Chasing Butterflies is a city planning/landscape proposal for Bromma Airport that strives to:

• Imagine a future eco-city through a biophilic lens.

• Apply biophilic ideas relating to plants.  

• Move towards meeting the criteria set-up by Stockholm´s municipality.

• React to the proposal “Bromma Parkstad” by the Swedish Environmentalist party.

The method consisted of: 

• Support design decisions by referring to scientific data and theories from the course Trädgårdens Biologi, orienteringskurs (Introduction to Garden Biology) at Stockholm University and other scientific articles relating to the subject such as phytoremediation (decontamination through vegetation), pollination and the history of Bromma Airport.

• Literature research on the following topics: the history of the Swedish allotment movement, the biophilic ideology, greenhouse living, environmental psychology, landscape theories regarding non-human migration patterns and ecological theories concerning pollination. 

• Searching through digital archives of governmental/municipality reports. 

Thesis question: How can architecture help generate biodiversity and how can non-human actors be integrated into a new eco-city at Bromma Airport?   

Different types of cultivated land (allotments, private gardens, community gardens, parks, urban farming, and greenhouses) have been studied to investigate how architecture can help generate biodiversity on multiple scales. 

Furthermore, there are several so called "forever chemicals" present at the site. For Bromma Airport to become inhabitable, the soil would have to go through a thorough cleans, where the use of plants is the most efficient alternative. 

The strategy is to:

• Keep all material on-site, since relocating to a different site would only move the problem. 

• Use plants for cleansing and letting the land heal in its own time.

• Maximize different types of cultivated land in an urban environment.