sweet summer

The office has been running a bit slow lately since some are on vacation and others are spending this beautiful Tromsø summer sublimely conducted by these delicate hands..

dialogue days

Peter Schultz Jørgensen, architect, planner and writer, is visiting us for some conversation, discussion and thinking on planning in our time. We have spent the last days in deep dialogue that is supposed to end up as a text in a book.
Peter is the author of the Weekendavisen articles Et kvalificeret brud and Den flydende by.

Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity and Consistency

Congratulations to Berit who has now finished her diploma!
We had the opportunity to see and to celebrate it yesterday with great food, company and discussions - as always in Casa S.

..and those words: Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity and Consistency, are of course of Italo Calvino and his Six Memo's and, to put it very short, the departure for Berit's excellent work.

If you're in Århus you can see her and the other students' projects at the diploma exhibition.

diseñart #35

Spanish magazine diseñart #35 presents our kindergartens over three spreads.

Island tour

We've spent the last days traveling some of Norway's most beautiful islands to see projects under construction, already built ones and some sites for possible new projects. So we left Tromsø, passed Kvaløya to go to Senja, from there we continued to Andøya, Hinnøya, Langøya in Vesterålen and on to the Lofoten islands of Austvågøy and Vestvågøy, and then Hamarøy.
In addition to checking our own projects we also took a look at Steven Holl's Hamsunsenter which is to be opened in less than a month, and we couldn't pass by Dan Graham's mirror sculpture without a stop.

Plan

In the magazine Plan #3-4 several projects and processes where D&U and 70°N been involved are mentioned as examples of more experimental and 'spectacular' planning. John Pløger refers to the Game of Tromsø and the Year of Urban Development, as well as our article Openness and Experiment, in his article Ambivalens og etos - forskjeller og likheter i byplanlegging i Norge og Danmark.

Hanne Bertnes and Aasne Haug uses the Nordhavnen competition as a case in the article Et møte med dansk planmiljø:
"Hvordan sikres intensjonene i en god plan? Er det i styrkeforholdet mellom offentlig ansvarlighet og private investorer man finner svaret, eller er det mer i prosessen og mindre i selve svaret? De tre vinnerne etter første runde i Nordhavnen hadde ulike svar på akkurat dette. Mens de to danske prosjektene la opp til en "tradisjonell" planstrategi der planen definerer de fysiske strukturer, satset det norske vinnerbidraget på en prosessbasert planstrategi, der viktige offentlige strukturer defineres, men der fremtidens fysiske omgivelser defineres suksessivt med utviklingen. Denne tankemåten erkjenner at vi ikke vet hva fremtidens samfunn trenger, men er samtidig mer krevende for planleggere og utviklere som ønsker forutsigbarhet."

"How to secure the intentions of a good plan?
The three winning concepts in the Nordhavnen competition had different answers to this question. While both the danish projects presented a 'traditional' planning strategy where the plan defines the physical structures, the norwegian winning proposal went for a process based planning strategy, where important public structures are defined, but where the physical surroundings of the future are defined successively with the development. This thinking recognizes that we do not know what tomorrow's society needs, but is at the same time more challenging for planners and developers who wish predictability."

TaTLIN 5|47|64| 2008

We had only seen the cover of this TaTLIN magazine presenting Strandkanten, but here's the whole article.

cathedrals & hotels

Gisle's writing about how hotels have taken over the right to build monuments in our cities with a recent example from Narvik and a quote from Aaron Betsky on that if one's considering building monumental, free-standing buildings today one should be sure they are of the same importance and quality as yesterday's cathedrals - the buildings that historically have had this place.

COP after RIO

Jan Carlsen puts attention on the upcoming COP15, taking place in Copenhagen in December, with an article in Arkitektnytt.
He's been talking sustainability with Knut Eirik Dahl and Marius Nygaard of AHO using our Excentral Park - Edge Dynamics project as a starting point.