on cities, urban movements, and social structures. She believes small interventions are as important as larger planning strategies. Her work is ambitious, critical, and combines these qualities with playfulness.
2. Beata Hemer
beatahemer@gmail.com
0045 91944363
beatahemer.com
Architecture is a broad field that I investigate at different scales.
I have studied carpentry, art and storytelling- where I through interest
in the everyday narratives, materiality and the scale of the body have
worked with architecture.
At another scale I have been engaged in projects in India, Palestine
and Bangladesh, where I have practiced architecture through studies of
cities, urban movements and bigger social structures.
I believe that small interventions and details, grounded in the everyday,
are as important for sustainability and development as bigger planning
strategies.
I am concerned about the process of making architecture, and I like to
think through my hands, working with different methods. From text to
ceramic.
In my work I am ambitious and critical, and I tend to combine these
assets with playfulness.
References are available upon request.
3. The project started with an interest in dualities
and paired terms, problematizing how this type of
ordering forms how we conceive and look at the
world.
Two concepts - that of the salon and the garden
are being recognized as liminal and in-between
spaces, mediating between constructed dualities.
They are used as programmatic frames for two
sites in Chittagong, Bangladesh; forming ground
for two interventions.
The interventions are a small-scale production of
ceramic water filter and a seed library.
The project concerns the everyday life of the
people involved, residing in practices of washing,
cleaning, sowing, cultivating; giving dimension,
understanding and marvel to these routines and
customs.
The soil, the clay and in extension the ceramic
element is what on a very elemental level joins the
garden and the salon. They are also joined on a
conceptual level by both being sites for production
and sharing of knowledge, each with their own
architectural articulation. They are rooted in the
scale of the community, where participation is a
keystone, and the architecture and it artefacts can
be adjusted and modified according to the needs
and creativity of its users.
HYBRID REFLECTIONS-
MEDIATING GROUNDS IN CHITTAGONG Thesis project. Spring 2015. Tutor: Niels Gr淡nb脱k.
Political Architecture and Critical Sustainability.
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This project is not offering a solution or answer
to how to deal with problematic questions,
regarding for example the right to clean water,
women卒s empowerment, community building or
environmental changes and challenges. But these
topics have been influencing the whole process,
and are incorporated within the project. Probably
there arent any straight solutions or answers,
and the intention with the project is to realize
and embrace that. The issues are taken seriously,
as a point of departure, but emphasize on the
importance of imagination - suggesting worlds
and realities that carry a bit of vision and marvel.
In cities like Chittagong, where there are no excess
of time, money or leisure for most people, and
where working days can be long and physically
exhausting, it might be precisely the extraordinary
and imaginative that the people need.
To be able to see beyond the most basic necessities
of the context is to suggest an architecture that
takes stand from the every-day life and the harsh
reality, but that uses imagination and creativity as
a tool for making change.
4. If the walls
become roofs?
Can the molds for the filters be modified
into other forms than the cylindrical?
If we change the shape and
the angle, the size?
Can they be used for other purposes?
What if we plant crops in them?
If we cut them in half and
use them as tiles?
Or as skylights in our roofs? If we
stack them and make walls?
9. 4th year 2012- 2013. Tutor: Niels Gr淡nb脱k.RECIPROCAL URBANISM
Mapping and zoning the central part of Berlin, Mitte,
lead to focusing on the area in and adjoining the station
Jannowitzbr端gge.
It serves as a junction for different typologies of
transportation. The S-bahn, U-bahn, the river and the
road.
The theme Reciprocal Urbanism refers to the method
of working as in a loop, where the project and the city
stand in a never-ending correspondence, giving-and-
taking, depending on each other. The material is re-
worked, looped over again and can never be said to be
finished.
The program of a bathhouse (a sauna/a place for
cleaning) is used as a tool to understand and portrait
the mechanism of the station, by juxtapose these two
programs and looking at the thresholds in between, new
types of situations and spatial frames emerge.
10. Architectural fragments and parts from the station of Jannowitzbrugge. They all relate to the thresholds of the bath and the station (when going in to the
sauna, when jumping on the train). The models are a study of the movement, gravity and balance that are connected to the entry and exit of a threshold.
11. The bath and the station, collages of sections and isometric views.
12. Axonometric view of the bath, from the underground U-bahn to the elevated S-bahn.
Next page:
Diagram depicting the uses of the bath and the changes throughout the year, the
week and the day. The humidity, the level of water and the temperature follows the
seasons and the timetables and rush hours of the station. These conditions then
define the functions and uses of the spaces in the bath.
17. WEFOOD
Interiorof thestoreWefood, Denmarks
first ever food surplus supermarket.
Concept, design, drawing and
building in collaboration with Studio
Fountainhead.
All construction built-on-site, adjusted
to the specific interior features - and
put together with no screws.
winter 2016
18. Collaboration with the Dutch architect firm STEALTH, Belgrade, Serbia
Practice at the architectural laboratory Studio Fountainhead, Copenhagen
Concept, drawing and building of interior of the surplus-food-supermarket Wefood.
Work for ASF (Architecture Without Borders) in Hebron, Palestine
Surveying and mapping occupied and restricted areas of the old city center, for the master planning office in Hebron.
PhotoScanning and drawing up a 3D model of the area.
Intern at the architecture firm Lendager Arkitekter in Copenhagen
Part of a competition team, where my role was to research and design solutions regarding
up-cycling and sustainability for future Danish housing.
Participation in the workshop; EASA (European Architecture Student Assembly) in Slovenia
Working with old abandoned houses and their narratives, turning them into a graphic novel.
Responsible for the building workshop Floating City, Copenhagen
Organizing a team for isolating and furniture old oil tanks.
Artist-in-Residence at Tomma Rum, Kil, Sweden
Light and moss installation in an old slaughterhouse.
Field work Bombay Boxed in Bombay, India, in collaboration with ASF.
The project consists of 140 sheets of drawings and texts, joined in a box. The sheets where exhibited at three different galleries in
Sweden and published in the magazine 4ARK.
Member and maker of the design and constructing-collective Byggbrigaden, Malm旦, Sweden
Building and designing the interior of the culture center Kontrapunkt.
Member of the Swedish drawing collective Dotterbolaget
Production of graphic novels and stories, and participation in several workshops, exhibitions and publications.
2015-
2013-2015
2014
2012
2012
2007-2011
2004
ongoing
2016
2014
2013
2013
2013
2012
2009-10
2009
2008-2015
Education
Selected works and engagements
Challenging Practice
An independent-learning program organized by Architecture Without Borders, that seeks to enable built environment professionals to
engage reflexively with the challenges of international development in the urban global South.
Masters degree in architecture, graduation from the program
Political Architecture and Critical Sustainability at KARCH, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Thesis work conducted in Bangladesh, where I studied how architecture can reconfigure modes of production,
and ways of passing through knowledge; by introducing the concepts of the garden and the salon.
Basic education in carpentry at the Technical School of Copenhagen, KTS
Drawing and making of a birch tree table and an oak chair.
Salzburg Summer Art Academy, Austria
Tutor: Christoph Sch辰fer. Drawings of the relationship between the salt mine in the city and the surrounding mountains.
Nordic Art School, Kokkola, Finland
BA in Architecture. Lund School of Architecture
Graduation from Swedish senior high school, natural sciences program
Languages
Swedish - Mother Tongue
English - Fluent
Danish - Fluent
Spanish Intermediate
I work ambitiously and precise in
computer programs like Rhinoceros and
AutoCAD, and creatively in the Adobe-
Design-package. I appreciate the digital
tools, but I also think the pen, paper and
cardboard are indispensable.
Computer programs
The Adobe series
Rhinoceros
Sketch Up
Solid Works
AutoCAD