Aarhus busts a move!

Programme Director Juliana Engberg is absorbing the urban situation in Aarhus - a city with 'liveability'.

Most people know the oft quoted “cycle tracks will abound in Utopia” proclamation from HG Well’s A Modern Utopia, but it is another of his statements to which I am drawn when I think about contemporary ‘Liveability’. Right at the start of his speculations Wells writes about his idea of a ‘modern’ post-Darwinian Utopia as being made from “a flexible common compromise, in which a perpetually novel succession of individualities may converge most effectually upon a comprehensive onward development.”

A contemporary Utopia therefore is not a place designed with one ideal in mind. Not made for the Vitruvian man based on perfect symmetry, balance and Olympic strengths. Nor a place, as that other modern dreamer, Le Corbusier would have had it, designed to accommodate the automobile by piling people high in vertical cities, separated by freeways, so that speed could be unhampered. In Wells’ vision, Utopia is a place that provides liveability with variation and consideration for multiple individuals and their capacities.

A city with liveability
Liveability is a much vied for title for any city. My home place, Melbourne, has been awarded most liveable city in the world 4 years running. The liveability indexes are a queer matrix of assessing availability of goods and services, personal safety, good infrastructure – bins and things, parks, in the old days phone boxes, now replaced with Wi-Fi spots. Melbourne is pretty pleased with itself. In Melbourne, town planning and clever design play an enormous role in creating a city that is liveable rather than merely survivable.

Therapeutic architecture
Now that I am Aarhusian I am absorbing the urban situation here. In Aarhus architecture is playing a key role in thinking about and designing solutions for future living. In Aarhus, I see a movement that I might label ‘therapeutic architecture’. Here I see architecture making an active effort to help people move their bodies. To me this is design contributing to lifelong health by encouraging people to keep agile.
Cognitive scientists will tell us that limber bodies are fit in mind as well as physical ability. So architecture can be, and is here in Aarhus, a proactive agent in the fight against aging and its associated brain attritions. Liveability as I think about it is not just about services but also about that impacts that the built environment can have on the mental and psychical well-being of its population.

Going the extra mile
I am currently a fortunate working resident of the newly opened Dokk1, situated on the Aarhus harbour. The designers of Dokk1 have created a building that for me exemplifies this notion of the therapeutic.
For instance rather than seeing the necessary disability ramp as an impediment to good design it has become a central feature in the body of the building. It is now a place of accessibility and opportunity for all who stroll with pushers and chairs, and additionally those who want to take a hike, ride a small go-cart, run a bit, jump a bit – play a game. This circulation ramp has become like an internal organ of the body. It is an intestine that keeps the flow and fitness of its visitors ever active.

Outside the building, at one of its entrances, the typical Aarhus stair – steep and many stepped – dares the able to go the extra mile instead of taking the lift. On its periphery, Dokk1 has a multitude of action areas. In particular, I am drawn to the set of springy platforms, which are used daily as an inter-generational social sculpture. Little kids help the younger ones, kids encourage grandparents to have a go, and lone people challenge themselves to try it out and re-discover their inner child and balance abilities.

Apart from being fun, this simple construction demonstrates co-operation, teamwork and ‘therapeutically’ moves the body.

A library need not be a Mausoleum
The idea to put Dokk1 down at the harbour before the inevitable grab to build vertical office space gets out of hand is a bit of genius town planning. And bold. In an era when most people have forecast the death of the book as object, and therefore the death of the library, the foresighted people in Aarhus have recognised that a library need not be a Mausoleum of dead spines and pages, but an active community centre, a place for people and a visible symbol of togetherness. An intergenerational space in which people read, work, play and sometimes just come and sit to watch the splendid harbour view in one of Aarhus’s best living rooms. The Aarhus harbour has come to life and the city’s own orientation has been fundamentally shifted to the water.

Every now and then a large bell gong rings out in Dokk1. A splendid sound, it announces the arrival of a new Aarhus baby. Lucky them. They are about to enter a very liveable place indeed, designed with people in mind and body.

This article was first published in the insert 'Architecture' in newspaper Politiken on 9 September 2015.