Futurelessness at the Gothenburg 400-year jubilee? Five approaches to the future among design professionals

Other conference contribution, 2026

In 2023, the city of Gothenburg celebrated its 400-year jubilee. Like the previous jubilee, in 1923, it had a considerable impact on the city's architecture and urban development. The 1923 jubilee followed the tradition of Great Exhibitions, exhibiting the best of what that time could offer, pointing optimistically towards a future of progress - a kind of future-orientedness that the 2023 jubilee lacked.

This paper will present the results of a study of architects and planners active in Gothenburg around the time of the jubilee. The underlying study was based on film elicitation as a method: Following pilot interviews with selected architects and planners, an essay film was produced. This was later screened on five occasions, to an audience of other professionals operating in these fields. Prompted by the film, the professionals deliberated on the futures that are or are not expressed in the 2023 jubilee architecture.

Through this approach, five different approaches to the future were identified. Thus, the paper will outline the worldviews of "Unreformed modernists", "Style pluralists", "Eternal beauty romantics", "Resigned pessimists" and "Professional realists". These divergent approaches to the future suggest that while Mark Fisher's thesis of "the slow cancellation of the future" is indeed applicable to contemporary architecture and planning. However, the empirical reality is suggests a somewhat more nuanced picture of the extent to which the future is lost among the studied architects and planners.