Relocation of Beer Drinkers/Enghave Minipark
Fotograf Kenneth A. Balfelt

Relocation of Beer Drinkers
Curated by Koyo Kouoh and Charlotte Bagger Brandt. Public art project. Part of “Make Yourself at Home” for Kunsthal Charlotteborg, Denmark. See “Alcoholics sunbathe too”.
In collaboration with Vesterbro Lokaludvalg, Spektrum Arkitekter, Hausenberg and the users
2010- work in progress

Through making the rapport “The public space as a living room – Urban renewal with space for socially marginalized” I realized that the beer drinkers at the extraordinary well functioning public square Enghave Plads in central Copenhagen would be thrown away during the 5 years construction of a Metro station. I decided to go into the proces of finding them a new place and make a process around and test out the findings of the rapport in practice.

I teamed up with a local community organ (Vesterbro Lokaludvalg) and Spektrum Arkitekter and began the process of involving the beer drinkers. So far we have made the following:

Opened up a dialogue with the beer drinkers about the situation
Had dialogue with them about where they would like to be relocated and what the needs for such a place would be
Took them for a walk to possible places and discussed pros and cons and decided for a space
Asked the Municipality about using this space for the project, which they accepted
Held a workshop about what kind of furniture and other facilities they needed and what architectural style they found suitable. We showed them over 150 photos which we discussed and they chose 40 from
Made a public meeting with citizens and other user groups in which we made sure that some of the beer drinkers also participated
we have made further design drawing with the architects Spektrum and discussed them with the beer drinkers
Copenhagen Municipality came with some “goes” and some “not goes” for the needs we had described for them
we took this back to the users and discussed this with them. We then decided which ones we accepted and which ones we wanted to pursue further
I wrote the Municipality an email about this and mentioned politely that we could get the mayor to support the needs of the users if they did not themselves have the funding or capacity for helping with this
I was then invited for a meeting with the Municipality and in which the accepted almost all our wishes also finally the much requested pissoir
Finalizing of the design with the users new preferences: At this time they had stayed on the site for 3-4 weeks and e.g. knows the sun scheme and have experienced some drawbacks on that they are very exposed for “zoo-watching” from people passing by.

We have in the design planned that as much as possible is open for being formed on the spot so that users can participated in the aesthetic outcome and we are planning to make this process open to other groups than the beer drinkers so that it becomes a multiuser minipark rather that a shelter for one group.