Chapter

How we chose the space

When we first began our research into a case for this project, we decided to investigate different places through walking. We agreed that walking was an ideal method, as it is a familiar way of navigating through the city; it sets the city in human perspective, guiding our movements naturally and allowing us to easily discover the city. Fig. 0.1 illustrates various locations around Copenhagen that we visited, both during day and night, in order to identify challenges and opportunities that could provide a good starting point for our study. We included different types of urban spaces, from enclosed nodes to open districts. In the final stage of our walking journey, we have analyzed our findings and observations and narrowed down our search based on the following criteria. The chosen location had to then present: ...an indisputable problem that could be tackled through lighting; ...the right size of a problem that could be addressed within the timeframe for this project; ...the potential for interactivity and for conducting lighting experiments on-site; ...itself as somewhat well-established, either due to longrooted historical or cultural legacy. After doing a screening of all options based on the aforementioned criteria, we found The Railway City (Jernbanebyen) between Enghavevej and Vasbygade as most appealing to fulfil it, especially due to the distinct space we had to surpass in order to discover it: an unusually long tunnel. It started with us walking on Enghavevej and getting curious about where the tunnel from Enghavevej led to, so we decided to investigate further. The underpass looked like a weary and decaying tunnel of a train station and something you would normally avoid. However, a walk through the underpass took us to the The Railway City, and what we found on the other side of the railways was a charming and historically interesting community under a huge development, with lots of great potential and creativity – almost like it was its own entity, disconnected from the city and its neighborhoods, and certainly not easy to find

Fig. 0.1: Map of Copenhagen showcasing the initial locations we have investigated by walking, as part of our pre-analysis process of scouting for the final case study 1. Bispeengbuen 2. Nørrebro Runddel St. 3. Yellow fence wall 4. Assitens Kirkegård 5. Urban Oase Park 6. Sankt Hans Torv 7. Old Library garden 8. Islands Brygge Park 9. Ørstad passage 10. Frederiks Brygge 11. Railway City 12. Sydhavn Station

PART-CONCLUSION: The Railway City was chosen as our case study because it appeared as a creative, but secluded place with various scalable problems associated with the urban space, which can be addressed with sitespecific interactive lighting.