Participatory Design and Build

This year, the course is taking place in Dals Långed, a site of HDK-Valand Steneby campus, under a working title Floating city. It is the third in a series of Design build projects in Dals Långed, where architecture, landscape architecture and design students collaborate with the local population to create public meeting places in Dals Långed and thereby develop the town's living environment. During 2018 and 2019, Långed park was built, with a public sauna, an outdoor kitchen and other amenities. The park was warmly welcomed by locals and tourists, and the sauna has become a successful place for community and social exchange with over 400 bookings per year, and winning several design awards.

The idea of the Floating City is to further connect Dals Långed to water, as the element of water is very essential to the character of the place. It also builds on a legacy of many iconic projects where water enabled materialisation of ideas which were difficult to conceive on land: from Aldo Rossi’s Teatro del Mondo to Raumlabor’s Floating Berlin.

Floating city will be a venue for different cultural events, which will attempt to cover a wide range of target audiences, and also a range of preferences when it comes to active vs. passive participation. The venue would be an addition to existing public space of Långed Park, and as it is envisioned as collection of several floating platforms, it would also have the possibility of traveling through Dalsland Kanal to other places. A list of possible activities includes a stage for music and theatre performances, artist in residence studio, vegetable garden, grill place, bathhouse, outdoor classroom and more. The exact program would be developed through collaboration of all interested stakeholders - local inhabitants, students, business owners and more.

The scope of this project is to design and construct a usable prototype of a modular floating structure during summer 2024. The project constitutes a test arena and is experimental in nature as it explores what such a platform could mean and how it could function in a long-term perspective. Within the project, two small public events will be organized to test and evaluate the proposed solutions: thus the project is not only about participatory creation of public space in the community, but also about the interlace of different categories of activities, which will hopefully embed the vessel in the community without it feeling estranged or removed from the non-art oriented people.

The project is carried out in partnership with University of Washington and Dals Långeds Utvecklingsråd.

Pre-application info sessions

Find out more and ask questions about the course info sessions held via zoom on 27 February at 16:30 or 12 March at 16:30.

Participate via zoom link

Apply in three steps

1. Apply for the course at universityadmissions.se. Deadline March 15, 2024.
2. Submit your portfolio in SlideRoom. Deadline March 15, 2024.
3. Submit documentation proving you meet the entry requirements of the course on universityadmissions.se. Deadline March 15, 2024.