AART Architects: Community through architecture
The name of the city says it all – “Nye” is the Danish word for “new”. A new city built from scratch with one overall mission: to design a beautiful and sustainable city with a strong social purpose.
Community through architecture
When dealing with circularity within the built environment, AART always focuses on how the architecture will create as much value as possible for both users and society. In the emerging city, Nye, one aim has been social value for the residents in the form of community. Therefore, AART has contributed 30 innovative wooden terraced houses that nudge residents towards a new way of living, one based on sharing, co-creating and socializing.
In the post-occupancy evaluation, residents in Nye report that the built environment through architectural instruments actively support interaction between residents, which contributes to a strong and shared sense of community. They report that they see more people; have more social engagements; help each other; interact across generations; talk when they meet; participate in common dining and activities; borrow things from each other; watch each other’s pets, plants and children; and keep an eye on each other.
When benchmarked against a national survey (Kantor Gallup 2019), the residents in Nye perform better in terms of both community and quality of life. 66% of residents report that they “socialize a lot with their neighbours and have a good neighbourhood-feeling” compared to the national average of 26%.
About AART Architects
AART is a Danish architectural firm with more than 20 years of deep dedication to creating impact through architecture. Cities and buildings are powerful catalysts. Within them lies the key to how they change and improve the most fundamental frameworks for our lives – how we dwell, learn, work and even how we live and breathe. That is why they think impact over form in all projects.
They are the first architecture firm in Scandinavia to establish a dedicated cross disciplinary impact team, where they collect the latest knowledge about how architecture makes a difference in practice. They do so by revisiting their completed projects and studying their social and economic impact.