The Dokken ideology
Arild Eriksen’s architecture firm Fragment has recently acquired office space in Bergen. He comes from the Bergen area himself and is known for his commitment to the port city of Bergen, including through the project “What we made by the sea” and as an architect in the parallel assignment on the Dock. He has also written a longer text about urban development by the sea in the latest edition of Arkitektur.
Eriksen puts on ideological glasses when he reads the interview with chairman Eva Hagen in Arkitektur.
– Everyone in Bergen is interested in Dokken. I am more interested in what kind of ideological choices the municipality makes through the company Dokken utvikling. Should the area be developed based on social planning that gradually becomes a district with space for everyone, or are land prices the guide? You can’t have both and urban development is a political discipline.
He believes that the choice of Danish Henning Larsen Architects for the preliminary project for co-location of the Institute of Marine Research and the Directorate of Fisheries on Dokken is a bad sign.
– Henning Larsen is a solid multinational company, of course with local employees. I still believe that an architectural office with a local connection should be chosen when Dokken is to be developed, Eriksen believes.
– Why?
– When you know the history of the area and see the value in Bergen’s tradition of mixing functions in the city core, this will influence the advice you give and the architecture you develop. The municipality itself has chosen an interesting expression when they had to illustrate their strategy, and it is based on respect for the residents’ wishes, also when it comes to the appearance of the buildings.
– Social ambitions are failing
At the same time, Eriksen, who usually sits in Oslo, is optimistic about the choice of architect Jan Erik Rossow, as general manager of Dokken development.
– Jan Erik is a good choice. He knows the importance of residential diversity and why a forge or an art studio can create a neighborhood bubbling with innovation and development. He also wants to understand that participation is about asking the whole town what it wants with Dokken.
In the interview with Eva Hagen, the chairman comments on how industrial workplaces can be included in the Dokken of the future. “I haven’t seen so many good examples of this in practice,” she says of the combination of industry and housing in new urban development on the quayside.
Here, Eriksen believes that she must look beyond the country’s borders.
– Hagen would probably see good examples of port production in countries that are more concerned with green industrial change and start-ups than we are in Norway. The main thing is that it must be arranged for jobs and those that are there today must be preserved.
Eriksen sees this in the context of musicians and artists being allowed to continue to stay in the Harbor Warehouse, where they currently have studios, rehearsal rooms and studios. That the building is not handed over to the Aquarium. He believes that the Port warehouse should rather be protected, but given room for flexible use as it is today.
– It should be completely out of the question for the municipality and Dokken development to leave the building to the Aquarium. In any case, then the social sustainability ambitions fail. Throwing out musicians and artists and musicians is not socially sustainable and poor urban development. Quote me on that. Then I would rather suggest more premises for art and production also in shed 26, which Hagen suggests as a temporary place of residence.
