We’re on our way back from Gothenburg, after four days of public city-prototyping workshops and urban planning conversations with the Ingrepp research group.

Dead dialogue

A few years ago when a major, central throughway was diverted through a new tunnel, a large slab of land on the southern riverbed area (Södra Älvstranden) in central Gothenburg was suddenly opened for redevelopment. In a (then) much applauded gesture the reponsible quango Älvstranden AB invited teams of citizens to come up with proposals for their future vision of the area. But, as the teams entered politically sensitive proposals that didn’t fit the wishlist of quango, the process was slowly quieted and bottled up.

Keeping up the conversation

The Ingrepp (Intervention) research group has been exploring artistic interventions in city planning in general, and the collapsed Södra Älvstranden process in particular. Ingrepp invited Unsworn Research to host panorama-making workshops at four different locations along the riverbed.

In our custom-made panorama studio passers-by as well as the participating researchers, artists and architects created new versions and visions of the location at hand. The panoramas were uploaded to a Parascope where the different scenarios could be explored and compared to the present milieu.

Learn more about the Ingrepp project through the Ingrepp Tabloid or their rhizomatic Politics of Magma publication.