The TWL project investigates public spaces and plans through the use of artistic methods, activities and involvement where the population through a year was invited to various events, such as workshops and festivals as well as debates, seminars, exhibitions, conversations, meetings, walks, performances, events and participation through a series of newspaper articles and the project’s own channels in social media – the digital parts of the project gained importance due to the C-19 and restrictions. All events in the project aimed to engage, provoke and motivate the population in our common future in Tromsø in general, and Tromsø city center's last central seafront area by Sørsjetéen (the Southern breakwater) in particular – by showing the place's history and potential as a public urban space and common, with special attention to urban ecology and all citizens' right to participation and expression. The TWL project took several new forms confronting and reflecting on political, democratic, economic and ecological issues connected to urban development, the importance of the sea in memory and history, and a possible regained position for the littoral ecology — not least in relation to future urban life. The project area in the southern demarcation of Tromsø’s harbour, has for a long time been under pressure from heavy urbanisation. Our engagement has a comprehensive motivation where the massive development plans stand in stark contrast to the citizens’ interests of a public common in the area — and not least are the environmental values threatened — as a complex littoral ecology, with several species of sea birds, including red-listed gulls like kittiwakes, nesting on the nearby building facades. The site’s position as a zone in transition in both space and time opened for new thinking and practices both for us as architects and the population of Tromsø taking part in the project. By involving in democratic processes — and like here, using the planning system’s own imbedded “liminal space”, made it possible to combine a new urban reality exposed by the pandemic with an open invitation for multiplicity and improvisation.
The Open Day experimented with spatial transformation by the making of temporary constructions, manifestation of immaterial heritage and reflections about what an arctic coastal urbanity should be – and invited the citizens to truly participate and give their meaning and feedback, not only as a gimmick but a real input to the planning process.

The Open Day made many rediscover the site, seeing the area for the first time emptied of cars and open for new imaginations about urban life in the intersection between sea and city. Over half of the proposals created in the feedback workshops were focusing on the ecologic and social aspects of the city — expressing the need for a new common, rather than huge hotels and shopping malls at the seafront, where nature and citizens could coexist and evolve, especially mentioning the shoreline and the urge to reconnect the city to the sea and to nature. The fact that the citizens’ feedback through the TWL have had an actual impact on the revised plan for the area is of great importance and inspiration, showing the democratic aspects and the fact that more experimental participation in planning is both needed, possible and highly relevant.