One Million to One The period between 1965 and 1974 saw a new phase in Sweden’s architectural history: the Million Programme (Miljonprogrammet). More than one million homes were produced in a very short space of time to meet the great shortage of housing at the time. It was a project based on a utopian dream of a good life for all but many of the areas it produced were soon drawn into a negative light and have increasingly earned a bad reputation. Fittja was developed as part of the Million Programme in the southern suburbs of Stockholm in keeping with the architecture based on the modernistic paradigm: mass production, segregated spaces and standardized architecture. In the project One Million to One we reverse the modernistic paradigm where society is perceived as a mass that can be controlled and easily repaired by master plans and rational arguments. Our strategy is to switch from largescale to micro, unique and intimate gestures, from a million to one.
Continuing with this dream of a ‘clean bathroom’, our project can be considered as an additional layer on previous matter, a site-specific installation or exhibition as a gift from five independent artists to Zöhre. We consider Zöhre a one-person audience and we devote our work uniquely to her private view. Zöhre has worked and lived with her family in Fittja for forty years but just like a large part of the population of Fittja she was born elsewhere – in Kulu, a small town in central Turkey. According to Slavoj Žižek the history and the shape of the toilet could be a reflection of national identity as well as being ideological – and the way we use it may reflect an entire society. Through the toilet and the bathroom – the smallest part of our domestic space – we want to rethink the notion of modern architecture, progress and regression, rituals of purification and modernist hygienic arguments; we are also looking for hybrid identities where different taboos, rituals, habits and cultures meet and the social protocol is shaped by this intimate space. 1.
SUPERFITTJA was a group exhibition with students from KTH –
School of Architecture that took place in Botkyrka konsthall, 28 May – 30 August 2014.
2013 / 2014
The starting-point for our work was the critical view on an existing context and tactics already produced. Our aim was not to invent or produce new knowledge but to reinterpret and add another layer to an already existing frame. During our residency, research and meetings with local artists and architects we discovered the publication SUPERFITTJA, an archive of artistic and architectural works dealing with different aspects of Fittja.1 The majority of the projects presented in the publication refer to the ideas of the sixties and seventies, like the utopias formulated by the influential architecture firm Superstudio; a dream of finding big solutions through the analysis of patterns, structures, flows and rules. The only project that focused on the human aspects and personal history was a work by Astrid Linnér called Meeting Zöhre, which, instead of analyzing buildings, focused on one person: “I have been working with Zöhre as an architect, redrawing her apartment. I did not find spectacular architectural dreams. I found out that the basic standards are very low and that she dreams of a clean bathroom.”
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