MACA 11: Cycling in Lund
Photo: Su Won Lee, MACA 11
Lund is a cycling city. Cyclists are everywhere, cycle paths criss-cross the town and the bike racks by the railway station are always full. The bicycle is the vehicle of choice for everyday transportation of numerous residents of Lund, who together pedal around the world four times each day! But despite the positive attitude towards cycling, among inhabitants as well as politicians, cycling is decreasing. Compared to 2004 cycling has declined by 5%. The past seven years Lund’s population has grown, but even though the citizens use their bicycles more than ever they do so less frequently in proportion to the recent increase of people. Why is this?
MACA 11’s first assignment was to investigate the attitudes towards cycling among the inhabitants of Lund and come up with suggestions for how cycling in Lund can be promoted; how can more Lundians, new as well as old, be convinced to choose the bike before the car? Working in groups the students got one week to perform fieldwork and analyse the empirical material before they presented results and suggestions for the client, Technical Service Department, City of Lund.
MACA 10: Bread Stories
Baker and photographer: Katarina Börjeson
Bread has always been a staple food of the Nordic region. It has a very material quality to it. It is sensually intimate yet mundane – it is so obvious in daily life that you take it for granted. Nevertheless, bread raises a number of questions concerning key cultural
phenomena occurring in the intersections between identity, class, ethnicity, gender, generation, environmental responsibility and health.
The first assignment for MACA 10 concerned the consumption of bread and the cultural
meanings assigned to it. It was linked to a project run by the National Museum of Denmark, department of Modern Danish History (DNT), which in turn was connected to the project “Nordic Bread”; a joint Norsam project in which some 30 museums and institutions in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden participated. Norsam is a network of Nordic museums concerned with contemporary documentation in the Nordic countries.
Articles based on this project is found in the publication Our Daily Bread. They arewritten by MACA students from Lund and Copenhagen.
MACA09: Experiencing Knutpunkten
Photo: Sveinn Birkir Björnsson, MACA 09
Helsingborg is an expanding city. During the next 20-year period an urban renewal project, H+, will radically change the central southern districts. Today the southern city districts are cut off from the rest of the city by the railway. To make the expansion and development possible the railway will be dug underground and a 1,5 km long tunnel, The South Tunnel, will be built. This means that the Knutpunkten, the bus/train/ferry junction in the city centre, will have to undergo profound alterations.
MACA 09′s assignment was 1) to observe and examine Knutpunkten and how it is presented and perceived today, and 2) to formulate ideas for how Knutpunkten
can be designed and developed for the future. What are the potentials as well
as the problems of Knutpunkten, what strategies could be used for improvement? Results and suggestions were presented for the client, The City of Helsingborg, after one week.