Events Calendar

This week’s seminar is a research topic, presented by Anne Cunningham – PhD Student in Landscape Architecture – Lincoln University & Copenhagen University

“Consent, Designed?: The Case of Superkilen, Copenhagen”

“Superkilen was designed by BIG Architects, Topotek 1 and Superflex. It was opened in 2012 to critical and public acclaim, winning multiple international awards and was the most instagrammed place in the world (2018).

Behind the accolades was a social intent: to improve the lives of the residents of Mjølnerparken, the adjacent social housing complex. Mjølnerparken is a contested place, whose high media profile reflects its notoriety, as does the Danish Government’s controversial labelling of it as a ‘ghetto’. To achieve the design’s social intent a novel participatory process was introduced, which the design team coined as ‘extreme participation’.

This study introduces an interdisciplinary, novel lens of informed consent to the analysis of two cases of Participatory Landscape Architecture. This presentation will focus on aspects of the case of Superkilen.

Informed consent is a rich seam of theory, at the heart of many social welfare disciplines. It moulds professional practices, addressing concerns about social justice, asymmetries of power and the legitimacy of heterogenous actors (Miller and Wertheimer 2010). Consent is also the fundamental interaction of democracy (Ringen 2009). It receives little attention within design and planning, where participatory procedures often arbitrate between local politics and best practice (Calderon 2013, 2019), and substitute for practice based discussions of e.g. democracy and justice.

This presentation draws on preliminary findings from an on-going PhD study, between Lincoln University and Copenhagen University.”

The presentation is taking place ONLINE and it will be a PUBLIC LIVE EVENT

The event will be recorded and available for viewing on the SOLA YouTube page: