Dugnad

The Norwegian word Dugnad (pronounced doog nahd) describes a special way of doing voluntary, communal work. When someone needs a hand, either to clean out the garage, prepare the garden for winter or to build an extension to their cottage, they call together neighbors, friends and family for a working party. Serving soda and snacks during work and perhaps a beer when all is done, the Dugnad is a social event as much as it has been an important tool for building Scandinavia and its social relations.

The exhibition project Dugnad - social design for Scandinavian towns presents the two young practices of HåkkiTM (artists) and Fantastic Norway (architects). They have both devoted their work to social interventions in small cities in Sweden and Norway respectively. Many smaller cities in Scandinavia suffer from a lack of civic pride due to depopulation and the absence of effective planning and development strategies. Dugnad aims to show how art and architecture can play an important, active role in social development.

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The exhibitors

 Fantastic Norway (FN) has been traveling through the northern part of Norway in a caravan. Serving pastry and coffee wherever they stopped, the dialogue has been their most important design tool. Priming the locals for future collaborations, FN writes weekly articles about the town in the local newspapers to provoke and inspire. Ironically, for a fledgling architectural practice, their first project was not a building, but it was the prevention of one from being built. Through interviewing the locals and analyzing the town's structure, FN proved that what the citizens of Brønnøysund needed was not the proposed mall, but an open public space in the center of town. FN showed here that the role of the architect was not merely to design buildings, but to be conscious agents in the successful development of civic life

HÅkkiTM has been designing and selling merchandize in aid of the small de-industrialized Swedish town of Ljungaverk - a once profitable center in Sweden's paper industry. By arranging happenings and supporting public features in Ljungaverk, they are catalysts for a more vital life in small town. Distributing the clothing brand through several shops around Norway and Sweden, HÅkkiTM makes this Swedish outpost a commercially viable branded commodity. HÅkkiTM tactically uses a commercial strategy to revitalize a town that suffered from the collapse of its own commercial system.

Both groups share a proactive and strategic use of media to make both inhabitants and the outside world aware of the challenges facing these towns. With tactics as diverse as advertising campaigns, temporary events and performative dialogue, these groups work with the inhabitants of depopulated towns to design a sense of place and a feeling of pride. They suggest that artistic practices can have a real and workable role as social design.

The exhibitions

Dugnad will be presented at two locations: At the Dugnad showroom at Designmai, two ongoing projects, one from each office will be presented. HÅkkiTM presents the project "Bring that Super-Mac Back," aiming to raise the necessary money to bring the Scottish football player Kyle McCullum (a.k.a. Super-Mac) to the Ljungaverk Football team. Giving it the incentive it needs to reach the top of its game, McCullum hopefully will help the team win the championship and bring back the football game as a communal social arena for the Ljungaverk inhabitants.

Fantastic Norway presents the project Bønnøysund Kunstbase, a yet to be realized building, whose design process has already had a huge impact on the cultural community of Brønnøysund. Entering the exhibition through a construction site billboard, Fantastic Norway™'s caravan and HÅkkiTM™'s football field set the stage for events ranging from Swedish storytelling to activist wood branding. At the Dugnad home base at PROJEKT 0047 both offices will present their ongoing projects in a broader context, documentation of the various sites and cities, as well as mixed-media installations featuring their previous work.

Not only do we aim to make new social connections, we hope that this exhibition project, as a real Dugnad, will have a constructive and physical impact on the two small Nordic societies.

The Project is a part of DESIGNMAI 2005

The Project is supported by:

The Norwehian Embassy in Berlin

Faculty of Architecture and Planning, NTNU