Attuned visibility and the ambiguity of demanding public spaces in Copenhagen

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based on ethnographic data and mapping exercises, this article explores North West Park in Copenhagen, Denmark and asks how lighting forms perceptions of urban space. The park was inaugurated in the late 2000s and has been praised for its bold landscape and lighting design. However, it was received in more ambiguous ways by users, explaining their experience of it in words such as “magical” and “kitsch.” This ambiguity highlights how current urban design may entail a reconfiguration of how visibility unfolds. Urban spaces have largely been lit to be seen. However, current trends in lighting design increasingly aim for spaces to be felt. Beyond visibility as the ability to see and be seen, we argue that the park design also evinces a more fundamental attuned visibility, conceptualized through the notion of ways of feeling. In a broader sense, we suggest that the increasingly atmosphere-oriented design of urban spaces facilitates a pressure to feel something. That is, this type of design is not solely functional but demands emotional responses – although undeterminable and open-ended. For the users, the atmospheric design raises questions about how lighting shapes urban life during dark hours in the field of tension between usage and architectural imaginations.