Opbyggerne – Urban Innovation in Copenhagen

One of the things that I would envy my son was an experience some years ago where he and hundreds of other people in Copenhagen started building on a beautiful spot close to Christiania. The initiative was taken by a group of activists who called themselves “Opbyggerne” – a play with words that both means those who build up or those who are constructive in a conversation. The action was really joyful, spontaneous and open where everybody was welcome – as a passerby buying a drink or listening to music, or those who would take part in discussions and eat in the improvised street kitchen. But off course the main point was to build something together.

“Opbyggerne” had picked an otherwise impossible narrow strip of land along a road that went past Christiania (and a part of the old Copenhagen Ramparts) on one side and on the edge of the canals that surrounds other old army facilities that now are turned into expensive housing (as a stark contrast to Christiania – also being an old army base but with a different and urban life). The lazy ones would build on land either on the road or on the edge of the water. The more ambitious ones would build floating constructions that would inhabit the water. Materials were either found, supplied by sponsors or in the case of my son found on Christiania.

After passing the place one day he decided to go for it with he’s friends the following weekend. On the same day they managed to get materials (plywood on Christiania), build a very small tent-like house and sleep there (three boys) for the night. Very basic but so fundamental for the way we could work with a city and let it become a place for concrete and fun creation. Where each building is an expression of the dreams and needs of very different people and how these change over time. In this case The tent-like structure became too small for the boys so they started adding on to it and made it possible to sit in the new construction also letting in more light. Now it was possible to have visitors.

The whole place became a hectic and creative melting pot of desires and the possibility to realise these within a day or a week. At times these desires also worked against each other and heated discussions or more constructive dialogue made this experiment an example on how you can build a city and discuss the way it works in the same movement.  It is a way of expressing yourselves in a much more concrete way that is based on action instead of abstraction (talking, writing, drawing etc). The concrete act of building structures as an expression of your desires (and capability of building) makes it possible for people who might not care about sitting down and talk but rather do it – the building then becomes a part of a discussion.

It makes the urban dialogue more inclusive and it makes the sensory and emotional experience of the city much richer. And all of that also adds to the interaction between people helping and inspiring each other, and setting off ideas for other projects and initiatives. This potential for urban innovation has to be seen in the perspective of the beautifully designed public squares of the “Urban Renaissance” and the talk about the chance encounter in these public spaces. In many cases these very controlled and often market dominated spaces (often the success criteria is that there are a lot of people there drinking cafe latte) are the opposite of “Opbyggerne.” In the urge for beauty, these spaces becomes architectural monuments, unable to be appropriated, but predictable and popular with the interests that wants to make money there – not that far from the shopping centre: “a mall without walls.”

The potential for “urban innovation” could be exemplified with the goal of “unplanned collaboration” of Pixar, the computer animated movies studio behind movies like “Finding Nemo”  og “Wall-e”. Their first success was created in the typical surroundings of a start up company: run down buildings in an unattractive area that made the rent cheap but maybe more importantly the building(s) were possible to appropriate and if you wanted a hole in the wall thats what you just made. So it had many possibilities for spontaneous and improvised appropriation of that space and when the company needed to get everybody “under one roof” to avoid the fragmentation that came from sitting in many separate localities they build with the goal of “unplanned collaboration.” The result doesn’t look fancy from the outside and inside it has the aesthetics of a classic factory building with a large common space as the equivalent of a “public space” that can de changed into what the situation takes – the fun company gathering or building large scale mockups of movie sets. More important is probably how they kept the possibility of appropriating the personal workspaces and in that way the personal space becomes an expression of what you like and who you are. To free the full urban potential one have to move from the less ambitious goal of chance encounters to the much more dynamic goal of “unplanned collaboration”.

Many cities has embraced the idea of “creativity” as a way of staying on top in the competition with other cities in the new globalised race. The main inspiration for this was the book of Richard Florida that promoted the 3 T´s: Tolerance, Technique and Talent. One of the main references in the book and the following implementation of he’s ideas was San Francisco and it is interesting how Pixar probably couldn’t have started anywhere else than in that city. The problem now is that municipalities set up zones for creative industries – like digital games etc both defining what is creative and where it should/could happen. It is almost as uncreative as if the wanted more new companies like Apple to start by building suburban garages and looking for collage dropouts (and orphans) to populate these.

The reaction to the miniature “summer of love” next to Christiania that the “Opbyggerne” created was very telling. It was tolerated by the municipality during the summer (apart from some intimidating policing) but when summer was over the area was evicted in a way that didn’t leave a single trace of what had happened. They even cleaned the road of graffiti and made the place look more like it used to be than before. Going there was like entering a time machine where it all seemed a bit unreal, knowing was used to be there.

Instead “creativity” has been allocated to zones with old industrial buildings or in ghettos where they in one case try to emulate the meatpacking district of New York. The municipality has succeeded to some degree in the sense that entering one of the local bars, where designs and pricing of the drinks are done by famous artists, made you feel like being a part of an episode of “Sex and the City.” What happened here and what is the problem with this particular perception of the “creative” is that the slow and unavoidable gentrifying process in a place like the meatpacking district has been cut down to zero making this creative ghetto to an instantly controlled and gentrified public space that does not have much potential of urban innovation or “unplanned collaboration.” You have to look  for somebody else and elsewhere for that. Where you can feel free to start building something together in many different ways.

See more photos here

Rådhusplads: Den urbane metropol

The text below is an article published in the danish newspaper Politiken in 2006. 

Rådhuspladsen er et af de helt centrale mødesteder i byen. Det er her, man fejrer landsholdet, tænder juletræet og demonstrerer mod krig eller nedskæringer i børnehaverne.

Ud over at være et fysisk rum, der kan diskuteres ud fra smag og behag, har denne plads i byen en central demokratisk funktion som et sted, der helt konkret lægger rum til byens mangfoldighed. Med planerne om en ny metropolzone i København er der lagt op til diskussion om Rådhuspladsens udseende igen. Og netop fordi pladsen har så vigtig en funktion for demokratiet i byen, burde denne diskussion være et forbillede for, hvordan meninger kan brydes og alligevel føre til en konstruktiv proces, der ender med forslag til en plads, der ikke findes mage til i hele verden. Noget kunne tyde på, at diskussionen tager en anden drejning.

Politikens leder ‘Storbydrømme’ fra sidste lørdag skriver om, at det skal være slut med kværulantisk brok, der bremser arkitekternes ambitioner, som det f.eks. var tilfældet med Krøyers Plads på Christianshavn. København skal ifølge lederen være en såkaldt ‘Kreativ Monopol (sic!) – med fokus på Teknologi, Talent og Tolerance’. Der skulle naturligvis have stået ‘Metropol’, men skrivefejlen kunne minde om den slags fortalelser, der ikke er helt tilfældige. Lederen overser bl.a., at medierne også spiller en rolle i forhold til, hvordan folk udtrykker deres mening og agerer i det ‘offentlige rum’. Eksemplet med Krøyers Plads viser, at det var først, da debatten blev til den kedelige sort-hvide brok, at medierne for alvor begyndte at dække sagen – eller var det først, da medierne trådte ind, at debatten blev sort-hvid? Hvorom alt er, så belønnede medierne dem, der stod stejlt.

Krøyers Plads er desværre et eksempel på, hvordan et kæmpe potentiale i form af en masse engagerede mennesker, et visionært projekt og byens populæreste strandbar bliver spildt i en ukonstruktiv debat eller byudviklingsproces, der endte med at sætte alle parterne i hver sin bås. Enten får de rollen som brokkehoveder med højdeskræk eller rollen som visionære arkitekter med det ‘kreative monopol’.

I byudviklingslaboratoriet Supertanker arbejdede vi med at bryde disse fastlåste mønstre ved at gøre mødet mellem byens parter mere urbant gennem åbenhed og jævnbyrdighed. Vi brugte en lang række metoder til bl.a. at gøre de borgeres ønsker mere konkrete og konstruktive. Vi var i høj grad inspireret af, hvordan Havneparken på Islands Brygge var blevet til i et sådant konstruktivt samspil mellem de lokale byboere og Københavns Kommune. Vi oplevede, at det var muligt at bryde disse ukonstruktive mønstre, men at de grøfter, der allerede var gravet på Krøyers Plads, var for dybe, til at der kunne bygges bro mellem parterne.

Politiken har med netop Rådhuspladsen selv leveret et godt eksempel på, at det ikke behøver at være sådan – at det ‘kreative monopol’ kan brydes ved at lade andre end arkitekter og byplanlæggere komme til orde. I 1997 da den nye busterminal havde afskåret Politikens Hus fra resten af pladsen, iværksatte avisen en artikelserie og en konkurrence for alle læsere med idéer om, hvordan pladsen kunne udformes. Konkurrencen blev formet på en måde, så alle kunne være med, bare man tegnede sine ideer ind på et præfabrikeret foto af Rådhuspladsen. Der indkom en stor mangfoldighed af projekter – fra van(d)vittige ideer hvor hele pladsen blev til et stort vandbassin, man kunne sejle rundt i, til mere realistiske ideer, med smukke belægninger og pæne tegninger. Det var især den sidste type, der blev præmieret, herunder mit eget projekt, der modtog en 2. præmie. Ud over lidt medieomtale skete der desværre ikke mere.

Konkurrencen er et eksempel på en mere urban måde at skabe en unik ny Rådhusplads på. Man kunne også samle de bedste unge arkitekter, sociologer, kunstnere, iværksættere osv. fra hele verden og lade dem gå helt tæt på den lokale virkelighed. Ved at arrangere workshop, hvor borgere og byens øvrige parter deltager, kan der skabes et udfordrende møde mellem det lokale og det globale. Pointen er, at alle parter skal udfordres, og at det sker i et møde, hvor alle stilles lige. De uforudsigelige urbane mutationer og den dynamik, der skabes ved at lade tilblivelsen af den mest centrale plads i byen foregå i det ‘offentlige rum’, vil sætte København på det internationale landkort.

København kunne profilere sig som en åben by, der virkelig appellerer til et væld af forskellige mennesker ved at gøre byboerne til medskabere af deres by. Det er på tide, vi dyrker det simple faktum, at vi lever mange sammen, og at vi udnytter det potentiale, der ligger gemt i at skabe udfordrende og konstruktive møder mellem byboerne.

En urban metropol.

Jens Brandt, arkitekt MAA og urbanist. Medstifter af byudviklingslaboratoriet Supertanker. Senest har Supertankeren udsendt sin ‘Urban Task Force’ i Københavns Sydhavn

Urbanitet

Urbaniteten handler dybest set om, hvad der kan ske, når en mangfoldighed af mennesker lever på samme sted under konstant forandring. En væsentlig side af det urbane består i en åben og respektfuld ‘urban’ måde at omgås hinanden på. Byens liv og evne til at forny sig er afhængig af de nye og uventede ideer, netværk, osv. der opstår i det urbane møde mellem forskellige mennesker.

Plan RH: Den overordnede idé er at understrege overgangen mellem den gamle ”langsomme” by  til den nye og dynamiske by. En samling af pladsen sker ved at nedlægge Vester Voldgade og lægge H.C. Andersens Boulevard ned i en tunnel. Mod den gamle by på solsiden er der lagt op til nydelse med et rigt caféliv og en badstue under et rundt vandspejl. Mod den nye by fungerer overdækningen af H.. Andersens boulevard som busterminal for at understrege byens mobilitet og dynamik. 

H. C. Andersens  Boulevard med ny busterminal ovenpå den gennemkørende trafik. Overdækningen sikrer en kobling mellem Strøget og Vesterbrogade og udvider således City. 

Lurblæserne: Denne plads er en overset perle med masser af sol. Her skabes der en intim plads, hvor kroppens dimension understreges af en badstue under et cirkulært vandspejl.

RH set fra oven: Dette var den ”obligatoriske tegning som alle, der deltog i Politikens konkurrence som et minimum skulle tegne. Pladsens motto er ”alting på hjul” så brugen af pladsen hele tiden kan ændres og f.eks. kan pølsevogne og byinventar hurtigt ryddes af vejen til den store fest.