Once Upon a Time in Forestrand
Typology
Europan 16, urban planning competition
(second prize)
Location
Fagerstrand, Norway
Partners & Collaborators
Paula Fernández y Xabier Montilla (Co-authors)
Services
Urban planning
Developer
Europan Europe
Form follows fiction
How do we mind a Non-Human Urbanism? Can fiction be inhabited? Where is Forestrand?
Form doesn’t follow function anymore. Forestrand is the reality that already exists, but it requires a new look at the territory. Forestrand is currently sleeping. By moving through this place, we identify a series of fictions that are linked to the forest that surrounds Fagerstrand and that allows us to discover new territorial drifts.
A change takes place from an egocentric model to an ecocentric model in which the forest becomes the center and from which a hybrid model that connects human and non-human realities is articulated.
Forestrand goes through them and gives shape to models of construction of the territory and habitats, the 4th Landscape, that improves the existing reality giving back to Fagerstrand its identity. We establish the concept of "Form Follows Fiction", therefore, as a mechanism of hybridisation between the fictions and realities of the human world and of the non-human world.
Together with Paula Fernández and Xabier Montilla we came across this project thanks to architectural practice and experience. Each of us has a different background and specified interests in landscape architecture, sustainable urbanism, architecture and design. This happened to be a very convenient match to create a multidisciplinary team, given a common sensitivity in terms of ecology and narratives that seek to explore architectural means beyond the human-functional, strictly productive-focused paradigm.
