Constructing Your City, One LEGO Brick at a Time
ImperfectCity Aarhus: Re-Thinking & Reviving an "Imperfect Building"
What if a city embraced its flaws instead of hiding them? In Aarhus, ImperfectCity is turning that question into a movement—connecting the raw beauty of brutalist architecture with the creative potential of Art Brut and the voices of mentally vulnerable young people.
At the heart of this reimagining stands Kulturhus Bunkeren, a once-abandoned brutalist building now set to become a climate-proof, community-powered haven. Here, architecture meets activism, and LEGO® Serious Play becomes a tool for healing and hope. In hands-on workshops, young people, planners, and citizens are building models that reflect their dreams, struggles, and solutions—brick by brick.
Far from chasing perfection, ImperfectCity invites Aarhus to lean into complexity. It sees imperfection not as a flaw but as an opportunity—for creativity, inclusion, and co-creation. Whether through storytelling, strategy-building, or imagining new futures, LEGO Serious Play offers a shared language to navigate “wicked problems” like urban loneliness, mental health, and climate resilience.
This is more than urban planning—it’s about shifting mindsets. A new kind of city management is emerging, one that values vulnerability, voice, and vision. Through co-creation with citizens, students, artists, and businesses, ImperfectCity may well become the blueprint for a future that’s as real and resilient as the people shaping it.
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The ImperfectCity concept seeks to integrate these two seemingly distinct challenges—the revitalisation of brutalist buildings and youth mental health—into a unified approach. This initiative challenges the notion that cities must be perfect and instead envisions a more organic city management model that prioritizes environmental and social resilience. ImperfectCity represents a reimagined neighbourhood-planning method designed by and for its citizens. While Aarhus will use its youth mental health crisis as a testbed for this approach, the city ultimately hopes that the ImperfectCity model will serve as a blueprint for addressing other complex urban challenges both within Aarhus and beyond.
For decades, city planners have chased the dream of perfection, designing sleek, polished spaces for idealized citizens of a utopian future. But here’s the catch—perfection often means erasing the old to make way for the new, leading to the demolition of buildings with real cultural value, like Europe’s brutalist architecture. These concrete giants were built for community life, with accessibility and shared spaces at their core. Yet, many have vanished due to shifting tastes, tight budgets, and a reputation for being, well... a little rough around the edges.
ImperfectCity is based on mindset change, making it an obligation for partners to engage in strong co-creation processes and understand every stakeholder's position. Aarhus has co-designed ImperfectCity through an extensive partnership and co-creation process, which will be further enhanced during project implementation. Co-creation processes are embedded in most aspects of ImperfectCity’s implementation.
Since Skejby is a growing neighbourhood, both present and future inhabitants have been considered in the project design. A strong local partnership—including local homeowners, students, and businesses—will ensure that envisioning events and actions result in innovative spaces that cater to all needs. Upscaling and communication activities will further disseminate the results to all interested parties. LEGO Serious Play workshops and art-based sensitization actions will be offered to all parties, with a special focus on outreach to businesses to foster inclusion and understanding.
The city's innovative new municipal management model aims to be more responsive and actively engage citizens in an iterative trial-and-error process, ensuring that co-creation remains at the heart of ImperfectCity’s vision and execution.
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LEGO Serious Play methodology will foster creative thinking, communication, and problem-solving among participants. Target groups include youth organisations, students from nearby dormitories and universities, local tenants from Skejby, primary school pupils, mental health patients, and local businesses. But what really is the LEGO Serious Play methodology?
Key Principles of LEGO Serious Play:
- Hand-Mind Connection – Building with LEGO helps participants externalize their thoughts, making abstract concepts tangible and easier to understand.
- Everyone Has a Voice – The structured process ensures equal participation, allowing every team member to contribute ideas and insights.
- Metaphorical Thinking – The LEGO models serve as metaphors for challenges, strategies, or ideas, helping participants explore different perspectives.
- Storytelling & Reflection – Participants explain the meaning behind their models, facilitating deeper discussions and shared understanding.
- Iterative Process – The method encourages building, testing, and refining ideas, making it a powerful tool for problem-solving and strategic planning.
LEGO Serious Play follows a structured process to foster creativity and collaboration. The facilitator presents a challenge or question, prompting participants to build LEGO models that represent their thoughts or solutions. Each participant then shares their model's meaning, leading to a group discussion where insights are connected, and strategies are refined. This method is widely applied in various fields, including team building and collaboration to strengthen relationships and communication, strategy and vision development to define goals and values, problem-solving and innovation to unlock new perspectives, leadership and personal development to enhance self-awareness and leadership skills, and community and stakeholder engagement to encourage inclusive discussions and decision-making.
“The LEGO Serious Play method can be used to make the non-concrete concrete, so that we can move forward with the project and find the solution to the problem together.
The method helps to ensure that we become better at working together, because together we create a safe space for dialogue. We can translate complex dimensions such as strategy, values and projects into concrete behaviour and action at the employee level. We can test challenges, scenarios and trends – and future-proof the project.” Zuzette Rostgaard Keldorff, Communications Advisor, Aarhus Kommune
LEGO Serious Play methodology and the ImperfectCity project in Aarhus share key themes: embracing complexity, fostering inclusive participation, and shifting mindsets. Applying LSP to ImperfectCity could provide valuable insights into how people perceive urban imperfection and how they can collectively navigate it. Here’s what LSP can teach about ImperfectCity:
1. Embracing Imperfection as a Strength
LSP helps participants externalize their thoughts through hands-on building. When applied to ImperfectCity, it can encourage people to explore imperfection not as a flaw but as a source of creativity and resilience. Participants might build models that represent Brutalist architecture or social challenges and reinterpret them as opportunities rather than obstacles.
2. Diverse Perspectives and Inclusive Decision-Making
Both LSP and ImperfectCity value diverse voices. LSP ensures that every participant contributes, preventing dominant voices from overshadowing others. This is crucial in ImperfectCity, where different stakeholders—residents, planners, policymakers—need to collaborate. LSP can facilitate dialogues where all experiences of imperfection (from mental health struggles to urban aesthetics) are acknowledged and valued.
3. Problem-Solving for “Wicked Problems”
LSP is particularly effective in dealing with "wicked problems"—complex, interconnected issues with no clear solution. ImperfectCity aims to rethink urban development to address issues like deteriorating mental health and climate challenges. Using LSP, stakeholders can visualize and test solutions in a low-risk, creative way, making abstract problems tangible and open to iterative improvement.
4. Storytelling and Changing Mindsets
One of the strengths of LSP is its storytelling element. In ImperfectCity, shifting public perception of imperfection requires new narratives. LSP allows participants to craft and share stories around urban spaces, reframing Brutalist buildings or non-traditional cityscapes as cultural assets rather than eyesores.
5. Prototyping Future Scenarios
LSP enables people to build models of potential futures. It could be used to imagine an ImperfectCity where urban planning prioritizes well-being, sustainability, and inclusivity. This process can help decision-makers and communities co-create new urban development approaches that balance realism with aspiration.
“We use the method to create space for development. This both internally between the partners, but also among our users and collaborators. The method gives us a common starting point that we have formulated together, based on the application. The project is constantly developing, and the method helps to ensure that we reach common goals. We use LEGO Serious Play Method for example: a) storytelling - where are we, where do we want to go, b) values and visions - what are our goals and c) where do we start - where do we want to end up. We are still in the implementation phase with the method. It will be used throughout the project, and it will be used to put into words both the easy and the difficult.” Zuzette Rostgaard Keldorff, Communications Advisor, Aarhus Kommune
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During our Opening Site Visit, part of the ImperfectCity Transfer Work component, we had the opportunity to explore the context in which the ImperfectCity Innovative Solution will be implemented over the coming years. This first site visit in Aarhus brought together Transfer Partners and the entire project team, fostering a deeper understanding of the initiative. A key highlight was our hands-on experience with LEGO Serious Play (LSP) alongside Transfer Network cities: Heerlen (Netherlands), Fundão (Portugal), and Dunaújváros (Hungary) and Antonella Radicchi, EUI-IA Transfer Expert. Dr. Antonella Radicchi serves as a Transfer Expert for the European Urban Initiative – Innovative Actions (EUI-IA) programme, where she is responsible for developing methodological frameworks to support European cities in transferring innovative architectural and urban projects focused on sustainable urban development.
The session began with an individual exercise where we used colourful LEGO pieces and accessories to create a representation of who we are and what we bring to this partnership. We then built models symbolizing our contributions to the Transfer Network, allowing us to introduce ourselves in a creative, out-of-the-box way. The final exercise, however, stood out the most—encouraging teamwork and open conversation in an equitable setting. We were asked to merge our individual visions into a collective representation of how we can collaborate to achieve our shared goals.
"As part of the EUI-IA ImperfectCity project, the Opening Site Visit in Aarhus marked the first in-person activity within the Work Package Transfer. It was also a valuable opportunity for me and the Transfer Partners to meet the ImperfectCity project team face-to-face, build trust, and gain a deeper understanding of the project. This was achieved through a thoughtfully designed mix of activities including site visits, guided tours, hands-on workshops, and insightful exchanges with project partners. A highlight for me was the Lego Serious Play Workshop, which provided us with training in this innovative methodology. Practising it together in a creative and collaborative setting allowed us to strengthen teamwork, shape our vision for the Transfer cooperation, and bring it to life- quite literally - through colourful Lego compositions." Antonella Radicchi, EUI-IA Transfer Expert
Through discussions, laughter, and a free flow of ideas, we crafted a timeline and narrative of our creative process, highlighting both individual and collective contributions. This experience not only deepened our connections but also set the foundation for meaningful collaboration in the years ahead.
About this resource
The European Urban Initiative is an essential tool of the urban dimension of Cohesion Policy for the 2021-2027 programming period. The initiative established by the European Union supports cities of all sizes, to build their capacity and knowledge, to support innovation and develop transferable and scalable innovative solutions to urban challenges of EU relevance.
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