Berit & Chris's weblog

Fun fair!

I have decided to stay in Denmark a little longer. Sadly, Maria and I had to push the deadline for our thesis, and hopefully an extra month will give us the time we need to complete it. As a result, most days now are spent reading and writing.

Today, however, I decided to treat myself to a break – at the Malmö 'home and housing fair'. And it began so full of promise; a considerable distance from the exhibition centre, roads were completely blocked with cars, police having to direct the traffic, and we had to spend a really long time queuing. Finally we ventured – full of anticipation – into the fair. And it was one massive disappointment. For two hours we fought our way through the masses of people and prams, desperately seeking kitchen and bathroom accessories. To no avail. In the end, the only remotely interesting thing – however strange – was a kitchen complete with cooks, an audience and a family, the latter consuming a meal they had apparently just won!

Malmö, Sweden

Valentine’s Day is less exciting when your boyfriend is 600 miles away…but I made the most of it and went shopping in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city. Malmö is one of my favourite cities; it is small – with a population of roughly 250,000, which is half that of Bristol – friendly, and packed with cafés, art galleries, beautiful parks, and lots of shopping opportunities. Swedish and Scandinavian design shops dominate the city centre, and give Malmö a real cosmopolitan feel. And everything seems to be within walking distance, including a two kilometre long beach overlooking the Øresundsbron – the bridge between Sweden and Denmark – the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world for both motorway and railway.

I returned home to find a beautiful rose waiting for me…

City of Tomorrow

John picked me up from Copenhagen airport yesterday morning. Twenty minutes later, we had crossed the suspension bridge to Sweden, and were driving around Malmö in desperate search of an IKEA (should be pretty straightforward in Sweden, you’d think!). John has recently bought a flat in north Malmö, in a newly established architectural development, close to the sea and central Malmö, and desperately needed…well, everything! We located IKEA and went on a shopping frenzy!

A couple of hours later, it was time to have a proper look at this Scandinavian architectural gem, John had decided to call ‘home’. The development started out as a housing exposition in 2001 called BO01 – “living 2001” - constructed with the intention to exhibit ideas in sustainability, intelligently utilised information technology, urban form, and landscape architecture, and then to assume its life as the core of a new community for the city of Malmö. This city of tomorrow is a loose grid of structures built around courtyards, canals, private and public gardens. And the focus on sustainability is ever present; local renewable energy sources include wind, solar power, and biogas that will heat and power the development. Surface water is drained off visibly in open gutters and miniature canals before reaching the saltwater canal or the sea. The beauty of the area is accentuated by a 220 meter long esplanade along the seashore which connects a large piazza at one end and a marina at the other.