It is a gloomy wednesday afternoon in mid December. I’m trying to orient myself in the concrete jungle of suburbia Copenhagen. My two o’clock interview appointment is probably already waiting for me. I imagine what he looks like, and I see before me a middle aged man, professional to the bone, but tired and with the disillusioned look of one who has taken on too many battles with the system and with the kids he is trying to create a reasonable everyday life for amidst the highrises of horribilis.
Just as the heavy grey sky is on the verge of falling I am entering one of those small barrack like buildings which J.G. Ballard would not even have dreamt about. I am talking about the prime institutional architecture of Denmark in the 1970s. Usually those buildings are all pretty run down by now. Years of uniformity, conformity, and concrete ideology have left an undismissible aura of disarray. But this particular building beats them all. It has to be one of the most dilapidated buildings I have ever entered, and as I step in my already dark mood drops below zero.
I guess when the building had its heyday in the 1970s it stood out as the image of modernity and civilization born and bred in new suburbia Copenhagen, but the stench of decaying liver paste on rye has marked the hall, and today that stench is trying to blend in with the smell of old curry, kebab, and finally dissolve up into the asbest like ceiling which demarcates the excact boundary between the concrete institution and the high up sky. I am expecting the worst.
A few minutes later I am warmly greeted by my interview appointment. He nonchalantly puts his arms out as to convince me of all the valuables in his world in one arm movement, and then he asks: “Did you know we have children here from more than 30 countries? It’s a challenge indeed. We keep them off the streets at night”. I instantly sense a person whose vigour and heart have saved at least one or two of those children and my motivation start to rise as he keeps on talking about the neighbourhood’s many challenged kids with both love and pride in his voice.
An hour later I find myself at the parking lot looking at the highrises which provide the clientele for the children’s and youth center. It has been a long day of pendling from one interview to the other. I’m hungry, and my coat is damp from the weather, but all of a sudden I feel the strong presence of the sun behind the skies, and I remember why I wanted to be an anthropologist in the first place. As my informant said “It’s all about relations. Relations will carry them through. I work to improve them everyday”. “Let’s help him do it”, I will say to our designer when my bus hits the big city lights.
