Hemmets Landmärken

Landmarks of Home 

Naturmolnet, Malmö, Sweden

Summer 2022

Participants were invited to meet at Naturmolnet in the Sofielund district of the city to engage in a neighborhood walk. Without a predetermined destination, the participants were asked to acknowledge their surroundings using all of their senses and to allow encounters not yet known to influence their path. I provided an open-ended script, asking only that participants consider the overlooked points of interest in the neighborhood that might be seen as “landmarks.” I asked them to think about shared space—where do they go when they leave their front door? They were asked to walk for one hour, return to the park, and draw their walk as a series of landmarks to be shared with others.

These walks are intended to explore how we see our neighborhoods—where is home? What landmarks define the place where we live? What do you see along your way that others may not? How do these non-traditional landmarks begin to define a place? Traditionally, a landmark is something we can all easily identify: the spire of a church, a civic building, a historic statue, or a square.

Yet, by moving away from the traditional landmark to capture the overlooked, we begin to see with the eyes of those familiar with a locale. The “overlooked” might include a distinctive tree on a street corner, a small house nestled between two larger buildings, or a path along the canal—and the stories that define those places as special. These stories are important to how we begin to understand what spaces within a neighborhood have significance, and to whom.

The process of creating a community dialogue and actively questioning: How do we see the spaces in which we live? How do others see those same spaces? What is the same? What is different? And where is the common ground? This is a critical link for thinking about how spaces in a neighborhood can be used—for example, the vacant lot being developed by Växtvärket.

This experimental approach to stimulating awareness of “place” provides another layer to the conversation of how we interpret where we live, more specifically, the public space beyond our front door. Using drawing and mapping as visual tools for communication, participants will investigate the overlapping points of connection within their community. The individual neighborhood mappings will weave together a collective response to the individual community.

Urban Social Atlas, Drawing Your Walk