Katja Grillner
katja@arch.kth.se

The KTH School of Architecture
The Royal Institute of Technology
SE-100 44 Stockholm
SWEDEN

Tel: +46 (0) 8 7908769 (work)
+46 (0) 8 6530436 (home)

Sökord: 1700-talet, landskapspark, estetik, arkitekturteori, landskapsteori, trädgårdshistoria, representation, litterär representation, ekphrasis

Keywords: 18th century, landscape garden, aestetics, architecture theory, landscape theory, garden history, representation, literary representation, ekphrasis

Katja Grillner is an architect, scholar and critic. She holds a Ph.D. from The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) School of Architecture in Stockholm, and an M.Arch from the Theory and History of Architecture program at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is a senior lecturer at KTH, the director of AKAD, and a member of the board at the Architecture Museum in Stockholm. She publishes essays and criticism for a number of magazines and journals in Sweden. Katja Grillner has pursued garden historical research since 1994 and has studied the early 17th century architect and engineer Salomon de Caus (his writings and the hortus palatinus) and more extensively theories of the 18th century landscape garden (Thomas Whately and Joseph heely in particular). She is currently engaged in a collaborative research project with Tim Anstey and Rolf Hughes examining the construction of designer-figures in architectural history. During the autumn of 2003 she has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University and at the University of Pennsylvania.

Katja Grillner current research project is entitled, “Writing the Landscape Garden.” Along with the publication of Thomas Whately's treatise, Observations on Modern Gardening (1770), and its immediate translation into French and German (1771), a theoretical debate concerning the landscape garden’s effects and design, took off across Europe. In a number of publications various genres of philosophical and scholarly writing in the form of histories, essays, descriptions, letters, and theories were presented. Each work struggled to invent (or appropriate) its own particular mode of writing the landscape garden and its design theory. Whately's treatise was illustrated by textual descriptions only - a conscious choice and a carefully devised didactic strategy. His striking descriptions of imaginary tours and settings provided readers with virtual landscapes through which the aesthetic judgment of prospective designers, clients and enthusiastic garden visitors would be cultivated. The project seeks to show how these descriptions, by offering its readers imaginary tours and settings, functioned to provide virtual landscapes in which the aesthetic judgment of prospective designers, clients and enthusiastic garden visitors would be exercised.


Selected list of publications:

Books / dissertations:

Grillner, Katja, ed. Just White - handbok för framtidens arkitektur. Stockholm: White arkitekter, 2001.

Grillner, Katja. Ramble, linger, and gaze: Dialogues from the landscape garden. Dissertation (PhD). Stockholm: Kungl Tekniska Högskolan, 2000.

Grillner, Katja. Four Essays Framed (Questions of Interpretation, Imagination and Representation in Architecture). Dissertation (Lic). Stockholm: Kungl Tekniska Högskolan, 2000.

Grillner, Katja. Automata, Perspective and Music: Poetic Instruments in the Written Garden of Salomon de Caus. M Arch disseratation. Mc Gill University, 1995

Essays and articles:

Grillner, Katja. "Writing and Landscape - Setting Scenes for Critical Reflection." In Journal of Architecture, vol. 8, no. 2, 2003.

Grillner, Katja. "Re-writing Landscape - Description as Theory in the 18th Century Landscape Garden" In Nordisk Arkitekturforskning 2003:4. A different expanded version of this essay is published as "Re-writing Landscape" in Hybrid Thought, edited by John Monk and Rolf Hughes. Milton Keynes, UK: The Open University, 2003.

Grillner, Katja. Utopia in Reverse in “The re-distribution of surplus – Addo’s Holiday Camp” Staffan Schmidt and Mike Bode, Göteborgs Konsthall 2003.

Grillner, Katja. Ändlöst växande arkitektur in ”Blow up”, Helene Schmitz and Jessica Clayton, Natur och Kultur, 2003.

Grillner, Katja. Topographical strategies for architectural research, Nordisk Arkitekturforskning 4:2002.

Grillner, Katja. Ramble, Linger and Gaze:Philosophical Dialogue and Architectural Research, in EAAE Conference Proceedings, ”Architecture and Research”, 2001.

Grillner, Katja. Dialogen som metod - The Dialogic method - article on the research method of PhD-thesis and translation of Alberto Pérez Gómez opposition. Tidskriften Dialoger, april 2001.

Grillner, Katja. Stories Down Below: Narrative Practices in Art and Architecture, article in MAMA, Jan 2000.

Grillner, Katja. När ögat förtjust panorerar: Arkitekturen som förträffligt ornament - When the Eye Rambles delighted - Architecture as Exquisite Decoration article i MAMA, Okt 99.

Grillner, Katja. "Human and Divine Perspectives on the Works of Salomon de Caus." In Chora III: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, edited by Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Stephen Parcell, Montreal; Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press, 1998.

Grillner, Katja. Om det andliga i arkitekturen - The Spiritual in Architecture, Arkitektur no 6 1998.

Grillner, Katja. Narratives of Cities and Landscapes, Nordisk Arkitekturforskning, Nr 1-2 1998.

Grillner, Katja. Det sinnliga vattnet , Utblick Landskap, dec 1997.

Grillner, Katja. Att drömma om regnbågens slut och horisontens faktiska vara: En resa genom tillvarons arkitektur med Gary Hills ‘Tall Ships’ (Towards an Architecture of Dasein with Gary Hill's Tall Ships) in ”Sju arkitekturessäer - Resultat från en tävling i att skriva arkitekturkritik utlyst 1995 av Arkus” Arkusstiftelsen, Stockholm 1995, sid 5-13. Also published in Arkitektur, mars 1996)

Grillner, Katja. Theory and Practice of Artistic Creation in the Early 17th Century: The Poetic Model of Salomon de Caus, i ”EAAE Conference Proceedings 1996”.

Grillner, Katja. Från Postmodernism till Kritisk Regionalism Nordisk Arkitekturforskning, Nr. 1 1994.