One West 8 project you talked about was a public square in Rotterdam with inward-facing benches that turn the space into a stage. Could you elaborate on this concept of the stage? Does it give the people who use this square more of a participatory engagement with the space and the city in general?

In contrast with many other urban squares, this is almost an architectural object. You can actually take the wooden or steel pieces apart and make an installation on it. That happens quite often. People come up with new ideas of how to colonize that space, but that’s on more of an organized level. On an individual level, because the square is exposed and you feel exposed, it works as a stage. A lot of people avoid the square, because they don’t like being looked at; of course they can walk around it. But it is an experiment in creating an urban void that is basically unprogrammed. We’ve been talking a lot today about programming public space, or giving it use, but this is basically a space that has no use. And people use it.

Of course, as a counterpart to this square you need parks and gardens that are more romantic, where nature is celebrated. The square is a very artificial landscape, as is most of the landscape in the Netherlands! We have very little respect for our natural history, because it’s almost extinct. Unlike here in Iceland where the natural history has a very strong meaning. We have a different attitude, which makes it easier to intervene and to play with nature and the character of the landscape.

Going back to the “stage”—when there are these voids that don’t have an obvious use, sometimes people don’t want even to cross them. Are people not interested in being in public spaces anymore? When they’re out-of-doors, they’re still in their own private worlds. Maybe they don’t want to be seen?

I think they want to be seen, but they don’t want to be talked to. But that’s urban life; urban life is in a way anonymous. In the end, the square plays with feeling this people have in public space. It’s difficult to be anonymous, because everybody’s looking at you; people feel that. I think part of this type of design speculates on the effect it has on people. So it is not an innocent public space; it is a public space that needs a response. Which in a way makes it interesting, and it’s been there for more than ten years. The fact that it’s still there proves that it works, and that people enjoy it. If people were completely opposed to it, it would have been redesigned as a beautiful green place.

Rotterdam is a very modern city; the history has been very much determined by the bombing in the war. Most of the city center was swept away. So people in Rotterdam have an open mind to change; it would be difficult to make a square like this in the UK. But if you have scar tissue in the center of your city, like we have, everything is focused on modernity, making new life, creating new business and activity in the center. It makes people accept more than in a very historic context, where everything is too much, or everything is ruining the history of the place, like in Amsterdam or many other cities around the world where you still have a very strong history.

With your work in Dublin, you mentioned the challenge of diversifying architecture, accommodating various, changing needs of residents of the city so they won’t move out. You linked this to the concept of urban sustainability. In discussing a long-term vision for Reykjavík, what are some other ways of increasing possibilities for sustainability, in the broadest sense of the word?

There are many levels of sustainability. Sustainable investment is something that carries for a very long time and doesn’t have to be replaced within the next ten years. You can have another type of sustainability, which is about energy consumption. But in the end it’s also about building a sustainable city where the community is eager to live and to stay, where people don’t move out.

What I feel from the brief discussions I’ve had here is that apparently the professional world is in a kind of identity crisis in Reykjavík. They don’t know what to do. They want Reykjavík to become a contemporary city, and it has to go with the flow of European cities. But I think it is necessary that you make a very clear, or maybe even confronting, analysis of what the Icelandic character actually is about. It’s about people who like to drive in cars, and they go to the countryside in their trucks with big wheels. You can fight it, and say, “We want a European model, a car-free city center, pedestrians everywhere and small-scale architecture.” But another approach would be to just accept that this is the quality of life in Iceland, and you work with that. The discussion has only just begun in Reykjavík on what the future of the city should be.

If I can give advice: One of the elements that has to be secured in the development of the city is the way the city relates to the landscape, which is a very unique feature here. It’s something you have to value, and secure, and even design. It provides a quality for the city, in the same way that the city relates to the waterfront; it’s a unique feature that you basically have a double waterfront, on both sides of the city.

That would be the first step. I understand there is a policy to densify the city, which I think is a very good policy. The definition of a landscape framework around the city would help prevent urban sprawl. The next step would be to introduce modernity into the city, but not everywhere; maybe not in the downtown center, but outside the center.

What do you mean by modernity, in this context?

In a way, the city center is small-scale; the scale of the buildings is small. It’s also very picturesque—you still have the traditional houses mixed with larger modern buildings. It sets a character, and you should not completely wipe it away and replace all the small scale with high-density urban blocks, but keep the contrast that is there.

The third element is to deal with the infrastructure. That’s not unique to Reykjavík; every city has ring roads and highways in front of the harbor. It requires some bravery also on the political level to deal with that type of infrastructure. It’s not easy, but in a way you have to do it to secure the relationship between the city and the landscape, whether it’s the natural landscape or the harbor or the sea.