Heidi Svenningsen Kajita

Heidi Svenningsen Kajita

Assistant Professor

  • Landscape Architecture, Planning and Design

    Rolighedsvej 23

    1958 Frederiksberg C

    Phone: +45 29 87 88 46

Member of:

I am an architectural researcher working for social change in everyday spaces. Focusing on the history and transformation of welfare state housing areas, my research deals with users’ everyday practices, normative frameworks for the built environment, and architectural paperwork.

Revealing techniques for combining social and technical expertise, I activate archives, documents, oral histories or other memory material that record often uncomfortable architectural histories of landscapes, buildings and structures  associated with marginalisation. The challenge of dealing with pasts, presents and futures in democracies is complex and I therefore link architectural history, creative practice, and ethnographic strategies to deal with different and even contradictory  perspectives and needs of different actors and ressources.

Currently:

* In the project (Im) possible Instructions: Inscribing use-value in the architectural design process, I activate archival research and ethnographic fieldwork strategies to develop caring techniques for new (speculative) practices (DFF/ Independent Research Fund Denmark GRANT_NUMBER: 9032-00006B - IPD).

* In the project Klager i praksis [Practicing Complaints], I question how architectural disciplines can make better use of social housing residents' sincere complaint and care labour. This creative practice research is funded by the Danish Arts Foundation and Dreyers Fond.

* I am visiting fellow at Newcastle University (2019-23); member of two NOS-HS networks on welfare state architecture and landscapes and the network Where are the Women in Scandinavian Landscape Architecture?; and member of the Society of Artists, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Further, I am active in Action Archive – a group of researchers and artists using collaborative methods and formats, such as witness seminars and exhibitions, to publicly bring together diverse actors around urban cultural, historical, and political issues. 

 

I have taught landscape architecture, urbanism, architecture and art at universities in Denmark, Sweden and the UK since 2001.

 

For more info see personal website: www.bureaus.dk

 

Selected publications: 

Kajita, H. S. (2023). Urgent Minor Matters: Re-Activating Archival Documents for Social Housing Futures. Architecture and Culturehttps://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2022.2093603

Kajita, H. S., Mack, J., Riesto, S., & Schalk, M. (2022). Between Technologies of Power and Notions of Solidarity: A Response to Danish Ghetto Plan and Swedish Vulnerable Areas Documents . In K. M. Raahauge, D. Simson, M. Søberg, & K. Lotz (Eds.), Architectures of Dismantling and Restructuring : Spaces of Danish Welfare 1970–present (pp. 148-159). Lars Müller Publishers.

Kajita, H. S. (2021). Caring Techniques: Making Design Documents Work for Democratic Futures. Copenhagen Architecture Festival. https://en.cafx.dk/post/caring-techniques-making-design-documents-work-for-democratic-futures

 

 

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