Exhibition: Latent City – Den latenta staden

May 19 – 26: Exhibitied proposals for urban development, at Lövholmen and in Solna.

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Image: Lauren Crockett

May 19-26 at Färgfabriken, fourth-year architecture students in KTH Studio 7 (Elizabeth Hatz and Peter Lynch, faculty) will exhibit and discuss design proposals for two large sites in the Stockholm metro area.

One site, Lövholmen (where Färgfabriken is located), the last zone of heavy industry in the central city, plays an important role in Stockholm’s urban image. The area is slated for high-density redevelopment. Transformation of this historic, complex area should benefit from local character, topography, public space, sustainability, and a careful relationship of buildings to the ground. Students working here focused on questions of adaptive re-use and historical memory, drawing upon existing conditions to uncover Lövholmen’s latent civic character.

The other site, a strip of unbuilt land near Solna town center, is a “blind spot” in the urban fabric. It encompasses a forgotten highway ramp, temporary student housing, an abandoned quarry, and a former farmstead. Here, students focused on integration of the site into the surrounding city—clarification of its latent urban role and urban image. In both study areas students were asked to consider their site, first and foremost, as fertile shared land, not as abstract real estate. How, in a very specific way, could these two places realize their organic and communal potential? As a design method, students drew out urban orders, spatial structures, architectural solutions, and ecosystems from existing conditions. An appropriate urban design approach can be imagined as latent in a place, already existing in potential. Uncovering it requires sensitivity and invention. This is the latent city – den latenta staden.

Public exhibition at Färgfabriken, Thursday May 19 – Thursday May 26 (regular opening hours)

The works are also presented at a public seminar at Färgfabriken, Thursday May 26, 18:00-20:00

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