A Study into Scaffolding

By Karina Tang

A Study into Scaffolding is an architecture diploma exploring ideas of maintenance and value through the secondary structures that facilitate this process – scaffolding. 

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Project type
Diploma project
Programme
Architecture
Year
2021

Supervisor:

Erik Fenstad Langdalen
Ingrid Dobloug Roede

The function of scaffolding is generally pragmatic and it has a compensational relationship to buildings / monuments. But unlike buildings and monuments, which only become what they are when they are built – scaffolding refers to both the unbuilt components and built structures. 

This lack of distinction reinforces the idea that scaffolds play a temporary, secondary, and supportive role. 

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And yet, scaffolding is also indispensable: we rely on temporary structures to keep the built environment operational. 

The diploma suggests that this reliance makes scaffolding worthy of architectural investigation. Scaffolding’s relevance in most types of building transformation becomes a way to explore problems of preservation – whether for heritage,  sustainability, or other reasons. Through examining the existing relationships between scaffolding and the built environment, the diploma hopes to present alternative and new uses of scaffolding in order to show how architecture might address and anticipate present and future issues of maintenance. 

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Contact

Karina Tang / tanghyk@gmail.com

Published Dec. 10, 2021 4:09 PM - Last modified Mar. 20, 2025 5:21 PM