Cities and regions carry with them a baggage of problems stemming from their locality or history, impacting their psychology and development. In Umeå’s case, it is not a problem of geography but a historical event. The fire of 1888 still casts its soot-shadows on the facades of buildings, scaring the extant buildings into retreating from each other, killing densification and turning expansion plans into far-off enclaves on the city outskirts. The project is a targeted intervention confined to the block of Stora Björnen aiming to boldly yet sensibly densify a neglected part of the neighborhood Öst på Stan. The Intervention acts as a benevolent academic enclave to the growing Arts Campus, stemming from an infill development and flowing into the courtyard of the block. Great care is used in fusing the new with the old stylistically. Adhering to local rules in a culturally protected environment while still breaking rules when they can be broken and bringing something new to the neighborhood. The existing barriers and haphazard collection of spaces in the courtyard is rearranged and from it emerges a new block within the block. New paths and relations between buildings emerge, strengthening and inviting more people into the collage that is Öst på Stan. The structure makes room for itself in the block, taking and giving back.