In Transit field research
Tøyen is a city neighborhood in Oslo, the capital of Norway. It is an international and multicultural place where close to half of the population is of ethnic minority origin. Tøyen’s population is also constantly shifting, as people tend to live there for a shorter period than in other areas in the city.
In the last few years, the Tøyen area has been included in the Oslo Municipality’s area upgrading plans, known in Norwegian as 'Områdeløft Tøyen', which includes different revitalizations schemes: upgrading the current building mass, and creating new meeting places and safer neighborhoods. The success of the upgrading interventions, however, has been debated.
Following the high numbers of new arrivals to Norway in 2015, the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) realized that it had to update its contingency plans and prepare for the possibility of increasing numbers of new arrivals in the years to come. With this as a point of departure, the In Transit 2 Studio focused on how to improve contingency plans, while also benefitting the Tøyen neighborhood as a potential host community for one or more reception centers.
See the projects here