Interior design and decoration of Dugnad Centre Vesterbro - a shelter for drug users.
With Tina Saabye, partner in Witraz Architects, Mette Høj, concept designer, Karin Dam, process consultant, Michael Lodberg, social worker/manager of Café Dugnad and Ole Kristensen, psychologist.
The establishment of a new drop-in centre for drug users at Halmtorvet. Here I have worked with values (see here), translating these into principles for the interior design, and the interior design itself. This was done in an interdisciplinary team with an architect, psychologist, concept designer, social worker and myself. I made sculptural lamps, films for windows with drawings and texts, and tiles for the washbasin in the café area.
The project is a continuation of the fixerum project and the Men's Home project. I am on the board of Dugnad. The Dugnad Centre is a historic collaboration between a private organisation (Dugnad) and the City of Copenhagen and is Vesterbro's proposal for an innovative concrete solution to some of the drug problems in Vesterbro. It is a dignified sanctuary in the form of a residence and resource centre for drug users. Many drug users in Copenhagen have nowhere to stay. My role has been to translate the ideas and needs of drug users into visual entities. As well as defining the values of the place and translating them into the physical layout.
The place contains, among other things:
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Café and kitchen
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Conflict resolution space - there are so many unresolved conflicts between drug users, locals, politics, business, etc.
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Rest area, shower, toilet room and lockers.
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Development of 'odd jobs'. Alternative labour market where drug users can be employed in alternative ‘day labourer jobs’
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Health rooms that are designed to take care of the health needs of the health professionals and with fix rooms for legal drugs.
The interior design and decoration, which I am involved in, aims to create a physical framework for some values and functions that have not yet been used in working with drug users in Denmark. Together we have developed a whole new set of methods such as decriminalisation (development of odd day jobs), conflict resolution (drug users have no legal protection as their lifestyle is totally criminalised), exclusion (soup kitchen/café also open to non-drug users, joint events with non-drug users) and inclusive ‘low-threshold’ conditions (ie. access for those who are rejected elsewhere - where their ‘deviant behaviour’ is seen as a symptom of needing help, care and love, rather than rejection).
Watch the film about the project values below:
