Sanden Hodnekvam

The little urbanist

Exhibition at the National Museum, Oslo

The Little Urbanist is a travelling exhibition made to tour around Norwegian schools in the coming years. The installation was commissioned by the National Norwegian Museum for Art, Design and Architecture.

It is a massive 700 piece urbanism play kit on the scale 1:200. It consist of a large group of abstracted "typical" urban buildings; both modernist and classical and a set of unique buildings like hospital, town hall, library, art museum etc.

The kit is made of beechwood. CNC milling is used for the "typical" buildings. A carpenter, using good old craftsmanship for making the unique buildings.

The focus group is school children aged 10-12 (but it also works incredibly well for grown architects.) The young urbanists are divided into groups of two pupils which develop their own neighborhood as they please. In the end eight different neighborhoods are combined to make the city (centre). All pupils are then given tasks to improve the city: Add more green, densify, make a central park, more housing etc.

Made in collaboration with Brendeland og Kristoffersen Architects 2012

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