ESKELUNDEN – AARHUS Landskabslaboratorium 2.0

Kunstnerisk udviklingsprojekt / Project manager: Stefan Darlan Boris.

In the agreement of the Finance Act, there has been allocated a so-called quality grant for artistic educational institutions of 15 million DKK annually, until 2023. This research project is funded by these means. Read more.

Aarhus Landscape Laboratory 2.0 is a research project exploring new urban nature in 1:1 on two sites in Aarhus: (1) Eskelunden, a 30-hectare large urban-industrial woodland placed on a former waste deposit, and (2) a new afforestation satellite to be located in 2020 in dialogue with Aarhus Kommune. Eskelunden is placed along the Aarhus River less than a kilometre from the city centre making it, potentially, highly accessible for many people. It is also the future event site in Aarhus currently (2020) undergoing large transformations in order for it to be inaugurated by Northside in June 2021.

Aarhus Landscape Laboratory 2.0 is a cross-disciplinary platform for research, education and artistic research with an aim to rethink and develop new types of urban nature in Aarhus. The laboratory is integrated in the recreational green spaces of the city making it highly accessible for the inhabitants of Aarhus to visit and explore:

We want to make room for more nature in the city. In both our common understanding and the physical space of the city. Our vision is to develop, test and demonstrate attractive biodiversity as an integrated part of the urban landscape and to qualify what urban nature can be. The vision will be reached by translating state-of-the-art research in nature, biodiversity and landscape architecture into specific action-oriented initiatives in an area, which will function as a platform for dialogue, sharing of knowledge and demonstration across disciplines, users and visitors alike. All experiments will contribute to the development, testing and demonstration of new forms of management.