designcity Malmö

Norrgavel in Engelbrektsgatan, Malmö and a designcity poster displayed on their door

Design shops and furniture stores in Malmö have joined together to promote the city as a destination for finding and buying good design. There are maps displayed in major shops participating in the scheme and advertisements in newspapers. 

Many of the streets in the centre or inner city are now pedestrianised and the major squares landscaped so a map showing that you can walk from shop to shop is an extremely good start. The tag line of the campaign is “Beauty comes from the inside.” 

Perhaps the Design Museum Form should be promoted as the starting point, so that it is number one on the map, to reinforce a link with high-quality and innovative design and, following the example of the very successful design quarter in Helsinki, the scheme should be expanded to include local architects, graphic designers, crafts people and possibly book shops with sections on design and architecture. There already appears to be an attempt to link the promotion with the idea of sustainability.

As heavy industries such as ship building have closed the city is reinventing itself to focus on universities, design and tech businesses. Despite wider economic pessimism, Malmö has major building works in hand with a large area of new apartments as part of the redevelopment of the west harbour and north dock and extensive new office buildings under construction west of the main railway station. The city really does seem to be benefitting from the opening of the bridge, linking the region to Copenhagen, particularly the train link to the airport at Kastrup, and from the major remodelling of the railway system through the city.

 

New apartments in Västra Hamnen that look out over the Öresund