City Talks: Spektrum Arkitekter

To kick off the City Talks 2016 series is a presentation by Sofie Willems and Joan Raun Nielsen, the two partners in Spektrum Arkitekter of Denmark, who are visiting New Zealand thanks to a ‘Share Your Practice’ grant from the Danish Art Foundation.

Spektrum Arkitekter’s extensive portfolio of work is centered around considering the development and cooperation of the users of space, pursuing methods for socially sustainable architecture by involving local people in each project. Their significant built projects include the Fjelstervang Uderforsamlingshus, a multi-purpose hall built at low budget by the local community of 500 people in the summer of 2013, and People’s Park, a renewal of a complex, disparate and unsafe park that socially integrated the park’s many users and invited the wider neighbourhood to engage in their park.

Spektrum Arkitekter is a young architectural studio whose work integrates architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and citizen involvement. They place the users centrally in their architecture through inclusion, social awareness and commitment, striving for an architecture based upon qualities of the specific location. The common denominator in all the company’s projects is the relationship between architecture and context — the landscape, people, history, culture, and social relations.

City Talks is an initiative of the New Zealand Institute of Architects Wellington Branch and is presented in partnership with City Gallery Wellington. The talk starts at 6pm and is a free event.