Malm÷ -the setting: 30 desolate hectares of salt-spattered industrial wasteland reclaimed from the sea in a windswept area near the western harbour of Sweden's most southern city, Malm÷. The only redeeming feature is the impressive view across the Oresund to Copenhagen in Denmark.
The mission: to design the "City of Tomorrow", a new urban centre intended to serve as a model for cities globally. Would it be a futuristic Blade Runner-type high-tech heaven? Or a Disney-style white-picket-fence bubble of happy families with white-collar careers? Or a 21st-century Camelot, a clean, green sustainable city built on a harmonious relationship between humans, aesthetics, ecology and technology?
The ambition of those involved in the City of Tomorrow project was to create the latter, and the result of their work is the main visitor attraction at the Bo01 European Housing Exhibition in Malm÷. More than 20 leading architects contributed their visions of future housing based on a policy of 100 per cent renewable energy in an environmentally friendly yet densely populated urban setting.
The area will, in the main, be traffic-free, with residents encouraged to hop on their bikes or use public transport or Smart cars (those dinky, almost toylike, vehicles).
In Malm÷, construction work on the first phase of some 500 apartments and townhouses is nearly finished and exhibition visitors and prospective residents visit luxury penthouses and modern warehouse-style apartments (all trendily decorated in Wallpaper magazine style), stroll along the promenade and dine outside fashionable glass-fronted cafΘs and restaurants, enjoying the view of the yachts moored in the marina.
The exhibition runs until late September and more than one million visitors are expected to view not just the avant-garde architecture and model civic planning of the project but also the temporary exhibition areas, with lifestyle, garden and interiors exhibitions.
The secret gardens in the Willow Wood, one of the most popular temporary attractions, reflects not only the fashion for gardening but also the emphasis placed on green spaces and green issues in Sweden.
The Willow Wood is set in a predominantly industrial area, adjoining a large expo centre that was once a Saab car-manufacturing factory. Hidden in the woods are 11 secret gardens, each created by an international designer, landscape architect or artist. Some are fantasy creations, others more conceptual in approach, such as a 12-metre-high platform garden set atop an artificial forest designed by Dutch landscape architect Adriaan Geuze.
Come late September, the Willow Wood will be chopped down, the exhibits dismantled, the visitor signs removed and real urban life will begin.
The current exhibition site will then become a construction site again when work on the centrepiece of this new urban district - to be called Boplasten, or The Living Area - continues. A 45-storey tower called the Turning Torso, designed by one of the world's most renowned architects, the Zurich-based Santiago Calatrava - best known here for his proposed Macken Street Bridge design - will be the most dramatic structure in the residential area.
The Turning Torso will be 187-metre tall and will twist 90 degrees as it curves upwards. Construction on the residential tower has begun and should be completed by 2006, by which time it is hoped that the surrounding area will be a thriving city district.
All this creates an image of a perfect glossy-magazine lifestyle. The first residents are beginning to move in, and the City of Tomorrow will undoubtedly attract green and socially-conscious residents. But most of the apartments are priced well beyond the means of average workers, suggesting that this model city might become just another exclusive and sought-after address, an enclave of rich professionals. One or two of the complexes, however, are designed for older people, and there is a student housing project providing 103 studio units for the nearby university.
In some ways, this seems to contradict the original objective of designing such a city. Is this "manufactured living" in a politically correct smugland, like a prefabricated theme park or Legoland, which is across the Oresund in Denmark? No radicals in its midst, no drunks on street corners belting out a rebel song for the price of a cup of tea, no edginess or seedy elements - you might ask, where's the soul of the city?
Still, though residents in Smart cars may not give Boplasten any real character, the project is full of imaginative ideas for sustainable living that offer solutions for real life in other urban centres - if there was the will to use them.
In terms of modern architecture, the City of Tomorrow is an excellent model of imaginative green design. Sleek, clean, minimalist glass-and-chrome buildings face directly onto the seafront. Most apartments have fantastic views of Copenhagen and the new Oresund bridge that links Sweden to Denmark. Huge walls of glass look out onto the vast expanse of Nordic sky and sea, clear and crisp: bright light in summer, twinkling lights in winter.
At present, Boplasten comprises 500 dwellings in 21 individual apartment complexes designed by some of Europe's best-known architects. Santiago Calatrava, Gert Wingard of Gothenburg, Kai Wartiainen of Stockholm and Bertil Ohrstrom of Malm÷ in co-operation with Moore Ruble Yudell of the US, have designed signature buildings. Higher blocks, up to seven stories high, line the quaysides while buildings of lower densities are the valleys between. CafΘs, restaurants and shops are at street level, with a broad promenade along the seafront.
The show apartments are impressive: a fuschia-coloured bath sits in its own glass- walled room, a glazed roof tower tops a four-level corner apartment, roofs and walls are covered with grass and plants. Most of the complexes have central gardens or winter gardens with rain and sea water used in public water features.
Funded by the Swedish Government, the City of Malm÷, housing company HSB and technology company Telia, along with support from the European Commission, the exhibition budget is £17.17 million (€21.8 million). The infrastructure costs for the new urban area are expected to be about £344.4 million (€437.29 million ), to include parks, marina, housing and commercial facilities. Energy company Sydkraft provided systems to ensure 100 per cent locally generated renewable energy - wind, solar and other renewable sources - making this the first sustainable city in the world.