Commoning the Heritage: Norrahammar

How can existing cultural and historical environments be developed into multifunctional living spaces? What role can artistic and exploratory processes play in the early stages of urban development? These questions are central to the practice-based research project Commoning The Heritage: Norrahammar, a collaboration between ArkDes and the Municipality of Jönköping.

In the future, development and management will be two words describing the same thing. To create transformation, we need to make the most of all the resources we have—material, knowledge, experience, and motivations—and carefully build on what already exists. Cultural environments provide a historical anchor, serving as a legacy that the new elements relate to and eventually become a part of.

Within Commoning The Heritage: Norrahammar a creative team to explore how the inherited environment can become a living part of the future—and more specifically, what tomorrow’s workplaces and production environments might look like as Norrahammar’s old industrial area is developed and densified.

Norrahammar grew around the Norrahammar industrial ironworks from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. The ironwork produced, among other things, boilers and cast iron stoves. Between the 1980s and early 1990s, the industrial operations were gradually phased out. Today, several actors operate in the area: Tabergsådalen’s cultural center, Norrahammar’s industrial and local history museum, sports associations, vehicle dealerships, beauty salons, and small-scale production businesses. The municipality has identified the area’s potential for denser development, including housing, workplaces, more green spaces, and a focus on the cultural and historical value of the Tabergsån river area.

Team TEJA was selected to explore how the former industrial site in Norrahammar can be developed and densified through artistic practices and exploratory design processes. Taking the area’s cultural and historical context as a starting point, the team will test and present proposals for how the industrial character can be preserved while transforming the site into a multifunctional place.

The project aims to provide the Municipality of Jönköping with tools and knowledge about how culturally and historically valuable environments can be managed and developed, and the role that artistic practices and exploratory design processes can play in the early stages of urban development. The goal is also to share the project’s results with other municipalities facing similar conditions and opportunities.

The project is part of ArkDes’ research focus on Transformation and builds on knowledge from the practice-based research project Commoning the Heritage, a collaboration between ArkDes, the Municipality of Robertsfors, and the Swedish National Heritage Board. To strengthen the sharing of both existing and new knowledge, the Municipality of Robertsfors also participates as a partner in Commoning the Heritage: Norrahammar.