FINALIST/TOP 3: Van Alen Opportunity Space Competition.
with: Henry Stephens, Nick Roberts.
As a temporary mobile structure with a progressive social agenda, strict physical constraints, and so many stakeholders, a response to the brief could only really have a lasting positive impact if it truly embraced flexibility. Rather than a statement of architectural form which gives representation to the raw humanity of the refugee crisis, we have designed a flexible, modular system which gives representation to the opportunities, relationships and connections it creates - for migrants, local government, private interest, and the citizens of Malmö.
Instead of re-producing the traditional bureaucratic model of one institution at one location, OS proposes to juxtapose three agents at one site, creating a rotating collage of events. Each of the three OS units will be temporarily appropriated by a governmental agency, organisation, company or small upstarting restaurant. Potentially configurable in hundreds of different arrangements, OS offers an infrastructure for social encounters and co-existence by conflating cultural events with support, networking and education. It can for example allow the visitor to attend a lecture on how to start a company, discuss possible courses with a university counsellor, or check out the ongoing Iranian film festival while trying some newly baked pirogues. Like any operative system, OS provides a platform for activities, without defining the outcome. In the end, the encounters, discussions, sensations and knowledge produced here will therefore be the result of a unique mixture of the different agents and visitors engaged.