Paper Short Abstract:

In this paper I am following the workings and appearance of a trashy maintenance space of seaweed piles, tractors, birds and birders in a dark corner of a man-made beach in Malmö, Sweden. Can the concept of poetic space allow for a deeper understanding of the collective workings of this living, littoral, left-over architecture?

Paper Abstract:

In my ongoing thesis I discuss and re-imagine the human relation to nature, wilderness, and others, from a man-made urban beach in Malmö, Sweden. From within the field of urban studies I work with photographic methods trying to raise knowledge regarding how the landscape architecture deal with the particularities of this littoral space. The thesis will be composed as a poetics, with several essayistic poems of architecture, and this paper is meant to be one of these.

This modern beach, constructed in 1920’s and onwards, needs much maintenance. The last 15 years the city of Malmö have been dumping washed up seaweed in a less visited corner of the beach. This dark, formless, wet, smelly opposition to the white, clean beach have turned into a living home to many animals, particularly birds, to the extent that local ornithologists have mapped this place as “the seaweed piles” in a forum-app for digital communication regarding rare bird sightings. Hence, this trashy space is a known locality for seeing birds in general but also more rare birds. The collective work of tractors, seaweed, birds and birders, is producing a trashy aesthetics and particular kind of public space – a poetic space? What can the concept of poetic space add to our understanding of the role, qualities and collective work of public spaces? The concept allows me to linger on the outer threshold of reasonable and civilized architecture and urbanity and to discuss this dark space more in terms of connectivity, changeability and monstrosity.