G1 BARCOS DE CLASES INTERNACIONALES DE LA ISAF G1.1 Identificación

Perhaps surprisingly, Eiler rasmussen was among the first profession- als to recognise Christiania’s potential. in the book Around Christiania (1976) he describes how plans to demolish 18 buildings to ‘normalise’ the ‘social experiment’ had left him sleepless. remembering Denmark’s undefended German annexation during World War ii, tingbjerg’s ar- chitect feels inclined to speak up. Emphasising his point with the evoc- ative memory image of bombed Warsaw, he questions the creation of a new tabula rasa in a thriving urban space, adding new cultural layers and alternative models of organisation:

When you know how many solid houses there are, you must presume that dynamite will be used. it is going to look like when the Germans left Warsaw, so everybody can understand that there is no mercy. You do not

want to put up with people wanting to live in a freer society.17

according to Eiler rasmussen, Christiania emerged from a specific condition, caused by ‘lack of planning’ before the slumstormers’ arrival: after the military exit, Bådsmandsstræde Barracks was ravaged because no future plans existed. Thus, he regards the squatting of the territory as an act that saved preservation-worthy buildings from decay or delib- erate destruction. Echoing 1970s’ urban planning discussions, embed- ded in discourses of the social, as in social politics, social experiment, social state, social problems, etc., he proposes the counterfactual sce- nario whether Christiania would be necessary, if society was better ar- ranged and geared to contain difference. Through the Freetown, howev- er, he discovers the potential of a new actor in urban development — the user/inhabitant/individual, co-designing the framework of his/her life:

For me, who has been occupied with the planning of dwellings and hous- ing areas, Christiania has been a strange experience. not in my wildest imagination could i have imagined that anything would come out of such chaos. it has not only been strange, but also uplifting, to see which pos- itive forces there are in people — even those standing weakest — when you offer them the possibilities […] You should not tear it down. You should build up our society, so there will not be need for any Christiania in the future!18

answering Copenhagen’s social Democrat mayor, Urban hansen, an- chorman behind the new town Urban Planen near Christiania (like- wise completed in 1971), Eiler rasmussen defends the Freetown as a learning laboratory: For better or worse, Christiania is a more success- ful welfare city than tingbjerg although the former is less comfortable than the latter. Putting forward an agenda to replace Christiania with an Urban Planen replica, hansen mocks Eiler rasmussen. how can the planner of tingbjerg — a welfare city icon planned from tabula rasa like

Urban Planen — protect or even romanticise this enclave of squatting misfits, disobeying law and order?19

Juxtaposing Christiania and his pet project tingbjerg, Eiler rasmus- sen’s response is branched. he stresses that people have chosen to live in Christiania whereas most inhabitants in tingbjerg have landed there randomly: many are allotted to flats by public housing organisations out of need rather than by active choice. Due to a will of participation, the democratic ideal of tight local communities around the neighbourhood also seems more unfolded in the unplanned Freetown, organising itself into 14 self-directed, local areas, than in the new town. tingbjerg is an instant community where everything was in place from the begin- ning, planned and administered from above and outside (top-down). in contrast, Christiania is a process-driven community, growing grad- ually from below and inside (bottom-up), generated by local forces.

Thus, Eiler rasmussen does not consider tingbjerg, programmed to predict residents’ needs, inclusive enough compared to Christiania, in- tegrating or at least tolerating people beyond categorisation: although the Freetown is ‘no sunday school’ and some are outsiders, many Chris- tianites are resourceful. it thrives by its multiplicity because of general solidarity between strong and weak, ‘outweighing’ each other. in ting- bjerg, people either enjoy (Eiler rasmussen’s daughter) or dislike (six- children families squeezed together like canned sardines in two-room flats by the municipality) living there.20 Witnessing how teenagers with the ‘right’ conditions ravage youth clubs with healthy activities, well- meaning personnel, educating workshops, etc., he regrets the master plan’s lack of openness towards reinterpretation and innovation.21

installations and equipment are spartan, but unlike tingbjerg’s pam- pered urban space, Christiania’s old buildings are adaptable for new purposes. Eiler rasmussen compares the kindergartens he ‘designed according to all the rules of the authorities’ with Christiania’s Children’s house, a military wooden house without basic facilities: the latter is ‘a real environment, friendly and familiar’ — English experts even esti-

mate it to be ‘better and more interesting’ than the former.22 This fas- cination with the process, the slow and the self-organised also involves Christiania’s anti-consumerism, its commitment to non-growth, sus- tainability and recycling of things dumped as waste material in ting- bjerg. The contrast repeats in the Freetown, superimposed on an urban palimpsest and reactivating historical architecture, and the new town’s context alienation, demolishing the existing to restart from scratch.