mike taylor and nicole la hausse de la louviere
urban friends in rural places
infrastructure | allotment gardens by mike taylor + nicole la hausse de lalouviere
copenhagen culture cultivation interstitiality taste and style
If you ask a Dane to explain the word vennelyst you will be offered an idiom along the lines of ‘friend’s delight’. Typed into google, it will generate the translation ‘buddy wanted’. Each of these interpretations offers an apt description of Kolonihaven Vennelyst in Amagerbro, five minutes southeast of Copenhagen’s city centre. but quickly spread with the continued industrialisation of Europe in the early twentieth century. The gardens have maintained their status as a source for an alternative lifestyle in some cities, particularly in Germany and Britain. However, in no country have these rural archipelagos remained such a critical part of the urban landscape as in Denmark. Danish culture is inextricably tied to its farming heritage and the allotment garden has evolved as a mechanism for embedding rural life within the city.
Founded in 1892 by the Copenhagen Garden Society, Kolonihaven Vennelyst emerged as one of the first allotment gardens in Denmark. Land rented from the city was made available to those who had come from rural areas, leaving their spacious farms to live in high-density perimeter-block housing. The allotment garden was a way for these new city-dwellers to retain a connection to the land and to farm their own 50 square-metre plots. The trend for allotment gardens arguably started in Denmark
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above: allotments are positioned throughout the city, including next to industry and business parks left: the allotment house is often an outlet for intensly individualistic design
Mike Taylor and Nicole la Hausse de la Louviere
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