Growing up on a building site in the most peripheral outskirt of Reykjavik had great impact on my interests and views, including my prejudices, ever since. A new suburb was being built up and a new material culture emerged, the arising of new infrastructures was clearly visible from where we waged our little sea fights on pieces of polystyrene afloat in swamped fundaments of future buildings, or from our little villages of sewage pipes, waiting above ground for their future usage. Simultaneously ‘nature’ was on our doorsteps. We were in close contact with dogs, sheep, horses, hens and insects as well as climbing mountains and swimming in rivers nearly freezing to death. I have wonderful vague memories of the excitement of almost drowning in dikes getting really dirty all over!

All these adventures led me to feel pity for those kids that would have to be raised inside the city. Not that Reykjavik was such of a metropolis but this was my point of reference at the time, and what could be duller than growing up in the Thingholt? Not only was it boring the city lacking both nature and exiting building elements lying around waiting for a purpose, but there also were dangerous criminals and threatening traffic all over, making life miserable. Poor kids! (Somehow the drowning episodes and the kicking horses did not count as danger in my world view).
Eventually, meeting the kids from Thingholt, my prejudice was not confirmed; they had to my big surprise (and disappointment perhaps?) their own adventures I couldn’t even dream of. Wonderful meeting places, like museums, shopping streets and the harbour! This gave me a taste for urbanity and— despite warnings from a psychic lady who rather saw my glorious future in Norway—I moved to Paris. My prejudices prevented me from seeking my fate in Norway, ‘the park of Europe’ as a Dutch architect (Winy Maas at the Oslo Arkitektur Triennale in year 2000) called it to Norwegian architects big disapproval. That provincial place I wouldn’t even visit, let alone stay there!

What fascinated me in Paris and later on in other cities I was so fortunate to spend time in (while postponing Norway), was not only the wonders of communal public space which has the wonderful quality of absorbing people of all ages and cultures into an overlap of communities. These cities also had elements of nature embedded in their structures. So totally constructed, manmade and controlled although physically made from the same stuff as the marshes back home, earth, plants, water. Green lungs feeding the dense city with oxygen, draining out pollution; places of leisure and pleasure.
Now I live in wonderful Norway (of course) where, like in Iceland, urbanity also has a close correlation with ideas of nature. When it stands between bringing up your children in ‘nature’ or ‘on the asphalt’, as it so repulsively is put in our languages, the mere sound of the proposal seems to make the choice quite simple. The longing for essential ‘harmony with nature’ has taken some extreme forms in our region, like the various attempts to the poles in ever more ultimate forms. When it comes to habitat, the ideal; the simple life in a hut on a mountaintop, in combination with all the compromises of modern life, makes for a result that rarely is all that flattering. Neither an endless suburbia with houses surrounded with big gardens where one seems to avoid contact with ones neighbour nor a ‘hut’ with 17 toilets (like the one Røkke the Norwegian billionaire has) seem to have much in common with the primitive hut, even if there is turf on the roof. It also has shown itself to be devastating to the environment. Ever bigger roads get people to all their meeting places, which after all cannot be avoided because they have jobs, go to school and do shopping. Infrastructure starts living its own life and takes on the role of the protagonist in the city, like cancer in a sick body.

April Architects believe reinforcing the best of both worlds, focusing on social space and simultaneously maximising the exposure to natural elements, might give new answers in future urban developments.

Example I:

Located between a new concentrated development area and a protected cultured landscape in Stavanger, a hierarchy of outdoors spaces with different degrees of public function is proposed around greenhouses. The project ‘Hothouse’, (A Europan7 winning proposal from 2003), explores social spheres on many levels. After all, it is not only a necessity facing another person, it can actually be nice!

Here we have a public park, communal gardens and the market place. The private garden, lies on the roof.
The greenhouse is the shared space of the small community unit and can have many different functions defined by the inhabitants. Small production units for vegetables and angora wool, or it would be a shared room for 12 students. An atelier, bicycle reparation shop, a living room or a jacuzzi.

The availability of glass has transformed living conditions in colder climates throughout the world. Glasshouses are well suited for the local rainy and windy climate. A varied flora of family patterns and multicultural society has emerged with a new kind of public sphere. Thesis is that the hothouse can provide an environment for sensitive cross-cultural situations to develop.

The history of the hothouse is intertwined with the history of colonialism; one started transporting plants and other organisms from the colonies and tried to sustain them in colder climates. Glass was the salvaging element, and was immediately associated with great possibilities in sustaining life and moving boundaries. As the boundaries of urbanity are to be moved into the cultivated landscape, the generator is a field of glasshouses. Land Art, or an installation is proposed as a strategy for the urban development.

The greenhouses are distributed across the fields and will shine as objects of attraction and manifestation of new possibilities. They can have temporary use until one chooses to attach ones living unit onto it and shares it with others that love the possibilities of the greenhouse.

The focus is on the fertile earth of the site itself. Talk to your neighbor while getting your hands dirty in the mud, instead of communicating on the internet!

We imagine that not only can those shared rooms be practical in modern life, people can share babysitting, children will find friends, etc. but there may emerge bubbling culture where people exchange ideas, argue and perhaps even become a little bit politically engaged.

In a nutshell: Hothouse can become a nurture bed for grass root activities.
On the site where the first buildings will stand next summer we found an old oasis that will give firm base and historical reference to a new development.

Example II:

The installation ‘The Kithchen Garden’, (a commission for The Norwegian Architecture museum in 2004), can be seen as a manifesto of our work as urban designers, where we see the world from above and define diverse programs for different areas. At the same time, it is present in 1:1 as furniture with a double function: Here is the dining table, the most social place in the home or in the office - a source for ideas and inspiration.

In an urban context ‘the kitchen garden’ offers new possibilities in that it allows us to dispense with the need for a garden outside the home or a winter-garden attached: We can simply have the herbal garden in our own kitchen in the middle of the city.

The table challenges to action (eating, irrigating, caring). The plants' life cycle with its youthful vigor, maturity and decay may even remind us of both happy and uncanny stages in the course of life itself. The content of the containers (usually used for food in refectories) will be subject to local needs and interpretation.

The table, with its special growth-stimulating lighting is also a compact greenhouse, where seeds may sprout and plants may grow. In combination, the functions represent some of the most important aspects of architecture: Human relations and the relation between Man and nature, the very thing that was so interesting in my clash of experiences as a child of nature, meeting the city.

As the poles of the earth are vanishing anyway one might want to redefine our relationship to nature. After all, the seemingly untouched nature is thoroughly contaminated, (mercury in polar bears for instance), and there is no problem bringing the best of nature right into the urban condition. Here the artists of the province have a creative key-role redefining issues regarding the existence on the fringe and influencing the public opinion, in order to evade devastation of the resources that already are there.