The Troll-Futuristic City Planning Office
11 October, 17 October, 25 October, 31 October, 8 November, 14 November, 22 November, 28 November
Public helping days
11.00–16.00
More information soon
In autumn 2026, the Troll-Futuristic City Planning Officewill open on a site next to Färgfabriken. According to the detailed development plan, the site will eventually become a playground. Over the course of three years, the Troll-Futuristic City Planning Office will explore what the site can be right now and what happens when city planning begins by getting to know what is already there. Through troll perception, we pay attention to how people, plants, animals, water, stories and building components are already shaping the site together.
The Troll-Futuristic City Planning Office builds on concepts developed through MYCKET’s artistic research. MYCKET (Mariana Alves Silva, Katarina Bonnevier and Thérèse Kristiansson) is an art, design and architecture collective that explores how people, other species, places, stories and things shape spaces together. Troll perception unsettles the idea that humans naturally belong at the centre and asks us to let what we encounter affect how we act. The stories we create about a place influence what we understand to be possible and, in turn, what we do. Troll-futurism is a playful but serious attempt to imagine futures in which humans do not see themselves as the only ones shaping the world.
Troll perception unsettles the idea that humans naturally belong at the centre and asks us to let what we encounter affect how we act. The stories we create about a place influence what we understand to be possible and, in turn, what we do. Troll-futurism is a playful but serious attempt to imagine futures in which humans do not see themselves as the only ones shaping the world.
The office is looking for co-workers
Woad, goat willow, black knapweed and sweet cherry are already working at the office. The fox takes the night shifts. The bedrock is the office’s only permanent employee and has been here since operations began some 1.7 billion years ago. The brick fragments have been rehired after a long career that began in the rock. Their journey to the office has been a long one. With help from the ice sheet, they first retrained from rock into mineral dust. When the ice retreated, meltwater carried them out into open water, where they settled on the bottom and became clay. Much later, they found work at the brick kilns, where the heat gave them yet another form. As bricks, they helped build many of the area’s buildings. Our human neighbours are Färgfabrikens staff, construction workers and the many artists who still work in studios in the area. Heidelberg’s cement plant is another neighbour.
About the artist
The Troll-Futurist City Planning Office is run by Thérèse Kristiansson of MYCKET as part of her doctoral research in urban design at KTH, within the research project Ecologies of Care (EcoCARE). The Swedish part of EcoCARE is led by Meike Schalk at KTH. The project explores how care for people, other species and living environments can play a greater role in urban development. The work at Lövholmen is being developed together with Emma Simonsson at Urbio and in collaboration with Färgfabriken. Skanska is making the site available. The Troll-Futurist City Planning Office builds on concepts developed through MYCKET’s artistic research. MYCKET (Mariana Alves Silva, Katarina Bonnevier and Thérèse Kristiansson) is an art, design and architecture collective that explores how people, other species, places, stories and things shape spaces together.
Image above: One of the office’s project employees, woad, bloomed at the end of May this year. It shares an important skill with the tropical indigo plant: both can produce blue dye. Indigo dyeing gave its name to Blå Hand (“Blue Hand”) and Nya Blå Hand (“New Blue Hand”), two dye factories that operated at Lövholmen during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The names are said to have come from the indigo-blue hands of the dye workers. We learned this from Hans Jungnell, Eva Hult and Karin Schibbye’s Lövholmen: en kultur- och industrihistoria (2024).
Partners
The work at Lövholmen is being developed together with Emma Simonsson at Urbio and in collaboration with Färgfabriken. Skanska is making the site available.