Nabo: How Can We Live Together

Rarely has architecture featured more prominently in the Norwegian public debate than today. Can this spark of public interest help create solutions for new ways of living together?

NEIGHBOUR: How Can We Live Together? is a collaboration involving Kode, the Bergen City Architect and its BOPILOT research project, the National Museum in Oslo, and the architectural firm of Helen & Hard.

The exhibition will be an immersive experience – a journey from the public urban context, via the museum’s function as a cultural third space, and on into our homes. Visitors will be able to see futuristic visions from Norwegian architectural firms, architect students, and real estate developers presented in many models and the largescale collective housing installation “What We Share”.

NEIGHBOUR will also serve as a meeting place that explores how residents and professionals can work better together to create good, sustainable architecture. Young and old, resident and developer, citizen and bureaucrat, artist and capitalist – we are all neighbours.

Common solutions to future challenges?

In the upcoming years, people in Norway will face a considerable growth in the elderly population. Surveys suggest there has been a long-term increase in loneliness among youth, even prior to the coronavirus pandemic. This demands a new perspective on how we organise our health care services and our housing.

It is increasingly difficult to enter the housing market and families with children are struggling to find a suitable home in the cities. The all-encompassing environmental perspective has also emerged as a factor, impacting virtually every single issue related to social development. Can new, collective forms of housing help solve some of the major challenges we are facing today?

What We Share: A Model for Cohousing

A major part of the exhibition is a revamped version of the installation What We Share: A Model for Cohousing, which was on display 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 invited a group of people to develop a communal housing project with a number of shared functions.

The installation provides a glimpse into the everyday life of communal housing and presents new ideas of sharing and cohabitation. The installation is curated in collaboration with Martin Braathen and the National Museum in Norway. Read more about the project

The museum as a meeting place

In a major collaboration, the Bergen City Architect has recently assumed a particular responsibility for exploring future possibilities and alternative housing solutions through the experimental research project BOPILOT. Here, innovative housing projects that are on the drawing board right now will be presented for the public.

Part of the exhibition will take its cue from the multifaceted insights the project has engendered, offering a space to meet and discuss housing and neighbourhoods across various roles and age groups. What can we share? And why do some forms of communal housing succeed while others don’t?

Neighbour evening

Kode is launching NABOKVELD, a packed programme of discursive events for both professionals and the public that will further explore some of the questions raised by the exhibition. There will also be various cultural events during the evening and the weekends throughout the entire exhibition period.