The project proposes to improve the learning environment through tools and frameworks. It takes in consideration the perception we had during a few weeks mainly to the community diners and also a full moon event. These gatherings were rich to discover and capture needs at Losæter. The learning and sharing opportunities can have a ripple effect on the strength that emanate from this territory.
Written by Carla Marjollet, Landscape Architecture
01 / The Brief
Learning environment
When you arrive at Losæter, it’s a constellation of people collaborating to create a dinner from the garden that welcomes you. You can participate and contribute to this organic experience that can offer, life, sharing beliefs and of course a delicious meal. This island of paradise in the middle of a changing city is resisting, and it is proof that local initiatives are working.
Figure 1: Losæter’s atmosphere, flower beds, the bakery house and the vegetable garden.
You can decide to enjoy the quality of the garden by observing bees and butterfly buzzing around, ask questions to the people working here to understand their motivation in contributing in. Or you can decide to take part in the dunag where you harvest vegetables, help in the garden tasks, washing the vegetables or find a job in the kitchen to prepare the meal.
02 / The Person
Carla Marjollet
I am a landscape architect, and I am from the French part of the Alps. It has been a year that I am living in Norway for my master’s degree at AHO and I whish I knew before from Losæter because this is the kind of projects that make me have hope again in our twisted world. I am a gardener myself and I am glad to be able to put my hands in the ground regularly as community gardens are sometimes difficult to enter. What I like the most about Losæter is the community it gathers. It is easy to feel like you belong as everybody is welcoming and sweet.
Figure 2: Carla Marjollet, Landscape Architect.
03 / The Motivation
Making new practices for desirable futures
I am keen of this kind of initiatives where people collaborate to create and shape the world we would like to live in. I believe that the future of food production and our ways of designing public spaces have to be shaped otherwise. Participatory projects are essentials and it is quite inspiring to see the strength that a community can bring by organising itself independently. Losæter is the living proof that it is possible to assert its place in a capitalist system, even though this is not it’s not always plain sailing.
I believe that education can empower people and open their minds to different ways of thinking or doing. Practices must change and Losæter is a living laboratory to experiment and generate new desirable futures of society.
04 / Past and Present
Experience Losæter
As a volunteer, it is possible to do gardening, to bake but also discovering the parts of the garden where some secret knowledge is underseen. Most people come to Losæter to share the dinner but there are also a lot of opportunities to learn about soil, seedlings, fermentation and a lot of other practices. How is it to experience a community dinner at Losæter? How can we learn more about what nature and humans give us there?
Figure 4: What does it look like to participate in this local community?
By discovering the different area of the garden, we can understand the different tasks going on at each place of the garden. By following this volunteer experience, we can see what tasks are needed. Some quotes of the core volunteers appear as some discussions emerged which gives a embodied variety of perceptions of Losæter.
Figure 5: Sharing and being present is contributing to these gathering moments.
05 / Futures and Interventions
Learn & Care
To give space for learning opportunities, we have to gently organise time by distributing tasks among different knowledgeable people. These interventions can be short term and easy to implement as a tee-shirt sign, but bigger impact can also be imagined in a long-term vision with implementing markets and workshops along the seasons.
Figure 6: How can we improve learning environment?
This hosting people system can improve the quality of experience from the leader perspective of Losæter. These tools can free up time and mental availability to teach about their practices. This empowerment and this ‘competency center’ is a key leverage to show the value of Losæter. This place could be defended as a space to learn for new futures if they face danger. This soft resistance needs to be recognized and protected from capitalism.
Figure 7: Co-existing, contributing and learning together can lead us to new futures. Let’s plant seeds of a desirable society.
This project was developed as part of Module 1 of Systems Oriented Design: Catalysing Desirable Transformations, an interdisciplinary master’s course at AHO’s Institute of Design.
