How can existing cultural and historical environments be developed into multifunctional living spaces? What role can artistic and exploratory processes play in the early stages of urban development? These questions are central to the practice-based research project Commoning The Heritage: Norrahammar, a collaboration between ArkDes and the Municipality of Jönköping.

Between 24 April and 14 May 2025, ArkDes and the Municipality of Jönköping launched an open call to find a transdisciplinary team. Out of 36 applicants, Team TEJA was selected to explore how the former industrial site in Norrahammar can be developed and densified through artistic practices and exploratory design processes. Taking the area’s cultural and historical context as a starting point, the team will test and present proposals for how the industrial character can be preserved while transforming the site into a multifunctional place.

Team TEJA’s work aims to provide the Municipality of Jönköping with tools and knowledge about how culturally and historically valuable environments can be managed and developed, and the role that artistic practices and exploratory design processes can play in the early stages of urban development. The goal is also to share the project’s results with other municipalities facing similar conditions and opportunities.

Team TEJA’s approach—grounded in site-specific prototypes and spatial interventions as a basis for knowledge production and collaboration across architectural, artistic, and heritage practices—is considered highly relevant to the project. The application demonstrates an understanding of the specific challenges in Norrahammar, along with experience working in complex environments marked by similar goal conflicts. The team is seen as well-equipped and experienced in curiously exploring key moments for the step-by-step development of Norrahammar, while contributing to new working methods of relevance to the Municipality of Jönköping. The project also holds strong potential for knowledge-sharing with other municipalities facing similar conditions and opportunities.

Overall, the application is considered to have high relevance and strong potential to explore tools and knowledge related to management and development of culturally and historically valuable environments and the role that artistic practices and exploratory design processes, in dialogue with heritage perspectives, can play in the early stages of urban development.