Honourable Mentions

From parking yards to front yards

“The Frontyards of Høje Gladsaxe” takes its starting point from the existing built environment of Høje Gladsaxe and addresses the question of how we can rethink the neighbourhood for generations by transforming what is already there today.

By a phased development in dialogue with the residents, the existing parking garages will be transformed from isolated parking yards into lively front yards that facilitate new functions, activities and meeting places for the residents. A transformation that helps to strengthen the community and interaction over generations as well as providing what is lacking today; a more human scale of the built environment and active urban spaces welcoming both residents and visitors to Høje Gladsaxe.

When we have trouble with hearing, we disconnect from others. Intimate acoustic spaces are positive for all ages

Elders can have reduced sense of hearing. For immigrants every meeting is a chance for learning a new language. Classrooms and similar have specific demands for acoustics: it requires speech clarity and low reverberation time. We can use this knowledge to facilitate acoustical equality in open air. Second generations immigrants are also a group in need of support, they can struggle with cultural rootlessness. To build a sense of belonging and self-worth can be a strategy to meet some of challenges in welfare services.

Meeting points can be placed around the infrastructure for everyday life. A cycle highway is being planned by Axelborg. Roof-covered bicycle storages can develop into intimate archways for talking to your neighbour. In the next step the project can be upscaled to a gateway for meetings with the surrounding residential areas, creating more understanding and changing the stigma of the area.

A set of typological corrections to enhance domestic flexibility and sustained communal activity

The buildings' closed gables turn into flexible, configurable domestic spaces to supplement the monotonous, frozen housing typologies that often fail to respond to the diverse family types, habits and activities of their inhabitants. The storage space in the garages -currently underused and deserted-, are relocated and swapped for public programs that were formerly concentrated at the limits of the neighbourhood, thereby turning these spaces into ludic, cultural and productive plazas at the entrance of the buildings.

A vast amount of parking area is turned into a garden strip, peppered with programmatic gazebos that will break down its scale into human-friendly clusters, catalysing public activity and collective engagement between neighbours.

Nonprofit housing as a key strategic partner in the green transition of our neighbourhoods and cities

We propose developing the futures most attractive neighbourhoods: Where mixed forms of housing and ownership complement each other, and everyday life is improved through interactions across social differences – and inequality deteriorates. Where ordinary welfare creates community, sense of security, and physical and mental wellbeing. Where new meeting places, platforms, and engagement, create understanding and trust across generations. Where sustainability, climate considerations, climate adaptation, nature, and biodiversity, are the starting point for building, renovating, and designing surroundings. Where new forms of housing are welcomed in carefully considered densification Where first-time buyers have a genuine opportunity of joining the housing market – to affordable prices

How could we live 'for free' by doing something we enjoy while helping our community?

SUSTAINABANK is a value exchange platform for urban communities where users can receive social and economic benefits while doing activities they enjoy. E.g. an elderly person with aching joints can, in return for reading stories to children at the daycare, get physiotherapist services from their neighbour, who in turn earns rent discounts for their services to the community.

'Community credit' balances supply and demand which, on a neighbourhood level, is managed through '4 accounts of sustainability'. In other words all activities contribute to keeping the neighbourhood's social, ecological, economic and cultural 'accounts' in balance. To understand the details, please read the visual story about Dina’s, Greta’s, Mahir’s and Lou’s day in 'Gladborg' at joksu.com.