URBAN ANOMALIES

From a sustainability, growth, urban life, and landscape protection perspective, it is crucial to develop attractive dense and compact urban districts. However, the discussion of compactness and density is often reduced to a concern about plot ratios, functionalistic demands, and easily tradable urban building typologies. However, density is a multifaceted concept that includes creating coherent urban structures that contain complex urban environments. Urban environments with more architectural layers, more interesting architectural clashes, and a greater degree of spatial unpredictability.

Urban Anomalies departs from the paradox that even in contexts with great societal wealth, we build new districts that often lack basic spatial qualities. We thereby produce environments creating few experiences and a fundamental absence of so-called urban ‘anomalies’. It can be argued that the experientially poor urban neighbourhoods are a consequence of: market-driven urban development, the implementation of diverse smart-city technologies, the increasing use of AI modelling tools, the use of standardized building components, as well as, a consequence of strategic thinking gaining ground at virtually all scale levels. We have become familiarised with cities being developed in certain ways with uniform building typologies and uniform business cases. There seem to be few alternatives in play. Urban Anomalies intends to challenge this habitual thinking.

The first part of the project focuses on several qualities that we consider to have been lost in newer Danish urban neighbourhoods. Qualities that can be said to set the framework for the city life that is otherwise often associated with the good (city) life.

We investigate to identify the lost qualities and name them to provoke a positive joint reflection and discussion between the many actors involved in designing cities in Denmark.

With this project, we focus on the physical design of our cities – the shape of the city, the city’s space and the city’s architecture.

• Co-project leader (contact person Aarhus School of Architecture): Nuria Casais
• Co-project leader (contact person Pasgaard Arkitektkontor): Jens Christian Pasgaard
• Research Assistant: Ida Bølling Kongsted
• Advisory Board: Tom Nielsen, Thomas Bo Jensen, Charlotte Bundgaard (Det Danske Institut i Rom)
• Collaborators: Comune di Siena
• Financial support: Statens Kunstfond, Beckett-Fonden, and Dreyers Fond

This project is a partnership between Aarhus School of Architecture and Pasgaard Arkitektkontor.

This project is a part of Research Lab 2.