Attuned visibility and the ambiguity of demanding public spaces in Copenhagen

ABSTRACT

Based on ethnographic data and mapping exercises, this article explores North West Park in Copenhagen, Denmark and asks how lighting forms perceptions of urban space. The park was inaugurated in the late 2000s and has been praised for its bold landscape and lighting design. However, it was received in more ambiguous ways by users, explaining their experience of it in words such as “magical” and “kitsch.” This ambiguity highlights how current urban design may entail a reconfiguration of how visibility unfolds. Urban spaces have largely been lit to be seen. However, current trends in lighting design increasingly aim for spaces to be felt. Beyond visibility as the ability to see and be seen, we argue that the park design also evinces a more fundamental attuned visibility, conceptualized through the notion of ways of feeling. In a broader sense, we suggest that the increasingly atmosphere-oriented design of urban spaces facilitates a pressure to feel something. That is, this type of design is not solely functional but demands emotional responses – although undeterminable and open-ended. For the users, the atmospheric design raises questions about how lighting shapes urban life during dark hours in the field of tension between usage and architectural imaginations.

KEYWORDS:

• Atmosphere
• attunement
• demanding design
• lighting
• urban space
• visibility

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Anette Stenslund for contributing with insights from fieldwork among the designers behind North West Park as well as Bettina Hauge for conducting seven of the interviews (see Bille & Hauge 2022), and Johannes Riis for contributing with additional mapping data from the park. Previous versions of the argument have been presented and discussed at the University of Aberdeen as well as at the seminar Tracking by Default: Infrastructures and Atmospheres of Surveillance at the University of Copenhagen. We gained much from discussions with Karen Søilin and Tim Ingold as well as the other participants on these occasions. We also thank Olivia Norma Jørgensen, Jeremy Payne-Frank, David Pinder, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. The research was funded by the Velux Foundation as part of the project Living with Nordic Lighting [#16998]. Ethics approval was provided by Roskilde University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://www.bispebjerglokaludvalg.kk.dk/nordvest-parken-flytter-graenser/ Accessed 15 July, 2020.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Velux Fonden [16998].

Notes on contributors

Siri Schwabe

Siri Schwabe is an anthropologist and the author of Moving Memory: Remembering Palestine in Postdictatorship Chile (2023, Cornell University Press) and The Atmospheric City (2023, Routledge) with Mikkel Bille. She was assistant professor on the Living with Nordic Lighting project at Roskilde University

Ida Lerche Klaaborg

Ida Lerche Klaaborg holds an MA in Anthropology from University of Copenhagen. She worked as a research assistant focusing on people’s attachment to places for the Living with Nordic Lighting project at Roskilde University.

Mikkel Bille

Mikkel Bille is Professor at University of Copenhagen, and project leader of a research project on urban lighting in Scandinavia, Living with Nordic Lighting (2018–2022 Roskilde University). His recent books include Living with Light (2019, Berg) and Being Bedouin around Petra (2019, Berghahn), and The Atmospheric City (2023, Routledge), with Siri Schwabe.