Neighbour

More than ever before, architecture has become a prominent topic in Norwegian public debate. Can this spark of public interest help create solutions for new ways of living together? This May, KODE Art Museum launches NEIGHBOUR: How Can We Live Together, a major exhibition exploring futuristic housing visions which seek to answer the question: can new, collective forms of housing help solve some of the major challenges society is facing today?

The exhibition is a collaboration between KODE Art Museum, Bergen City Architect and its BOPILOT research project, The National Museum of art, architecture and design, and the architectural firm Helen & Hard.

NEIGHBOUR: How Can We Live Together offers an immersive experience investigating the public urban context, museums as a cultural space, and the home. Visitors will explore future models of housing solutions made by Norwegian architectural firms, architecture students, and real estate developers. They will also experience the largescale installation What We Share: A Model for Cohousing, which was first displayed at the Nordic Pavilion during the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021.

The model is based on the communal “Vindmøllebakken” project in Stavanger, where the architectural firm of Helen & Hard (nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2022) invited a group of people to develop a communal housing project with several shared spaces, such as kitchens, sport facilities, and playrooms for children. The installation, curated in collaboration with Martin Braathen and the National Museum, provides a glimpse into the everyday life of communal housing and presents new ideas for sharing and co-habitation.

The exhibition is a response to current issues facing the Norwegian population, extending beyond housing crises and affecting social development. From a considerable growth in the elderly population, to the long-term rise in loneliness among the youth, rampant even prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the increasing difficulty to enter the housing market, and all-encompassing environmental concerns, these issues demand new perspectives in their search for structural changes and solutions.

Part of the exhibition takes its cue from the multifaceted insights that have arisen from the experimental new research project BOPILOT, led by the Bergen City Architect, and seeking to explore alternative future housing solutions by offering a space for conversation and discussing among diverse communities and age groups. The resulting ideas and concepts are currently being developed further and will be presented in the exhibition in the hope of reaching even more people who have alternative housing needs as well as connecting real estate developers, businesspeople, and urban planners to find and enact the solutions of tomorrow.

In response to the recent explosive discussions on Norwegian social media and in the daily newspapers about housing developments, architecture and aesthetics, KODE will run a programme of public events entitled NEIGHBOURHOOD EVENING to open up a debate on how Norwegian society should take shape. Taking place over the duration of the exhibition, these events will be a space for exploring the exhibition’s themes and questions, creating a participatory forum where people can formulate active opinions.

Through the exhibition and events programme, NEIGHBOUR serves as a meeting place that explores how residents and professionals can better work together to create good, sustainable architecture and explore why some forms of communal housing succeed while others do not. Young and old, resident and developer, citizen and bureaucrat, artist and capitalist—we are all neighbours.