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Arkitekturmuseet Risk Centre - Exhibition

‘Arkitekturmuseet Risk Centre’ was a commissioned solo show at the Arkitekturmuseet (Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design) Stockholm, Sweden. The show presented an installation based on Kular’s research into educational safety centres first highlighted with Dr Fischbacher-Smith of Glasgow University as part of the EPSRC-funded ‘Impact!’ project in 2010. Never investigated as cultural forms before, such centres construct 2D and 3D representations of dangerous situations, to educate the public.

With ‘Arkitekturmuseet Risk Centre’, Kular re-programmed the Swedish Museum of Architecture into a site-specific risk facility, a performance space and set. The museum was reconfigured as scenes and places in Stockholm. Potential hazards of the city were first analysed through extensive field research conducted during a residency at ‘Iaspis’, Swedish Visual Arts Fund’s international programme 2012, then realised as dioramas and sets, representing present-day and historical contexts. Each scene of risk was accompanied by an educational scenario-based script indicating an event or potential hazard related to the specific place outlined. The educational scripts were developed in collaboration with the MSB, the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency.

The constructed ‘Arkitekturmuseet Risk Centre’ acted as the venue for a public engagement programme with the dual purpose of risk education and design performance. This included collaboration with Dr Erika Wall, sociologist at Mittuniversitetet Risk and Crisis Research Centre, providing material for Erika’s research into how children make sense of risk in everyday contexts.

The research draws attention to a current culture of over-protection through the mechanisms of health and safety regulation by using those systems to create a sequence of spaces that take the risks out of their original context.

Financial and logistical support was provided by the MSB. A catalogue published by the Arkitekturmuseet accompanied the project. The exhibition received an eight-page review in Abitare International Architecture and Design Magazine (2013).