Trolltinget
Trolltinget forms part of a design-based research project that transforms Oppigården, a nineteenth-century timber house in Ängersjö, Hälsingland, into a more-than-human ting. Developed as part of my recently completed PhD in Architectural Design at The Bartlett, UCL, the project asks how relational conditions between architecture, landscape, matter and other forms of life might become perceptible in the encounter with a building.
Time: Fri 2026-10-09 13.15
Location: Conference Room 6th Floor of the Architecture School Room A608
Participating: Elin Lund
The troll is proposed as a figural device. Rather than translating a folkloric creature into architectural form, it is used to trouble established architectural categories and make familiar relations appear strange. This is developed through what I call anatomical storytelling, an architectural practice in which bodily associations become generative and figural through design and making.
The presentation focuses on the assembly hall at the centre of Oppigården, where a series of grain-painted panels depict anatomically impossible tree-trolls engaged in processes of growth, movement, decay, weathering and succession. Extending beyond the painted surface, these figures begin to unsettle the apparent coherence of the building itself. The inquiry considers how such figuration can operate architecturally: not by representing an already relational building, but by making the material and environmental relations through which it is constituted available to be apprehended and engaged with otherwise.
Bio
Elin Lund is an architect (ARB, SAR/MSA) and recently completed a PhD in Architectural Design at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, funded by a UCL Graduate Research Scholarship. Her work combines architectural practice and design research, with a focus on the transformation of existing buildings and relationships between architecture, material histories and landscape.