A New Urban Village

TEAM DATA

Team Representative: Jeanette W. Frisk (DK) – architect urban planner; Associate: Rasmus W. Frisk (DK) – architect urban planner
Contributors: Bianca M. Hermansen (DK) – architect; Emilie S. Kjeldsen (DK) – student in architecture 

Arki_lab ApS, Birkegade 4, 2200 København – Danmark 
+45 28 14 37 17 – mail@arkilab.dk – www.arkilab.dk 

See the complete listing of portraits here
See the site page here

^{R. W. Frisk, J. W. Frisk, E. S. Kjeldsen and B. M. Hermansen}

INTERVIEW

1. How did you form the team for the competition?

The objective for us was to find someone outside our office team with the right skills and knowledge to complement ours. We had to gather the relevant skills to answer the site’s assignments, specific challenges and potentials, but also to answer the overall question in relation to the competition as well as to our cities’ ability to adapt.

2. How do you define the main issue of your project, insisting on how you answered on this session main topic: adaptability and urban rhythms?

The master plan proposes a socially adaptable ‘crumble’ structure in which housing units are small but joined up this way, allowing flexible and adaptable use over time. The ‘crumble’ structure also allows exposure for both private, semi-private, semi-public and public spheres, providing the neighbourhood with a socially resilient spatial framework, e.g. 24 hour residents such as seniors or people outside of the labor force vs. the busy career couple working at the hospital. The proposal celebrates human behaviour in all its many forms and shapes. Focus is put on Lefebvre’s ‘Everydayness of the Everyday.’ It is about making every day as enjoyable as possible, including ordinary necessary activities such as shopping, taking the bus, sending the kids to school. The main concept of the proposed master plan is thinking in terms of types of infrastructure: social, human, community, ecological, economic, etc. to support the rhythm of life lived in the urban framework.

3. How did this issue and the questions raised by the site mutation meet?

The master plan proposes a socially adaptable ‘crumble’ structure in which housing units are small but joined up this way, allowing flexible and adaptable use over time. The ‘crumble’ structure also allows exposure for both private, semi-private, semi-public and public spheres, providing the neighbourhood with a socially resilient spatial framework, e.g. 24 hour residents such as seniors or people outside of the labor force vs. the busy career couple working at the hospital. The proposal celebrates human behaviour in all its many forms and shapes. Focus is put on Lefebvre’s ‘Everydayness of the Everyday.’ It is about making every day as enjoyable as possible, including ordinary necessary activities such as shopping, taking the bus, sending the kids to school. The main concept of the proposed master plan is thinking in terms of types of infrastructure: social, human, community, ecological, economic, etc. to support the rhythm of life lived in the urban framework.

4. Have you already treated this issue previously and could you present some reference projects that inspired yours?

We were predominantly inspired by a combination of the traditional historic French Village, with its community buildings abilities as well as its celebration of the natural setting; the Sea Ranch Lodge in California by Charles W. Moore, Joseph Esherick, William Turnbull, Donlyn Lyndon, and Richard Whitaker and the landscape architect Lawrence Halprin with its clusters of wooden houses close to the edge of the Pacific ocean and a Danish residential area called Galgebakken (Gallows hills) in Albertslund west of Copenhagen, by J.P. Storgård, Jørn Ørum Nielsen, Hanne Marcussen, Anne Ørum Nielsen from 1972-74. Galgebakken is a residential area characterized by close low-rise buildings in the form of terraced houses grouped in a number of streets and neighbourhoods. The buildings’ design has given way to the development of a particular community and the many public spaces and protected lanes provide good conditions for all generations and members of society. It is a great example of an adaptable and social structure witch is still working even after 40 years.

5. Today –within the era of an economic crisis and sustainability– the urban-architectural project should reconsider its production method in time; how did you integrate this issue in your project?

The key to solving any architectural and urban project is a strategic human approached process within a flexible framework, rather than a rigid master-plan structure. The way we have integrated this into the project is by looking at the existing urban conditions and social and human capital in the area and how that can play a role in the development of the area over time. This master plan framework proposal envision a main public space as the neighbourhood ‘living room’, that not only functions as a social high performance space in the final result, but also activates the human capital of the area in the building process. The overall multi-usability of the space never dictates use but rather hints or inspires it, this way supporting creative self-expression as well as supporting community cultural development and social capital.

6. Is it the first time you have been awarded a prize at Europan? How could this help you in your professional career?

This is the first time that we have been awarded a prize at Europan, and we already experienced that it helps promote our work and expose us as an office that solves important and relevant issues in our society with a special attention to the site and the release of the social and human potential in the process of co-creating our cities.