The SOD unit as part of a consortium led by NORCE, has successfully secured NFR funding for a four year project called Culture Based Solutions (CbS), running from 2025-2028. The project process is detailed here. CbS grew from questions that emerged during the NATURACT project which looked at how Nature based Solutions could be more effective and efficient interventions to shore up the resilience of landscapes that were to experience increasing intensity and frequency of natural hazards, such as floods, droughts, landslides etc. It became apparent that alot of the ‘solutions’ involve changing land-management practices, not just placing physical NbS interventions in the landscape, e.g. not plouging. It was also apparent that many traditions and cultural practices are already occuring in Norway and could serve in the toolbox of solutions to be considered to address the various pressures that landscapes in Norway are increasingly facing.
The project broadly has an ambition to show-case the potential of these cultural practices and traditions that are already occurring throughout Norway to address the pressures being faced in our landscapes. In particular we have an ambition to explore, uncover, and show case how do local and traditional land-care practices generate a multitude of cultural, ecological, and social value, and what would it take for those practices to be recognised and supported as “Culture based Solutions” for improving the resilience of landscapes under pressure?
The geographical distribution of each case in the Culture based Solutions project [Image: Crawford]
CbS works across these four case sites (see above), each representing a distinct practice and distinct Norwegian landscape under pressure. We at AHO’s SOD Unit will work with Losæter, an urban focused case acting as both a ecological stepping stone, and rain sponge as well as a social-ecological connection hub, where people can connect to themselves, others and nature by working together in nature. The ambition, that we are in the process of co-creating with the community connected to Losæter is twofold, both to understand what is needed for Losæter to continue to thrive, and what would it take for there to be more places like Losæter?
WHAT IS Losæter?
Losæter sits on municipal land in Bjørvika, Oslo between the Opera House, the Munch Museum, and Deichmanske Library. It is classified by Oslo municipality as a nærmiljøhage, a multifunctional community garden that brings together people for cultivation, harvesting, cooking, eating, art and open gathering together on a single publicly accessible site. Oslo maintains a map of urban agriculture sites across the city, of which Losæter is among the largest and most active.
A view of Losæter, looking at it’s bakehouse and towards Bjorvika from the vantage point of the garden [Image: Losetær]
Today Losæter is home to a collective of artists, local residents, refugees, and visitors who plant, harvest, and cook together. A city farmer manages the site on behalf of Oslo municipality, the Flatbread Society bakehouse functions as a public gathering and baking space, and nine varieties of ancient grain grow in the heritage field. Communal dinners are open to everyone in season.
losæter as a “culture based solution”
In this project we see Losæter playing two roles when it comes to being a “Culture based Solution” addressing pressures on the landscape of the Oslo region. Both directly functioning as a stormwater infiltration sponge, and biodiversity stepping stone for bees, birds and other life, but also indirectly as an initiative that inspires care for nature, and support for actions that care for nature as well as being a place for social connection around food and nature.
STOrmwater sponge & biodiversity stepping stone
The site also functions directly on the ecology. Its soils and vegetation absorb rainfall during heavy events such as Hans (see below), reducing pressure on Oslo’s stormwater infrastructure and protecting water quality in the fjord. Sitting where the Alna river meets the sea in one of the most built-up parts of the city, it acts as a biodiversity stepping stone, providing foraging habitat for pollinators and resting ground for birds within the dense development of Bjørvika.
Crews open drains amid flooding caused by extreme weather dubbed “Hans” in Oslo, Norway August 7, 2023. [Image: NTB/Frederik Ringnes via REUTERS]
a hub for connecting PEOPLE TO EACH OTHER and nature
When it comes to Losæter’s indirect role in caring for nature, we understand Losæter through the lens of what design scholar John Thackara calls “bioregional reconnection,” the idea that a bioregion reconnects us with living systems and each other through the places where we live, acknowledging that we inhabit watersheds, foodsheds, and food systems, not just cities.
Losæter is a rare urban site where that reconnection is actively practised. Art has been the engine of it, drawing farmers, soil scientists, city officials, school groups, and newcomers into a shared practice of land care in ways that conventional public programmes rarely achieve.
Food is prepared during the seasonal weekly Community Meal by students from NMBU researching Losæter as a model case for Urban Agriculture in Oslo during the 2017 Agroecology Masters. [Image: Crawford, 2017]
LOSÆTER AS AN ART PROJECT
As a multi-functional urban community farm in the city, Losæter is unique. Losæter began in 2011 not as a planning initiative nor as a food production project but as an art project: Flatbread Society, initiated by the international art collective Futurefarmers and commissioned by Bjørvika Utvikling. Losæter has show-cased and continues to show-case the crucial role of art in developing place and creating multi-functional spaces that can thrive, that can support the emergence of diverse cultural practices that generate a multitude of values, both for ecological functioning and for people to reconnect to themselves, each other and nature by working together in nature.
One of the many expressions of art in building the Losæter initiative can be seen in the soil procession of 2015. Farmers from over 50 Norwegian farms carried earth through the streets of Oslo to Bjørvika, making visible the soils, food systems, and metabolisms that sustain city life but rarely enter city consciousness. The soil was spread, a Declaration of Land Use was signed, establishing the site as a commons, and that earth became the literal foundation of Losæter’s heritage grain field, a material act of reconnecting urban ground with rural land that decades of port use and property development had severed.
The soil procession walks down Kong Håkon 5s gate towards Losæter from Bjorvika [Image: Futurefarmers]
losæter as an example of balancing order and chaos
Another factor critical to the character of Losæter is this balance between order and chaos. The openness that the early days of chaos allowed for was a critical factor in giving birth to what Losæter became, and continues to be. Chaos allowed space for experimentation, creativity and innovation. This was then balanced with supporting structures such as embedding it into the municipality environment department, and its processes and organisation.
The tension between chaos and order is another aspect we are interested to understand with Losæter and its role in its success and struggle. The tension of striking the right balance between structure and openness that appears essential to places like this. Too much organisation and the creativity, experimentation, and spontaneous community life that make Losæter distinctive get squeezed out. Too little and the site cannot sustain itself over time. Getting that balance right appears to be both a practical and a cultural challenge, and understanding it better is one of the things the project hopes to contribute.
Our starting focus AND AMBITION
We at the AHO SOD unit will work with the Losæter case primarily over the next two growing seasons, 2026, and 2027. The ambition, that we are in the process of co-creating with the community connected to Losæter is twofold, both:
- What is needed for Losæter to continue to thrive?
- What would it take for there to be more places like Losæter?
As part of this ambition we want to investigate what is the role of the city, and how the various structures, resources and mechanisms can be harnessed to support more Culture Based Solutions such as Losæter in the problem solving toolkit of the city. To consider and showcase the role of art in creating and maintaining inititatives such as Losæter. To understand the role of balancing between order and chaos that is essential for breathing life into projects like Losæter, but also to maintain and organise it.
The project will work closely with the people who run, utilise, and depend on the site to co-define and follow up these ambitions.
To read more about the project process, see here.