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INTRODUCTION

Perspectives on Place-Based Architecture

Text: Malin Zimm
Research: Angelica Åkerman

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Table of Contents – Perspectives on Place-Based Architecture

Introduction

Roundtable

On the 14th December 2023 a roundtable was held with the contributing experts to this article, discussing the topic further.

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The future will judge us by the “how” as well as by the “what” in the built environment. But most of all, the built environment will be appraised by how the built corresponds to its environment – its place.

Every person in this world is connected to a place, to which we develop an extra sense; the “sense of place”. This makes every one of us experts in the place we dwell. Place is the dimension of our identity, it forms its inhabitants, and its inhabitants forms their place. This article will investigate place-based development and architecture as a community builder in the Nordic context, with a focus on learnings from regional and local-based planning and development. The aim is to promote methods and skills that use local knowledge, skills and materials. The learnings from a number of examples will contribute to the knowledge of how we can take care of existing places and buildings within a local fabric of social structures, materials, energy, infrastructure, culture, identity and relations. Through the perspectives presented in this text, we will also get an understanding of cultural, political, and legislative barriers, as well as how these can be overcome. We will also investigate how architecture and planning can be used actively as a community shaper that builds the foundation for a regenerative use and more sustainable behaviour. The perspectives presented in this text build the story about how to work with place-based architecture within the Nordic countries, in different situations, scales and levels.

The Nordic Context

Place ties the embodied existence to the conditions of earth itself. Where industrial building has caused a disembodiment between architecture and climate, material, culture, craft, community – place-based architecture brings us back in balance with reality. The Nordic countries share common characteristics in terms of public policy, values that form a good basis for place-based planning. The Nordic countries have a tradition of political consensus. Collaborative decision-making contributes to stable and enduring public policies. While maintaining a strong central government, Nordic countries also emphasize local governance. Decentralization allows for greater flexibility in responding to regional needs and preferences. Nordic countries are known for transparent and accountable governance, and open government practices, access to information and low levels of corruption contribute to public trust in institutions. Policies supporting equal opportunities and gender equality, as well as access to quality education in publicly funded educational systems, contribute to a high quality of life for residents. The Nordic countries also share a tradition of archiving and keeping of historical records, accessible to the public in open archives and museums, which facilitates staying in touch with, and caring for, the cultural heritage.

The essence of place-based architecture is the long perspectives, looking back as well as ahead, to ensure that the local conditions and needs are met in the most socially, economically and ecologically sustainable ways.

Placemaking vs Place-Based

The terminology is important, though the term “place-based architecture” seems fairly unambiguous. Yet similar terminology, such as placemaking architecture, causes confusion. Placemaking architecture denotes a process where architects and planners work with residents, businesses, and other stakeholders to create or develop the identity and culture of a place, with a strong emphasis on the design of social public spaces and creative interventions. Placemaking as a strategy is troublesome because it assumes a place was not a place before the creative interventions, and also because of the questions of who benefits from the values created within the community, and sometimes the lack of long-term perspectives that stretches beyond the next stages of development. After the place is “made”, the cultural activities and value-creating strategies are often no longer present on the same terms as before the full development. Strategies within placemaking can be found in processes of place-based architecture, but the essence of place-based architecture is the long perspectives, looking back as well as ahead, to ensure that the local conditions and needs are met in the most socially, economically and ecologically sustainable ways.

Critical Regionalism

As a historical economic process, globalization has decreased geographic distances but increased financial inequalities. Rather than boosting humanity’s sense of interconnectedness, the negative consequences of globalism are omnipresent. The era of inexorable extraction of fossil fuel energy sources coincide with an expansive, homogenizing industrialized architecture, executed in the concrete and glass of “international style”. The backlash was articulated by, among others, Kenneth Frampton who coined the term “Critical Regionalism” in an essay published in 1983. Fuelled by the imperative sustainable shift in architecture in the 2010’s, regionalist planning was brought to light after having led a parallel off-the-beaten track since the 1980’s. In 2014, Brian MacKay-Lyons published Local Architecture: Building Place, Craft, and Community, bringing together some of the most important and original voices advocating the regional focus in architecture and development, including Kenneth Frampton, Juhani Pallasmaa, Deborah Berke and Glenn Murcutt. This book concluded the International Ghost Lab conferences, initiated by MacKay-Lyons as a forum to discuss place, craft and community, with an underlying concern about the state of the profession of architecture in both education and practice. The ideas of an architecture that responds to site, draws on local building traditions, materials, and crafts and strives to create a sense of community is not new. At the contemporary end of what Frampton framed as critical regionalism, and after half a century of theory and practice of sustainable site-sensitive architecture, place-based architecture is a comprehensive term for all the necessary strategies to achieve ecological, economic and social sustainability in the built environment.

 

In the perspective of:
An architecture office

Sören Nielsen, Denmark