ExpansionContemplation

Madsen & Möller Group/ Lone Haugaard Madsen & Lasse Krog Möller 2002
Expansion contemplation

In 2000, the city of Aarhus arranged an idea competition concerning the future development - planning of the city/harbour areas of Aarhus. In connection to this, the Madsen & Möller Group developed a project which by theoretical contemplations concerning urban evolutional structures, set up a series of methods for handeling, discussing and adaptation of allready existing valuable localities in a future planning of sites on Aarhus Harbour. Through a production of these methods, the aim was to raise a number of fundamental questions and theses in relation to a redefinition of such industrial harbour localities for an urban structure.

The following describes an image of the physical fixpoints (sites), which are grounding this Madsen & Möller project.

The Sites

Evolution in the ciy; alteration in the city plan. Areas are transformed and assigned new functions. Sites are supplied with new meaning by virtue of - and subordinated to - the current processes in the development/evolution of the city. But what is controlling this development? - Is the public space defined by the crowd of people or of employment ? - Is the public sphere gradually getting staged from financial practice, in preference to utilization of the sites from e.g. cultural or historical values of these sites ? One thing is certain. In connection with the expansion of Aarhus Harbour, the public space is redefined. To avoid a total regulation/homogenization of the city space, it is nescessarry to interpret the already existing codes, in connection to the until now, unheeded spaces/areas of the city. - The empty sites.

Aarhus Harbour has - as all cities have - "stigmas". -The contrast to the glamourous cafés of the city; gaps in proportion to the city plan. Not the first site you would go to see and parade for a visitor in town. Backsides, you normally wouldn´t ascribe any kind of utility value. Slowliness and emptiness, marks these sites. In this they are in conflict with the intended and accepted city plan.

Example of one of the here mentioned sites: "A smaller ground with trees. Encircled by granite bollards with iron chains. In the immediate vicinity of this, there is a street covered with paving stone, which is now blocked. The street was earlier led across a railway track. The area produces an immediate peculiar impression, as it is situated - remote and solitary - suppressed between the railway and a provisional gravel-area. It is demarcated by the charasteristic white marking blocks of concrete. The area represent a collision between an earlier, today outdated monument, the blocked paving stone street and a provisional constructed space. The paving is partly covered by newly established asphalt":

Aesthetic value is not the mainstay of the sites, but rather the fact that the sites themselves carries an expression of "remains", compared to the remaining city space; the homogenization of the city.

As link in a new city plan, it must be relevant to exploit these surplus-sites. These non- or different-coded spaces, their slowliness and emptiness. "The sites" which are taking part in the organizing of the city. - if you dive into; zoome in on a site without a visible function, you have to take a closer look at the relation between: sense versus non-sense - consequently define the site (and eventually function of the site) from clash of interests, - here the surroundings. With what kind of knowledge can an apparently empty site impart us ? Which expressions does the site eventually contain ? ; whether e.g. melancholy or other atmospheres, will be attributed to the observer. A sober consideration reports about a "resting" site. A not yet utilized area. At a certain point, the site will probably be incorporated in the city environment - be discovered - on a more "accepted" level than now and a completely different value will be added to the site.

Further application

"We are living in a space, which is totally charged with qualities, a space which is maybe also ravaged by delusions, our main sense, our dreams and the respective spaces of our passions posseses themselves some qualities, which are if anything essentially determined!" - Michel Foucault

The sites expresses with their "content of absence" and by virtue of their adaptability and aimlessness an opposition against a totally regulating of the city - the harbour. In matter of interpretaion, the sites are "carriers" of an image of "fantasy space". Entropy in architecture of the harbour, the sites´ character of being left overs indicates the status as opposition of the harbour/city against previous cityplanning. How is it possible to make use of these values in a future renewal concerning the extension of Aarhus Harbour? It is attended to incorporate the immediately not functional aspects, - the sites, on the harbour. These sites contains a kind of independence. If the present sites are getting "caught by surprice" - filled up during the extension of the harbour, they will find new crevices. One can try to plan this process, but it is not possible to directly steer or control it. The sites have a limited lifetime. Their existence is however producing an experience-based fundament to "build upon"!.

The aim is to let the values of the present sites, find a physical form. The target is to avoid the control from the city´s normality and standard, to transfer "the otherness" metaphorical. To articulate the otherness and by virtue of that, create a greater consciousness about the qualities of the sites. To create a new type of public space, partly marked by experience and impressions, differing from the other spaces in the city. Thereby involved to express an opposition against the common - worn down - space.

To articulate the emptiness, by respecting the already existing values and sense of the original genius of the sites themselves.

Controlled commercial cityspace?

The experiences drawn from the city plan projects in Aarhus shows in resemblance to other larger city planning projects, that the dispositions made of the city, with reference to a realization of new plans/designs, which are primarily based on often obvious unrealistic expectations; conceited promises about an increased economical acceleration seems to be the motive power. This tendency is allready manifested in e.g. the transfer of the public city space onto private companies. Lately there has been made a licitation/out-leasing of the city furniture, stopping places, toilettes etc. To companies which are entrusted the right to rent out commercial space on these fixtures. By this tendency - that the public sphere is subjugated such financial based parametres, - and thereby following rigid commercial synonymous city spaces, there is no prospects to any acceleration in the nearest future. Neither in Aarhus nor in any other possible spaces.

For info/contact Madsen&Möller Group: mailto:lone_haugaard_madsen@hotmail.com, mailto:lasse-krog@ofir.dk

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