Nærvær - the guiding word for Ikano Bolig's social responsibility work
By Cecilie Tarras Madsen, Community Builder and Urban Planner at Ikano Bolig
The Danish word Nærvær means “being present” or just simply ‘presence.’ It serves as our guiding principle when we develop residential areas. We focus on defining the meaning of concepts such as “home” and “community” by understanding how relationships are formed across different contexts and places. The purpose of Nærvær is to encourage and strengthen the sense of community, belonging, and togetherness in and around residential areas.
By 2020, we will have completed the first community house named Nærvær, which is built to get the residents to engage in their community. We want to have a relationship with the neighbors and, most importantly, help them form a connection to each other.
We aim to get them to see and experience what they have in common and identify where and how they can contribute positively to each other’s everyday life. In the increasingly busy lives that most of us live today, it will become more and more important to know your neighbors and help each other out. A strong sense of community will help people feel safe and prevent loneliness.
This is why, when we develop an area, we take responsibility for the whole neighborhood, and this is a learning process for us as well. We take away lessons learned and new ideas from place to place; we listen to our buyers and the neighbors so that we end up as experts on how to create socially sustainable neighborhoods from the start. There are two main reasons for this focus:
We want to know and learn more about what will affect the social life between the houses.
By making people see that they have more in common with each other than they might think, we believe that it will improve mental health, create better everyday lives, and more popular homes.
Pop-up café in a shipping container
In our first project in Greve, south of Copenhagen, we built a pop-up café in a used shipping container to give the residents, buyers, and volunteers a place to meet each other and socialize. In the beginning, we facilitated the events, to make it as easy as possible for people to meet up. Luckily, we already had a group of local neighbors willing to take part in the planning of these events.
When the community house, Nærvær, is finished, we will move the pop-up café to our next area of focus, and there it will continue to be the place where residents can get together.
We hope that by establishing a sense of ownership and community early on, we will have made the creation of a new social neighborhood less problematic e.g., we arrange for Bingo-nights in the office for all our neighbors.
Nærvær, to us, is everything from the way we set up our construction sites, to how we interact with our co-workers and communicate with future buyers and current residents. It is a way to learn from the community and create a space for sharing knowledge.
About Cecilie Tarras Madsen
Cecilie Tarras Madsen is an urban planner and Community developer with an interest in people and the future of the built environment.
She facilitates the community in and around Ikano Bolig's neighborhoods. A close contact with the buyers and neighbors is essential in order to know what kind of life they live, and which needs and interests they have, which is the starting point in creating socially sustainably neighborhoods.
Get in touch with Cecilie here