Designed Places: An Ethnography of the Financial Crisis

The 2008 financial crisis has left traces in the built environment of Copenhagen like many other places: Building projects are left unfinished or their function or finish is changed due to new economic circumstances. An ethnographic exploration of these traces exposes central aspects of what is at stake, when we design the places we inhabit. In the process of design we engage with our material surroundings and seek to shape them according to our ideals. However, the market forces also play a key role in shaping these places, and these forces cannot be controlled. Rather, they are dealt with much like the forces of nature. Based on a fieldwork in three new housing developments in Copenhagen, this paper aims to bring the financial crisis ‘down to earth’ by examining the material shapes it has taken in the spaces of everyday life.

The ethnographic cases in question are places that are somewhat over-designed: Not only the places’ architecture and built environment but also their identity, image and social life has been carefully planned for. At the same time their design and architectural layout bear witness to a seemingly longing for that which is unplanned and beyond design, thus staging as authentic the friction that derives from the place’s history or topography. Yet, even such friction is designed. One housing complex is thus designed and branded as ‘a modern mountain village’, though situated on flat and greenfield land. Its shape grows from market forces, rather than from topography, and when the ceilings leak water, the residents suspect it to be a consequence of the crisis. The paper discusses how market forces interact with the material surroundings we inhabit and explores the relationship between controlled and uncontrollable in the design of places.