Johanna Fager

ANTICIPATING 2020 + Telge Hovsjö

Diploma work for M.Arch, a curated art and architecture program for temporary projects –
a counter-proposal / in wait for construction to start
Thereafter a continued commission by Telge Hovsjö for
municipal strategic urban planning
Hovsjö, Södertälje (SE)
2013-2014

The diploma work centered around how to plan for the unplanned - and to plan for the future by acting in the present. And further, on the role of the architect and artist, the architecture and urban form when working whitin spatially segregated areas and planning for the future. It was a proposal for a curated art-, and architectural program with a series of temporary installations taking place during 2014-2019.

The purpose of the Diploma work was to discuss the existing, and possible, urban life in relation to planning and “upgrading” spatially segregated areas in general, and the city area Hovsjö in particular. To question the need of extensive planning practices and control.

The focus of Telge Hovsjö, a municipal housing company, was in 2013 on social mobilization and participatory work processes by involving the inhabitants in the management of the site. Simultaneously they worked on a vision for Hovsjö’s future, a plan called “Hovsjö 2020”.

The Diploma work ANTICIPATING 2020 was created as a reaction to their plan. By testing different spaces, by charging them with ideas and functions, coming from a diverse group and with temporality as a main objective, the permanent redevelopment of the area could come from more informed choices and thereby creating better architecture, spaces and communal areas.

Central questions; how can you work while waiting for the future to come? While waiting for the area to become even more densified? While waiting for the new shopping malls, restaurants and apartments?

Four objectives were in focus in the Diploma work:

I. The architects, and the architectures role
II. The public spaces and places that were the outcome and consequence of the functionalist/modernist urban planning. The planning that resulted in a sort of island urbanism - an archipelago of mono-functional suburbs that are poorly connected to each other as well as to the city center
III. The notion of temporality and events in relation to architecture and art
IV. Vague spaces, creative loopholes, SLOAP (spaces left-over after planning) and to see the existing

The proposed curated program would run between 2014-2019 with invited artist and architects doing one project / work each year.

For 2014 I proposed the project the Sphere and the Grid.

Hovsjö has a big “Central Park” but the area lacks smaller, intimate, public spaces and rooms. The Sphere and the Grid creates small, intimate, public rooms by a park-like installation of spheres. Framing the outlines of rooms, instead of building them.

This proposal aims to create a diversity in the types of rooms present on the site. Doing so by adding something a bit unexpected and low-key; a park-like installation with spherical plants and wooden globes. Accompanied by a large stainless steel globe that, thanks to its geometry, gives a distorted reflection of ones surroundings and self. When looking into the steel globe through viewing holes, you would find a small cinema with animations and films playing.

The installation is a play with old castle gardens, with the strictness of the grid and its plants, trimmed and perfect. It creates a structure you might not expect in this context. Which also means that the use doesn’t have to be what you expect.

The Sphere & the Grid

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