Stofan | Placemaking and Community Care

Stofan | A Public Living Room is a project that allows us to imagine the future library as an inclusive public space for communities and how a supporting environment could look and feel like in the transformed central city library. 

The third year of Stofan began with a think tank on spatial identity and creating communities to share the care. Participants included experts and enthusiasts on placemaking, members of the library staff as well as the collaborators who will create their own temporary place for community care at the library. 

We began by putting the focus our own needs with a guided visualization exercise lead by Martyna Daniel, where the group explored the intricate connections between the nurturing of plants and our personal needs. Next step was to find ways as to how we might put our own “ways of life” in a public space like the library so that it becomes our place that is useful and relevant to our community. And last but not least find ways how collaborators might also share the care for each other's versions of Stofan.  

Tanja guided us through an “exchange of offers and requests” with the aim of visualizing the different versions of Stofan and sharing them with the group of other project collaborators. Each creator formulated what they wanted to offer to others in their version of a public living room. The next step was to communicate to the group what they would need assistance with formulated as a request. For the continuing exchange within the group, we will experiment with the platform Totel.ly in developing the ways of placemaking and connecting with the community of creatives involved in the project.  

This year, we will see eight versions of public living rooms created by different communities, each with their unique way of communicating to the public about what kind of place they need to flourish. The first one opens on the 19th of September in Grófin and is created by Michael Richardt. Follow the development on the project page: Stofan | A Public Living Room 

Further information 
Dögg Sigmarsdóttir 
Project Manager | Civic Participation 
dogg.sigmarsdottir@reykjavik.is