A City of Comings and Goings

In 2016 The Aarhus School of Architecture (AAA) invited Michelle Provoost
and Wouter Vanstiphout from CRIMSON architectural historians to become
VELUX guest professors. It was due to several things. Their long-time
commitment and contribution to adding new perspectives and ways of
understanding contemporary architecture and urbanism was one of them.
Another was their knowledge of Danish developments and discussions, and
their specific contribution to developing ideas on and for the transformation
of the modernist legacy. This is a discussion we at the research lab
Territories, Architecture and Transformation and the teaching programme
Transformation at AAA are particularly interested in. After CRIMSON
accepted the invitation, it was agreed that the focus for their contribution
should be based on their ongoing research in ‘Cities of Comings and Goings’.
The idea was to apply their idea of looking at the cities not as much as
physical structures that are more or less optimised for housing a ‘population’,
but to try to understand the dynamics of the city by looking at its most
fluctuating groups of inhabitants and users.
This book is a result of the work. It is not at all a full research project
into the subject, but more of a probe or test mission to build an overall
understanding of Aarhus as a city of comings and goings. We see this book
as a contribution to the city of Aarhus and to ongoing discussions in the city
on how to deal with the permanent in- and outflow of students and the
issue of how to house them, the increasing number of tourists, migrants and
visitors of many different origins, discussions about migrant ghettoes like
Gellerup, and other subjects.