The world’s first terraced housing development, Nyboder, Denmark.Design in Scandinavia is characterized by much closer collaboration with the community than it is in the United States. This tradition is a long one, stretching back a hundred years or more. There is an excellent example in Copenhagen. In 1854, the Danish Medical Association was concerned about a cholera outbreak that was threatening the lives of the city’s residents. The association worked with municipal authorities and architect M. G. Bidesbøll to design housing and public spaces to minimize or eliminate factors that contributed to the disease’s spread. That housing set the standard for a holistic view of design incorporating health concerns. It is still in use today.
Earlier, in 1631, the Danish king Christian IV had commissioned the world’s first terraced housing development at Nyboder, also in Copenhagen. Originally built for naval personnel, these buildings have recently been reintegrated into the civilian community after extensive public consultation.
The guidelines of Denmark’s Ministry of Environment describe a formal process for such design planning: “The process comprises political discussions, public hearings, and dialogue with numerous partners . . . An important side effect of the spatial planning process is that the involved public achieves ownership of the final plan. This ownership is felt . . . by citizens, interest groups, business, and other partners.“
Architects are also playing a key role in another major design project in Copenhagen, the utilization of a massive brownfields area south of the city. Instead of disrupting the scale and architectural setting of the old city by tearing down and building anew there, Mayor Jens Kramer Mikalsen and a government architect named Anne Grethe Foss went to work on designing a new town on an island next to the airport, a mere ten minutes from the center of the old city. The new development, Ørestad, sensitively incorporates the natural environment: one half of the island—formerly a military firing range—was made into a bird sanctuary. It also continues the Danish urban tradition of combining residential, commercial, retail, and institutional space within the same neighborhood. The result is a vibrant, 24-hour city that combines high density with easy access and a close affinity to nature. This is a city that is suitable for all, for families, for children, for professionals and retirees, and even for the poor.
I should note that Denmark prepares its citizens to play the role of informed design consultant. School children are required to complete a two-week module on design and design appreciation. Perhaps as a result, nearly one of every 700 Danes has a degree in architecture, a level perhaps 10 times as great as in the U.S. And, as we all know, design in Den mark and Scandinavia in general is highly valued.
Corporate Denmark has a different view of design from Corporate America, as well. Big Business has a much greater social conscience, much lower executive greed factor, and a great willingness to invest in the promotion of the society’s culture—not professional sports, but rather art galleries, museums, folk fairs, and the like. Executives earn only 20 times the wage of a line worker in Denmark, while in the U.S. a CEO earns nearly 85 times the average worker’s wage. You have in the Danish experience a positive interpretation of the role of commercialization. Good design is viewed as an economic engine, be it in Nokia cell phones or Danish furniture. And, in Scandinavia, good design means durability, a ratcheting down of the throwaway society, the consumption of fewer resources, and ultimately more sustainable growth.
There’s a lesson there for the U.S. As a people, we need to be better informed about the importance of design. We could learn something from the collaborative design process widely practiced in Scandinavia. Our system tends to pit deep-pocketed corporations against single-issue interest groups. It’s an “us or them“ situation, not a collaborative effort. Groups seek to block a project after its design has been announced, rather than influencing the design to include their needs. Ours is a system of adversaries, not advocacy. We resist what we dislike rather than cooperatively promote what we feel is beneficial.
I encountered a perfect example of this phenomenon during my time in Congress. The House was considering yet another highway bill. There was stiff resistance for reasons we have all heard before. The discussion was uni-dimensional. You were either for it or against it. There was no context, no holistic overview balancing our transportation needs against our quality of life. My colleagues and I eventually broke that stalemate by broadening the discussion. The result was the Transportation for Livable Communities Act, a law I helped author that ensures that community needs are considered as transportation programs are developed and implemented. It was enacted within the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1992 and is a significant step forward in dealing with urban design issues in an integrated way.
Throughout my career as an architect and public servant, I have witnessed and participated in the maze of complex systems, governmental regulations, professional disciplines, special interest groups, grass-root community organizations, and big businesses, all seeking to influence our built environment. I have found that there are few people well equipped to sort through the cacophony of competitive interests in a constructive, harmonizing way. The creative process architects use is a constructive, inclusive process—therefore more diplomatic than the aggressive and adversarial methods of engagement in politics. By virtue of our training, skills and perspective, architects should play the role of integrators, but, sadly, we rarely do.
Instead, because of our singular focus on aesthetic design without regard to social design, because we have turned our noses up at the more “mundane“ or administrative aspects of our profession, and because we have narrowed our leadership responsibilities to avoid liability rather than expand them to gain influence, we have seen our roles as leading visionaries in society follow a diminishing path. It is time to change our perspective.
That is why I held a conference in Denmark—with the help of the U.S Embassy, the Danish Government, the Danish Architects’ Federation, and the American Institute of Architects—on “Design Diplomacy: Public Policy and the Practice of Architecture.“ By “Design Diplomacy,“ I mean expanding “design“ from its limited aesthetic sense to incorporate people, society, and quality of life issues, shifting the paradigm from design of buildings to “design“ for solving problems in society—that is, to public policy formation.
I went to Denmark believing that the influence of design on public policy had been cultivated through the successful engagement of architects in the public arena. I inquired about the long list of architects serving as elected public officials and was surprised to find that the profession is just as reticent about running for public office there as it is here. In Denmark, however, there is much more influence exerted by the profession through other means. Relationships between government officials and designers are more prevalent. The profession has taken definitive stands on social policy that have influenced legislative policy makers.
In the design of managed communities for senior citizens, in the day-care centers for Danish children, in the sensitively restored period architecture, and in the planned, postwar suburban communities integrated into the rolling hills of the Danish landscape, Denmark provides a stellar example of a truly integrated and societal approach to architecture and public policy. Making design a social, political, and economic priority has led to a world-class role for the Danish industrial and architectural design community. The architects of the world should take note.
Author Richard N. Swett, FAIA, has served in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he co-authored the Congressional Accountability Act and the Transportation for Livable Communities Act. He was subsequently U.S. ambassador to Denmark, where he was awarded the Grand-Croix of the Order of Danneborg, the Danish equivalent of knighthood. Ambassador Swett serves on numerous boards, including the Board of Peers overseeing design quality issues for the General Services Administration. He also served as one of six panelists who helped the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation select the teams to perform design studies for the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site.
Originally published 2nd quarter 2003, in arcCA 03.2, “Global Practice.”
