The good life vision on the landscape scale

摘要

The presence of green, open spaces within Danish post-war social-housing estates is visually discernable, however their role and understanding beyond modernistic incentives and ideas of living in health giving nature is limited. There is more to the landscape than meets the eye. This paper challenges dominating and often-oversimplified ideas of Danish welfare landscapes by thickening their unnuanced interpretations and using the 1956 housing estate Bellahoj as a case study. This paper offers insights into the embedded histories, nature/city relations, human dimension and experience of the landscape as central in the materialisation of the societal welfare vision. Through a combination of spatial and historical analysis, this paper brings new perspectives to Bellahoj from the standpoint of landscape studies, highlighting how ideals of nature incorporated within the Danish context and concept of welfare, caused the landscape to become a negotiated ground and inseparable part of the post-war good life.