Understanding Our Campus through its Art
Even upon entering the campus building, art welcomes
I have always been curious about buildings, from their history, the design style, to the interiors and furniture used to fill the spaces. But this time I will not discuss it, because there are other things that caught my attention more when I started exploring life as an Architecture student here, namely arts that are scattered all over this campus.
You can enter campus through various doors, there are a total of 27 accessible entrances and 6 of them can be accessed by wheelchair users, I am sure you will have more than enough time to try all the doors while you are a student here. But there is one door that has been made to welcome students and the campus community from the start, namely the door to the Pegasus library which is always guarded by 70.000 kg (about 154323.4 lb) of red granite, namely the Converging Rays by Matti Peltokangas.
Converging, which means to unite in one place, is a perfect metaphor to welcome anyone who comes to this campus. We are united here like rays from various directions with the same goal and spirit, which is to develop ourselves through our chosen scientific field.
Even as we walk, art ushers in
It may sound strange, but that is what happens to us when we walk from one corridor to another on this campus. Then we begin to realize that throughout our journey on campus, from class to class, from the cafeteria to the sitting area, almost all the space of the campus has artworks displayed, we will agree that this campus is actually a massive art gallery.
I really enjoyed the combination of paintings with geometric style displayed in the campus corridors, it disrupts the rigid horizontal and vertical lines in the interior of the building.
Whatever we do, art is there
After reading this and we are back wandering around on campus, we start to realize that part of the reason this campus is so fun to walk through and gives positive energy in every activity we do, is because of these works of art. They are not only displayed as the filler to empty spaces but provide expression and passion to the surroundings.
All of us come to this campus with our own dreams and goals, and at the same time the campus tries to take us to that destination with beautiful experiences and journeys.
About the author
Gyrass Ksatria is from Indonesia and has been in a love-hate relationship with Architecture since 2009. Gyrass is now a master’s student in the Architecture programme at the University of Oulu.