Unboxing the Monument of Frihamnen, 2019, is an essayistic after study and MFA Design exam work about the Jubilee Park city building project in Gothenburg. It works as a platform for conversations about art in the city and assembles research and documentation done by the artists during the placebuilding. The project has been carried out partly in collaboration with one of the art groups – MUF Art/Architecture in London.

The Jubilee Park has been a testbed for the City of Gothenburg to try new methods for socially and environmentally sustainable urban development. They have invited several art and architectural groups to contribute with full-scale prototypes in the park. The investigation of bathing culture has been a central theme in the construction, and the groups have challenged norms around it in various ways.

In this context, I highlighted the importance of also investigating methods for reflecting on and documenting the artistic processes. If a monument were to be created for Jubileumsparken, what would it look like? – With this imaginary assignment in focus, we have together examined MUF’s documentation and then I worked on a spatial sculpture as a result of the collaborative work.

One of MUF:s initial initiatives was to establish a specific bus stop connected to the park with the aim of increasing the possibilities for everyone to access the place. They therefore made a sketch of an entrance that would function as a temporary gate to the park until the administration and construction of the bus stop were completed.

The spatial sculpture that was built during this thesis project takes a ledge from MUF:s idea of the temporary gate. The temporary entrance was never built, meanwhile there is still possibly a trace of this idea – a bus shelter at the beginning of the park named “Frihamnsporten”. The imagined monument in the sculpture, is molded in soap – a questioning material connected to the bathing culture of the Jubilee Park. The site-inspired material fails to sustain, associate with the notion of cleanliness and has a clear connection to the human body. The installation is built as a support structure of the imaginary monument and forms a “negative space” in the proportions of the bus stop. Scattered around in the exhibition space as an extended structure – are the material samples, prototypes and an essayistic film on screen which creates historical and contemporary time and space for Frihamnen & touches on classic themes connected to architecture, monuments and otherwise history. The film discusses the production of monuments and asks the question: what would a monument be without its social, political and physical support structure?

During the 2019 Gothenburg design festival at the City Library in Gothenburg, the installation served as a stage for a performative unboxing and a reflective panel discussion between several of the architectural groups involved. After the thesis, the project received a scholarship from the Swedish Crafts Association, which supported the project to be further developed together with the architectural groups.

“Support Structure is an architectural interface. Support Structure aims to create a space which is continuously reinvented by its users in relation to its context. Support Structure houses artefacts as well as activities and aids reconsideration of existing spaces as an impulse for future change.” (Condorelli, 2009)

Related research on the subject, published by the Swedish goverment 9.04.2021 https://www.regeringen.se/rapporter/2021/04/den-hala-tvalen–verktyg-och-metoder-for-social-hallbar-i-fysisk-planering/