Magnifying the Rural : Moving through the past, present and future of a social space in Västergötland

Abstract: In this project I have worked with strategies at regional level, as well as with alterations to an existing building, to strengthen and celebrate rural systems in a place called Naum, in Vara municipality in Västergötland. This I've donein order to challenge the dichotomy of urban and rural. I find that urbanity is very often celebrated in the architectural discipline, and in the public debate in general. There is a strong hierarchy of spaces in the national discourse of Sweden. By focusing on a rural space that I perceive have low status and connect it to networks that reach out to other spaces, cities, and regions, I treat the urban and rural as a continuous variation rather than a fixed binary. The binary is also challenged already by people constantly moving across this scale. Most of the residents of Naum, mapped out herecommute to Vara Town, or other adjacent towns or cities to work, to go school, to go the doctor, take part in cultural events etc. This project focus on the power of rural networks, on movement, and on rural systems of cooperation, and then I am making a number of alterations at a zoomed-in scale, to offer the inhabitants a more intimate relationship to this agricultural landscape. My project operate both at the intimate scale of an existing bygdegård, which is a specifically rural community space, in Naum, as well as on the larger scale of Vara municipality.To the bygdegård I propose three small scale alterations, a sauna called the 'Storytelling Sauna' (SECTION S S) an overnight stay shelter called the 'Please Stay',and an imaginative element of a 'Wisching-Well-Ditch”. In the larger scale I propose a strategic alteration to the treatment of roadsides, to increase biodiversity and human movement. I call this alteration the 'Thriving Passages'. The project also consist of this room-installation that we are all inside of, that aim to represent the different scales and allow us to move across them, and it consists of mappings of bygdegårds in Vara municipality and in Sweden and how they are connected by human movement, as well as mappings of historical and agricultural layers of this landscape.