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

A good shopping center is a bankrupt shopping center

I used to live on top of a shopping center in Geneva and wrote about it a couple of years ago. The conclusion was that it is not possible to make a “more urban” shopping centre just because it is more integrated into the urban fabric.

Now in Zagreb I had a look at the Cascada Commercial Center placed in an especially insensitive way in the old part of town. Only good thing is that its empty after it went bankrupt. One could hope that it would discourage investors to build more of the same or simply deem it a “crime against urbanity.”

Urban Key Note – Listening to the City

Can we really hear the city and its wealth of stories? Or is it possible that there is a whole range in frequencies that are outside maybe not the human ear but outside the range that is dominated by a view of the city as a mechanical and plannable thing (and the talk about creativity as a (market driven) driver in the development of the cities does not radically divert from that).

What made me stop and think recently was the story about how the languages of elephants were discovered not many years ago. It was not a story about how technology suddenly opened up for new ranges of sound, but technology confirmed the discovery which was made in a more bodily and accidental way. In short the researcher, Katy Payne,  one day went to the ZOO and standing next to the elephant house she could sense something both in her ears and body. A sound deeper that the normal range of the human ear was discovered and then confirmed afterwards using sensitive microphones. After this discovery the researchers has been able to get an insight into a whole new world of the elephants talking to each other.

This might be a good image for how to listen to the city using the most diverse sensor that still exists: being there with your eyes, ears, nose, hands etc, and remembering how often one tend to focus on certain things and thereby exclude others. Both being conscious about sensing what you know you don’t know but also what you don’t know that you don’t know.  Here the techniques of the situationists come in handy as a way of introducing unplanned encounters by using little games like walking backwards, blindfolded, systematically taking turns left and right. Just like the accidental discovery of the low sounds of the elephants this playful and very personal sensation of the city is necessary to avoid projecting your own established vision of the city onto the city and instead try to be as open and receptive as possible.

What needs to be discovered and acknowledged is this urban key note – a language that is part of the life in the city and just like the language of elephants and humans shapes the way we are able to think and express ourselves about the city and a language that is shaped by the life in the city.

In recent years advances in technology both in the development of new sensors, wireless communication and computing powers has led to the idea of “Smart Cities” which is driven by the wish to make cites more efficient – using less energy and for example getting an ambulance faster to its destination. These advances can make life easier for us and save energy and money but a presentation some months ago by Carlo Ratti from the SENSEable City lab, MIT, in Boston made me think about some possible problems with this approach. Among other things he talked about these technological advances and used an image of Corbusier standing in front of he’s big car (a Voisin – “the perfect machine”) to underline the point that technology shapes our cities and the way we live. I got reminded of my work in the suburbs of Copenhagen where this fascination of the car dominated technology had a very negative consequences.

To my surprise this was meant as a positive thing and Ratti went on to present the possibilities of todays technology by referring to the successful Ferrari race cars where the whole drive is monitored by a vast number of sensors and a team of 20 people watching the data from the sensors during the race. The point of this was to show how it is possible to monitor the city in the same way as the race car and all the advantages this have. It struck me that just like the fascination of the car had disastrous consequences the same could be said about the present technology and the somehow very masculine “need for speed” without knowing exactly what the disasters would be this time.

One thing that is similar in the use of any technology is the danger of giving too much weight to the rational and abstract aspects that drives technology. In the case of Corbusier and his Plan Voisin from 1925 (named after the car of the same name) he went even further so the industrial building techniques was not only a means to an end; Corbusier celebrated industrialised production as the perfect creation: ‘If houses were built industrially, mass-produced like chassis,’ Le Corbusier said in his manifesto Towards an Architecture, ‘an aesthetic would be formed with surprising precision.’  In Rattis presentation using the Ferrari race car as an analogy of how technology could improve the city we get close to the same fascination for technology. The image fits into the present discussion of cities in a competition against each other and how to make this “machine” run faster, better and stronger (to quote Daft Punk).

This way of thinking can be blamed for producing a city (mostly the suburbs where people don’t go except if they have to) that is very vulnerable to social meltdowns and its rational and abstract focus makes it harder to correct the mistakes of the past and see the potentials for a more poetic and playful (and stronger) city. To use another analogy it could be compared to making a movie where the engineers that designed the hardware or software also were the ones to decide what the story should be like depending on the capabilities of their technological contribution. This movie probably wouldn’t be a box office hit (just like a car that Corbusier designed).Then why did so much of  this industrially produced city get build? Many people didn’t really have a choice. The process behind the production of the suburbs was a strange dance couple where market driven industrial production went hand in hand with idealists who wanted to produce housing for the “masses.”

With riots in London this summer, riots in suburbs in Paris and many other places it should seem obvious that we are missing some points about how we work with cities – or maybe we are just ignoring them. How to open up to the possibilities in the city and how to produce a city in a way that empowers and opens for involvement of people in the continuos process of creating the city? As a start just being in public space using the best sensor for the rich sensory and emotional diversity of the city: ourselves and our senses. Taking time to allow more openness and play to experience the unexpected stories and sensations or provoke new ones. Always knowing that the urban keynote is out there and we will probably hear it where or when we least expected it.

Urban Oeuvre and/or an architectonic Masterpiece?

Why is it, that when people travel to see new cities they typically pick (old) areas that are diverse and rich in both a sensory and emotional sense – (and the mainstream tourism that profit on these places is also the one that gradually destroy that richness). Newly build areas are seldom attractive in a way that would make people go there the but singular buildings (monuments) are. Probably the best example is the Sidney opera house by Jorn Utzon. Is the problem that we build cities today the same way as we build monuments like the opera house?

I think that Utzon is a true genius when it comes to his more singular or monumental buildings and I often refer to the way he was building and designing in the same mo(ve)ment when he build he’s last house on Mallorca. He would notice that certain pillars or walls already build needed to be different and he would ask the builders to move this or rebuild that – always paying the builders a little extra (bottles of wine). For me this is a good example on how the process of building a house becomes much less static and finite and thus allows for change and improvisations. Utzon was always very close to nature and most of his references go to natural phenomena or more monumental buildings like the Maya temples. But he did build two housing projects in Denmark that refers to more urban situations in Arab villages or the secret city of Beijing. They are praised as an architectural “pearls” but they also point to the problem when such building projects is developed and perceived as one singular and finite piece of architecture.

The problem with the Arab og Chinese references are that they are taken as a snapshot in  time that overlooks that the area/village has grown over time and would continue to do that if nothing else happens. The spatial character of such spaces is a product of the people living there and gradually transforming these spaces over time. In this sense the space becomes both a physical space that can be measured and photographed but most importantly is an almost living and organic expression of the people who have inhabited that space and in that also pointing to the openness to possible for future adaptations. In that sense these “living” structures becomes “natural” in an urban sense and could have been an inspiration for Utzon just as the clouds or the plants were. His own last house on Mallorca show some of that more organic and open process of how buildings can be build.

It is interesting to see how the buildings that Corbusier designed in Pessac outside of Bordeaux gradually got decorated or people compensated for problems in the design such as the flat roofs (also inspired by Arab villages). In both a wish to make the houses look more personal and in a functional sense the design of Corbusier was being appropriated in what could be called a “natural” urban process that would be in accordance to the arab references. In contrast to the buildings of Corbusier – being very stringent and based on precise, inflexible proportions – Utzons organic layout of the Kingo houses are closer to the Arab references and could have been appropriated without going against the architecture like in the case of the Pessac buildings. But here the finite “architectural” oevre and the fact that the buildings were owned by a building associations meant that appropriations were either forbidden or maybe the law abiding Danes were just not up for challenging the design of Utzon, who shortly after the houses were build, became famous by winning the competition for the opera house in Sidney.

One place not far from the Kingo houses, some not very law abiding Danes have either build their own houses or appropriated the existing army barracks on Christiania in Copenhagen. This is probably one of the few examples in the world where the above mentioned stream of tourists choose to go to a (in parts) newly build area. All houses are build or appropriated over time as a result of a local culture that tries to live less conventional and they are therefore all different. Christiania have just celebrated 40 years of existence and people keep building, renewing, adding on to the existing buildings there. Hopefully that process will keep going and serve as an inspiration for the more mainstream way of life and inspire the way we think of creating a less finite and open – urban – view on how to continuously build the city while we are discussing how it should be. What is more important than the amount of tourists that will visit such a place is that the very concrete/physical expression of the continuous creation of a city points to the fact that it is possible to take part in a way that makes people dream of a better future and inspires to take action.

Planete Charmilles

Lately in a conversation with a local Geneva architect, we talked about the strange place (which I live in) that includes a shopping centre called “Planete Charmilles” and he thought that this very dense building complex was an example of how a shopping centre could be urban. My first reaction was to reject the idea that any shopping centre could be urban even though it might be less “un-urban” compared to the classic style shopping centre – a box surrounded with parking.

The typical shopping centre is one of the strongest forces of (un)urban fragmentation (being mono functional, purely market driven, privatising potentially public space and dominated by the use of the car) Planete Charmilles is different since it is woven into the urban fabric of our area and has entrances to the street. These three entrances do have signs of urban life. Especially the entrance with small corner shops that I pass several times every day is little local microcosm of everyday life. So what makes this place urban?

One of the things that makes the place really stand out is the small improvised (urban) “Memorial” for somebody who died in a traffic accident just at the street crossing outside the entrance to the shopping centre. For years this improvised Memorial has been there with plastic flowers attached to the light pole (many traces of scotch tape shows the time go by) and real flowers are placed there to dry out – just like the grave yard. It looks like people do steal the artificial flowers but there is an unwritten rule: that the last one always stays which makes it look even more miserable and sad. Every year flowers are refreshed.

This “Urban Memorial” marks a stark contrast to the shopping centre with its controlled atmosphere behind the sliding doors just 10 meters away. The sad but also beautiful character could never be part of any “be happy don’t worry (but shop)” atmosphere of the shopping centre. Everything that could make potential costumers uncomfortable is avoided just like the physical surroundings are kept at a comfortable level when it comes to temperature, humidity, sounds etc. Nothing in this artificially regulated atmosphere is supposed to challenge you as long as you can pay.This is part of a more subtle mental fragmentation of the city that makes it less urban: There are places for careless (market driven) pleasure and other places for sadness and feeling of loss in spite of everyday life always being a mix of these feelings.

What also makes the entrance to the shopping centre more urban is a more recent phenomenon: behind the sliding doors is a no smoking zone which makes the entrance a popular place for smokers. Where the controlled atmosphere inside the shopping centre is now smoke free (but symbolically rather low on oxygen) it exports this problem into the public (and less controlled) space which makes the entrance a place to hang out for the smoking outcasts (quite urban in that way). The entrance literately becomes a grey zone between public and private space. Like a purgatory you have to pass before you can enter the smoke free and careless atmosphere of the shopping centre.

As a contrast to the memorial to somebody who died or the smokers who might be (challenging death) what really matters in this space is the mornings where I pass by on the way to school with my daughter. The two corner shops on each side of the entrance are truly part of the local fabric both in a functional sense supplying people with bread and sandwiches on one corner and beer and wine on the other but most importantly they are mostly populated with people who enjoy to be part of public space. This means that every morning we are saying good morning, waving, blowing kisses (depending of who is there) and later in the day when time is less precious its time for a little gift from the bakery or a talk about how the Danish team did in football or he’s latest trip to the october beer fest in Munich. This makes the passing and stopping for a short talk a pleasure while greeting some of the more stable smokers in the same space. The two corner shops are in a dense position where many people pass by every day to make it “urban”. But in this case the place is only really “urban” when it is the Portuguese guy in the wine and beer shop or the Colombian woman in the bakery are there. Those are the people who enjoy to be part of public space and in the end makes it urban. At other times it is not the same.

What is urban? Its all about the people and how they inhabit a place and interact with each other. It is about how people are able to inhabit a place and make it personal and it is how people enjoy the urban space in the good company with other people.

Is the shopping centre Planete Charmille more urban than other shopping centres? Not really – it might be less “un urban” as mentioned already but being woven into the local fabric in a physical sense makes it easier to see how its not really urban and the entrances are not urban because of the shopping centre except that it creates a critical mass of people either passing to and from the centre or hanging out there to smoke. But that same Critical mass of people is sucked into the mono functional atmosphere of the shopping centre which makes the surrounding neighbourhood equally mono functional with only a few shops and cafes etc – they are all inside the sliding doors of the centre.

Often “urban” is seen as the same as an area being dense and thus focusing on the more quantitative aspects, and even though it seem obvious that the urban is also the qualitative   (social and cultural) aspects too it is often overlooked or seen as an automatic consequence of the place being dense. These qualitative aspects are things that are not to be planned or controlled like the shopping centre is and they are much more complicated if one look at it from a rational perspective. But on an emotional level its often much simpler: an urban space feels good – not in the predictable way of a shopping centre, but because it is inhabited with real people and has a diverse sensory and emotional richness from the weather that changes to the improvised memorial for somebody who died.

I wonder if the qualitative aspects of urban life are overlooked because the controlling perspective of the way an architect shape a building is also applied to urban life. The problem here is maybe not the controlling perspective in it self – we do want buildings that are build properly and doesn’t collapse – but the problem might be that the controlling perspective of architects creates a blind spot towards the qualitative aspects. In short there is a need for a more holistic approach where architects work with other professions and especially take the time to go much more local than is the case today.