When building the modern city, it is important to approach urban development as an emotional, social, and sensory practice rather than a purely functional one. “Emotional Urban planning” embraces the more fallible, ambivalent, and vulnerable sides of inhabitants and users of a city.
The project provides an overview of five important qualities that need to be included in contemporary urban development. These qualities are: sorrow, anger, inactivity, uncertainty, and invisibility – fundamental human conditions that must be actively accommodated when planning new districts and cities.
You can find an in-depth description of the qualities and a wide array of concrete strategic instruments in the written program: “Quality Program for Existential and Emotional Urban Planning”
> Click here to download the full pdf-version of the program
At the launch of the program, a full-size prototype of a “Screaming Pit” was installed in Nyhavna in Trondheim – An area going through massive changes in the coming decades. The pit is one of the strategies described in the program and provides a place to meet in anger and sorrow by screaming into a hole in the ground. After the prototype period is over, the pit will be filled, and the screams will be encapsulated for the future, providing a solid structure of transformed rage and sadness for future tenants and other stakeholders.
The project is done as part of Trondheimsbiennalen and RITE agency´s research program.