.Bolsjefabrikken (Candy Factory) 360 degrees - click for larger image
Not sure if it's been experiencing 8+ months of unemployment, the oil spill, or moving to a "socialist" country, but to me ideas about an end of the "culture of economic growth" seem to be a recurring theme. I think in particular people from my generation are especially hard hit as we were reared and educated during boom years that may not return. It doesn't take long to find some media with a story about student debit, chronic unemployment, or an outdated education system. This article in The Atlantic (How a Jobless Era will Transform America) talks about how studies show that job placement the first few years out of school have a large impact on lifetime earning and health. In other words, even if the economy does recover, many if not most people in my generation will be handicapped for years to come.
Given the politics of the situation, this guy has come up on more than one occasion in the past week:
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What I'm interested in are the implications this has for architecture and the built environment.
What will the unemployed and over-educated generation do, and where will they live?
Its true people like Teddy Cruz, Urban Think Tank, and others have developed an interesting practice based on social systems analysis in developing countries. But this time, it is the designers who are effectively designing for themselves.
Like the Gesellenwanderung I met last week, there may be some visions from the future in Copenhagen.
The picture at the top of this page is of the Candy Factory or Bolsjefabrikken. It is one of many self-run, ambiguously funded youth centers in my area. Many of these places are not just for youth and date back to 19th century marxist worker's movements. These spaces and the activities that take place within them is a whole other story, so I'll just pick one: Folkekøkken.
Folkekøkken is a practice that is apparently common across Scandinavia, also dating back to the 19th century revolutionary social and spatial politics.
Folkekøkken is a bit like an american soup kitchen or Food Not Bombs in that they prespare donated food for all. However, besides being formally housed in a facility that includes access to all sorts of other social and political infrastructure, a major difference is that the element of charity and hierarchy are eliminated. The people eating there might be working there the next day, everyone goes back to the kitchen to wash their own dishes, etc.
