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Louisiana c/o is a new way of conceiving of the museum in a global, mobile world. It takes the museum and the presentation traditions for which it stands out into other contexts than those determined by its home locality and it serves to draw attention to Louisiana Museum of Modern Art as an international institution.
Life Between Buildings
At the 13th International Architecture Exhibition Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, in collaboration with Gehl Architects, is presenting a spectacular 270-degree spatial installation which uses a succession of small narratives to elucidate Gehl’s visions of urban space. This offers visitors the opportunity to be present in Gehl’s universe of images, film and sound. The installation takes the form of a large circular screen 12 metres in diameter, on which the viewer experiences the multiplicity of narratives about the city as a meeting place for people, and stories of how Nordic values are translated into the identity of the city and realized through the softening of boundaries, the establishment of green oases, easy opportunities for mobility, user involvement and new ways of creating atmospheric, living, playful places.
Gehl believes the city should invite people to meet in public space, to ‘hang out’ together, to strengthen the feeling that the city is theirs, so that they also feel the urge to be in it and use it. Gehl’s vision is to show the meaning of the spaces we live in, the spaces of the city and the way we use them. He focuses on the interconnections between the man-made environment and the quality of human life
The city at walking pace
For more than forty years Jan Gehl has worked with the spaces of the city, and how one creates life between buildings. In the course of the 1960s he became more and more aware of how architecture affects people, and wrote the book Life Between Buildings, which became an international bestseller translated into 22 languages. The book gives an account of the connections between man as a social being equipped with senses and the scale of the city. One of Gehl’s points is that humans are biologically constructed to walk at a speed of five kilometres an hour, and that this affects people’s experience of what happens around them. Consideration for the basic scale of the human senses in urban planning is crucial to whether people feel comfortable in a city space.
Reclaim Public Space!
Today half the population of the world lives in cities, and the figure will continue to grow as the population itself grows. This leads to cities of dizzying proportions and this is why the human dimension is a must in all new planning. Jan Gehl has a feeling for the potential of close urban space and had developed various strategies for enhancing life in the city. Man is a biological and psychological individual, so in Gehl’s view urban planners and architects should recognize people’s different needs and give them the right to influence the environment of which they are a part. Gehl insists on a humanist perspective in the planning and design of new city spaces. A human-oriented approach to the spaces of the city means cities that are more alive, safe, sustainable and healthy.
The Human Scale
In the room beside the exhibition the film The Human Scale is being shown. This documentary questions our assumptions about modernity, exploring what happens when we put people into the centre of equations. Director: Andreas Dalsgaard. Producer: Signe Byrge.
Jan Gehl was born in 1936 in Denmark. Architect MAA, Professor (ret.), Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Founding Partner: Gehl Architects – Urban Quality Consultants. Author of Life between Buildings, Public Spaces - Public Life, New City Spaces, New City Life and Cities for People (2010). Awards include The Sir Patrick Abercrombie Prize and an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Honorary fellow of MAA, RIBA, AIA, RAIC, RISA and PIA.
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