To Cultivate
The word “cultivate” comes from the Latin verb culturare, which itself derives from cultus, the past participle of colere, meaning “to till, tend, or care for.” This root word colere also gives rise to another closely related – “culture”. The connection between these words highlights a central understanding – the connection of time to place to people, celebrated through culture and care.
“Culture” itself originally referred to the cultivation of land but later evolved to describe the cultivation of the mind, manners, arts and also design. And as the most traditional use of “cultivate” refers to the preparing and using land for growing crops, the essential notions of care is expressed in the relation between people and land. “To cultivate” in a cultural sense means to develop or refine intellectual and artistic pursuits, contributing to growth – which is to me the notion I want to reveal through design.
The act of cultivating can therefore result in different ways to form a way of understanding and practicing design. However, at the heart of whichever idea, the notion of care must be present. Caring for the place, the building, the space, walls, the way they meet the ground, the doors and their handles, the windows and how it feels to open them, the chairs and the tables, the way the light shines on them, caring for the plate, the spoon, the knife, the fork, the little vase with flowers. But most of all – caring for the people that the space is designed for. And that is the crucial notion to understand from the idea of cultivating: To design with care and attention.
On a different layer, the act of cultivating describes how a space is connected to a place. To cultivate in design therefore can also mean respecting the context in which a space or object exists – whether this context is urban or rural, old or new, global or local. This includes considering the cultural, social, historical and environmental aspects of a place, ensuring that the design respects the connection between people and place.
Those understandings are tied to the underlying concept of time within cultivation. Time in following translation is proposed as the meeting of past and future. Since “culture” and “cultivate” share the same root, cultivating design also involves the idea of preserving culture while at the same time thinking towards the future. The act of cultivation can therefor be understood as using design to explore the past and bringing what already exists into a new context – the future. Essentially, to me, that is a manifestation of design as a means to grow, preserve and care for culture — essentially, design as the cultivation of culture.
To Harvest
The Nordic regions experience long, harsh winters and short, summers where suddenly everything happens at once. Traditionally, harvesting was crucial cultural event symbolising survival and celebration. Because of the incredibly short period that one can celebrate the sudden abundance of sunlight, flowers, vegetables, fruits and berries, harvesting in the Nordic context also emphasises the importance of preserving food. What is harvested must often be preserved—through methods like drying, fermenting, or pickling—to ensure a supply of food during the winter months. One can say, that this preservation process is as much a part of the harvest as the gathering itself.
The harvest describes the window of time where produce is mature enough but not too mature. It is a window of time that must be carefully observed and understood and once everything seems to align – it requires immediate action. Translating these findings into design, I want to focus on two qualities emerging within the act of harvesting: The needed observation to determine the right moment of action and the feeling when the conditions align and everything seems to be just right.
The Sámi people, indigenous to North Europe, follow a unique tradition of dividing the year into eight seasons, rooted in their profound comprehension of habitat and season that rests within their culture. Each season marks a changing in the landscape and activities of practical and spiritual quality. The names and customs associated with these seasons differ based on the specific region in Sápmi, considering variations in language and seasonal practices. After I learned about this way of seeing time, I started to apply it within my own experience of season and space. Following are my observations from my experiences in Oslo.
Spring-summer is a love letter to life, it is the anticipation of the abundance of summer and an anticipation comes often with even greater joy than what is being anticipated. The space is full of energy and every guests who visits immerses in it. The space is daring, it is like going for a swim when the joy to be able to swim again is so great that one forgets the water is still cold from the winter. Windows are being slightly opened to hear the flowers bloom and the birds sing. Cool wind blows into the space but hearing the spring is worth it. The space still provides warmth and comfort through materials, just like we still have to wear woolen sweaters in the spring summer evenings.
During summer, the space opens up as far as it can and encourages the guests to sense the soft smell in the warm evening breezes. The air vibrates from all the insects flying busy from flower to flower. Evenings seem to never end, the sun never sets. Just like day and night are blurred, the space now blurs the lines between outside and inside. Elements from outside are invited in, the warm wind, the tickling rays of the sun. Flowers and fresh produce create the feeling of a garden inside, there is so plenty of it all. The space is spontaneous in summer. It is as fruity as it is briny.
Summer-autumn reflects a melancholic joy. Fruity becomes earthy. Materials that give warmth are introduced to the guests. Wool and comfort for those who wish to the warm long nights would continue, even though it almost is too cold to sit outside now. Others have accepted the end of summer and seek the inside of a space. The space is silent while it takes farewell with the summer, keeping only a few souvenirs for memory. Lights are dimmed to give the guests the chance to part with the natural light. The space marks the ending of summer by slowly secluding itself and gradually getting ready for the long winter.
In autumn the forests birth mushrooms and the apple trees carry their dark red treasures, new scents, new sounds, new images, new colours. Trees change their colours and their leaves can be admired one last time before they fall. All the green disappears, slowly. The space takes now its final farewell from the summer. Memories of sitting outside are being caramelised while sitting warm and comfortably on the inside of the space. The space reflects the calmness and and encourages contemplation. It’s not gloomy or heavy, like a Nordic winter; autumn is bright and stormy.
Autumn-winter might be darker than the winter. Without the snow, the darkness came quickly and seems so heavy and persistent. Everything seem to get so unbearably cold in the anticipation of winter. Storms tumble through everything that happened over the past year before they make it all fall into place one last time.
In the winter, the space is enclosed and becomes a shelter from the cold and grey monotony. Guests are seated in a space of warmth and comfort, reflected in the materials. Outside, ice cold winds are whistling through little cracks and snowflakes are covering the everything under their heavy white blanket. The sounds are dimmed, the light is dimmed. The weighty darkness is being embraced, not fought against. Remnants from autumn remind the guests of summer that now seems so far away. The space takes care of its visitors, it becomes a sanctuary of collectedness and togetherness.
Winter-spring starts silently and not knowing whether it's starting or whether it's just hope, the space slowly shifts again. Sun rays seem to reach the inside again, trees and shrubs are showing their first buds, so green and purple and vulnerable. The changes are still so fragile. The floral vulnerability is reflected in the space. Materials are light and transparent, cold but warm up through touch. Some branches with buds are being brought into the warmth inside so they can bloom for us. Just like snowdrops and crocuses, the space too awakens from under its snow blanket. Lighter and fresher colours are being introduced as the snow melts and drips from all edges.
Spring is the evidence of the new start, life is now firmly exploding. Every bud wants to bloom, every plant pushes its leaves out towards the sun and everything is being born everywhere. The space reflects this tingling joy. It opens up again, it introduces fresh produce, tart colours and textures that are al dente. It now is grassy, refreshing and blooming. There is a tartness to the space, it tingles, it excites with a new freshness and purity.
To Preserve
Around the world, different cultures have developed various techniques to preserve food, each beautifully adapted to specific climates. In fact, most existing food preserving techniques go beyond the mere aim of being able to store the produce. Over thousands of years, techniques have been refined that add taste and nutritional value over time while at the same time preserving the produce. In the light of this translation project, I have become particularly interested in the technique of fermentation – preservation through change.
Read about how to ferment a building here.
To Compost
To compost marks another act that happens in the intersection between past and future. Composting is the process of breaking down organic matter, such as food scraps, yard waste and other biodegradable materials, into a nutrient-rich material called compost. This process occurs through the natural decomposition of these materials by microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi and insects in the presence of oxygen. The resulting compost can be used to create soil that is actually alive (not brown dirt one can buy in a bag) and thereby recycle nutrients back into the ecosystem.
The word “composting” comes from the noun “compost,” which has its roots in the Latin verb componere, meaning “to put together” or “to combine.” The term “compost” in English was first used in the late 14th century to refer to a mixture of decayed organic matter used as fertiliser. The verb “to compost,” meaning to convert organic material into compost, came into use later (Etymonline, n.d.).
“‘We are all compost’ claims Donna Haraway, and this says something about who we are, where we come from and where we are going. It reminds us that humans are part of nature and that we depend on everything around us, particularly soil. Composting brings the human and the more-than-human together and opens a possibility to understand how we depend on the life- creating processes around us.” – Bjørn Inge Melås (Melås, 2022, p.270)
Compost as a composition – another way of reorganising a structure, composing existent elements into something new. Another way of creating newness from what already exists.
What I want to point out, however, is that composting not as much of a solution for waste but as a necessity to create and sustain new life. “Composting provides an insight into how all life around us is reproduced all the time. This could be a source of security, or confidence, or humbleness in the uncertain and chaotic world we live in” (Melås, 2022, p.256), writes Bjørn Inge Melås in his doctoral thesis. Through combining theory with practice, he explores the social and ecological value of gardening in an urban setting as well as expressing what an alternative pathway to capitalism can look and feel like. His work dedicatedly centres the meaning of compost. Melås suggests that the process of composting and soil regeneration offers more than just ecological benefits – it can also provide personal meaning and well-being.
“The life-creating technology of composting and soil
regeneration might also be a source of meaning and well-
being. To find joy not in consumption, but in repairing,
fixing, maintaining. It is a way to do something tangible
and visible, a way of being productive and creative, making
something with our own hands.” (Melås, 2022, p.256)
Melås explains that capitalism not only depletes the earth’s soils but also erodes our mental and social “soils”—the ways we think, act, interact, and relate to one another. “The practice of composting also holds a potential for regenerating the social and mental ecologies, a necessary part of the transition to a degrowth future. Capitalism exhausts soils of their capacity to function properly, but it also depletes the mental and social soils, the way we think, act, interact and relate, and all these levels needs to be regenerated at the same time, through practices that gives meaning and direction to the people involved.” (Melås, 2022, p.270)
I wonder what possibilities the idea of composting could present for architecture. This thought presents many answers and can be discussed through a variety of layers. On the one hand, there is the abundance of outcomes emerging from understanding the act of composting in its concrete appearance and physicality. How do we implement decentralised, democratic composting stations into the daily life of urban contexts? On the other hand, there is the abundance of outcomes emerging from understanding the act of composting as an abstract concept of organic recreation – an idea that grows around the thought of finding alternatives to capitalism. What does a post-capitalist dinner space look like? How do we design the infrastructure of post-capitalism?
The abundance of these openings can again be explored on different scales – from the private to the civic to the public to the national to the global scale – and how those interact with each other. “Everything is connected under ground, where the experiences from the projects above are digested, composted, theorized and reflected and nourish the soil from which new projects might grow”, concludes Melås (Melås, 2022, p.492). The act of composting itself opens up inquiries that transcend words, encouraging us to engage with the world in ways that are more intuitive and connected to the earth.