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Years of the Housing Question in Sweden Daniel Movilla Vega (Ed.) Based on an ArkDes exhibition curated by Dan Hallemar
Front cover Skärholmens centrum, Stockholm (built in 1968). Architects: Wilhelm Boijsen and Dan Efvergren Photographer: Sune Sundahl. ArkDes
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Bo. Nu. Då: Bostadsfrågor och svar under 99 år (Housing. Now. Then: 99 Years of Housing Issues and Responses), produced by ArkDes, The Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design, Stockholm April 2016 – January 2017.
This book is published in collaboration with ArkDes.
Curator Dan Hallemar
Head of exhibition Karin Åberg Waern
Producer Lena Landerberg
Project assistant Arvid Hillberg
Technics and props Stefan Mossfeldt
Photo and film Matti Östling
Collection Frida Melin
Library Lena Biörnstad Wranne
Exhibition designer Spridd Klas Ruin Ola Broms Wessel
Graphic design Futurniture
Copying prohibited This book is protected by the Swedish Copyright Act. Apart from the restricted rights for teachers and students to copy material for educational purposes, as regulated by the Bonus Copyright Access agreement, any copying is prohibited. For information about this agreement, please contact your course coordinator or Bonus Copyright Access. Should this book be published as an e-book, the e-book is protected against copying. Anyone who violates the Copyright Act may be prosecuted by a public prosecutor and sentenced either to a fine or to imprisonment for up to 2 years and may be liable to pay compensation to the author or to the rightsholder.
Translation Comactiva Translations AB
Studentlitteratur publishes digitally as well as in print formats. Studentlitteratur’s printed matter is sustainably produced, both as regards paper and the printing process.
© The authors, ArkDes and Studentlitteratur 2017 studentlitteratur.se Studentlitteratur AB, Lund Art. No 39666 ISBN 978-91-44-12047-8 First edition 1:1 English translations Julia Felmanas & Phillip Wigan David Whitling Graphic design Daniel Movilla Vega & Alfonso Huidobro Pereda Printed by Interak, Poland 2017
The following persons have, through their involvement, support or critical thinking, had a decisive significance for the production of this book: Alfonso Huidobro Pereda, Antonio Molin, Bárbara Vega Casquero, Britt-Mari Andersson Pelling, Carmen Espegel Alonso, Carmen Galián Barrueco, Christina Pech, Dan Hallemar, Eric de Groat, Erik Stenberg, Esperanza M. Campaña Barquero, Eufrasio Movilla Gangoso, Eva Eriksson, Frida Melin, Hampus Hermansson, Henrik Hannfors, Ingela Blomberg, Jens Fredholm, Jesús Bernal Vallejo, Josep Maria Montaner, Julia Felmanas, Karin Svensson, Karin Åberg Waern, Kerstin Kärnekull, Katarina Bonnevier, Kateryna Morozovska, Lena Biörnstad Wranne, Lena Landerberg, Madeléne Beckman, Mariana Alves Silva, Marie-Louise Richards, Mark Kretz, Matti Östling, Max Risselada, Mika Blomqvist, Monica Sand, Phillip Wigan, Ricardo Atienza Badel, Silvia Atienza Galián, Stefan Mossfeldt, Thérèse Kristiansson, Tor Lindstrand and Zaida Muxí.
Contents 7 Preface 9 Introduction
12 P E R S P E C T I V E S .
94 H O U S I N G . Dan Hallemar
15 Constructing Folkhemmet: A Critical History Daniel Movilla Vega
96 Starting Point
17 The Housing Question 19 Getting Ready for 1917 21 A Great Beginning 25 New Standards and First Steps
N O W .
T H E N .
100 Temporary Homes 102 Emergency Housing for Swedish Workers 112 Second World War Emergency Housing 114 Flat-Pack Emergency Housing
29 The Dream of a Swedish Family 31 Funkis 35 The Sparkling Thirties 39 The Collective Adventure 43 A National Housing Policy
116 Emergency Housing 118 Houses for Larger Families 119 Social Housing 128 Swedish Emergency Housing in France
47 From House to Neighbourhood 51 The Record Years 56 Dismantling Folkhemmet 58 Epilogue
132 Homeless 134 Homeless in Stockholm
Situation Sthlm 142 Homeless in Sweden 144 “Homelessness is not something that has to exist.”
63 Chronology Dan Hallemar & Daniel Movilla Vega
Hans Swärd
146 Home 85 Ways Out of the Housing Crisis Dan Hallemar 88 Homes for All 89 Other Solutions 90 Profiting from the Needy 91 Homes That Pay for Themselves
148 Lena Larsson’s Investigation into Household
Practices 152 The Click Home 154 The Theatre of Dreams
MYCKET 156 From a House to a Home
160 Innovations 162 Narrow Housing Blocks Bring Air and Light 168 Ingenious Star-Shaped Housing 176 Living in a Pyramid 180 The Flexible House 182 Stacking Houses One on Top of the Other 188 Innovative Prefab Systems 194 Today’s Housing – Quick and Cheap 195 “It is within a period of change that we find a
brief window to try new things.” Ola Nylander
196 Co-Housing 198 House for Professional Women 202 A House for the Whole of Your Life 206 Family Hotels 211 Modern Co-Housing
212 Light in Housing White Arkitekter 214 Large-Courtyard Blocks 216 Shallow Blocks 218 Slab Building Blocks 220 Postmodern Blocks 222 Dense City Blocks
224 Neighbourhood 226 Encounters in Areas of Smaller Houses 232 Residential Areas Without Fences 233 A Space for Young People 234 A Shared-Home Movement 238 Common Resources 241 “We can design in a way that makes it easier to
share resources.” Ann Legeby
242 Everyday Metrics
298 Debate
244 Pioneers of Housing Renewal
301 “Increased immigration from abroad is an
256 The Fight for the Bathroom 258 The Home Research Institute 267 Postmodernism 268 “Standards can be seen as a way of controlling
the objects that surround us.” Helena Mattsson 269 The Information Centre
270 The Million Programme Now Tor Lindstrand 272 Prefab, TV and Italian Marble
Mika Blomqvist 276 Setting the Stage 278 The Covered Footpaths of Fittja 284 Conversations in the Cube
Julia Hedander & Vicky Skondras
advantage for Sweden.” Andersson Arfwedson Arkitekter 304 Overcrowding in Sweden 307 Housing During the 1970s, a Commodity on
a Market Eva Eriksson 308 “Housing policy influence over the building of
high volumes of housing.” Ola Nylander 310 How Can Sweden Build 700,000 Homes by
2025? Hans Lind & Erik Stenberg 312 Number of Square Metres of Housing for SEK
50,000 (5,195 €) in Different Towns and Cities 314 Six Myths about Housing
CRUSH, The Critical Urban Sustainability Hub 316 What Would Happen If ...?
Lisa Mari Mannfolk
285 Media Image & Local Community
Döne Delibas & Gabriela Varas Stancovich 288 Gentrification & Renovation
Nooshi Dadgostar & Erik Stenberg 291 Citizen Dialogue
Elsa Smeds & Nazem Tahvilzadeh 294 Public Space & Local Community
Ayhan Aydin & Sauda Luzze 296 Art, Stories & Local Community
Johanna Gustafsson Fürst & Viktoria Nguema
321 Contributors
Preface
The exhibition Housing. Now. Then: 99 Years of Housing Issues and Responses opened at ArkDes, The Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design, on the 16th of April 2016. It was perfectly easy to choose this subject matter for an ambitious exhibition since the shortage of housing units in Sweden, and especially in the larger cities, had increased with an evergrowing speed during the last decade. This was the backdrop for the centre’s effort to make an extensive overview. One of the ideas behind the exhibition was to present the fact that this situation isn’t something new. Sweden has faced these kinds of problems before and has dealt with it in different ways. Through examples from our vast collections, the thematically arranged exhibition managed to present a range of aspects. This made it possible to discuss and make parallel comparisons both back in time as well as into future scenarios. The exhibition also helped us to look beyond the built world and deepen the current discussion, to explore and consider a broader spectrum of © T H E A U T H O R S , A R K D E S A N D S T U D E N T L I T T E R AT U R
possible choices and traits for present-day developments, political as well as esthetical. An exhibition of this scale and complexity is not possible without the support from many professionals, researchers, architects, artists, designers and filmmakers that have contributed with their work, skills and knowledge under the supervision of guest curator Dan Hallemar. It is a joy that the content from the exhibition halls now has been transformed and brought together in this publication, making possible a longer life and wider audience.
Karin Åberg Waern Head of Exhibitions and Learnings ArkDes, The Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design 7
Constructing Folkhemmet: A Critical History Daniel Movilla Vega
0 The Housing Question 1 Getting Ready for 1917 2 A Great Beginning 3 New Standards and First Steps 4 The Dream of a Swedish Family 5 Funkis 6 The Sparkling Thirties 7 The Collective Adventure 8 A National Housing Policy 9 From House to Neighbourhood 10 The Record Years 11 Dismantling Folkhemmet Epilogue
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0
The Housing Question
In the 99 years from the Russian Revolution to the Trump-Brexit voter revolt – or rather from the first national Swedish Housing Policy in 1917 to the 2016 riots in the Swedish towns of Norrköping and Borlänge – advances in housing in Sweden have signalled a radical change in the evolution of Swedish architecture and cities. This was neither solely the work of architecture itself nor the talent of specific professionals, but rather the result of a series of complex phenomena that reflected a leap forward in the development of society itself. Sweden is not unique in its development. Indeed, it has always played a role in the development of modern societies in the West. With the emergence of new standards of living and health, new programmes for the population, new materials and building systems, and new methods for managing production and logistics, it quickly became apparent that housing projects in Europe involved far more than just bricks and mortar. They also encompassed what happens both in and outside buildings. Thus, the subject of housing incorporates both the building and the fabric of society to which it belongs1. © T H E A U T H O R S , A R K D E S A N D S T U D E N T L I T T E R AT U R
The development and transformation of the housing infrastructure was one of the most novel and greatest challenges the industrial revolution posed to Western society. The continuous influx of people from rural areas to the major cities in search of new employment opportunities and with expectations of a better life led to a widespread housing crisis, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. From a quantitative point of view, the number of housing units available was insufficient to meet the increasing demand for accommodation. As a result, apartments that were once intended to host a single bourgeois family were occupied by four, five or six newly arrived family units. The outskirts of large cities were also affected. Shacks and improvised barracks were built very close together, rapidly evolving into slum areas that expanded around cities. Adverse conditions directly affected the quality of housing. Greedy property speculators and rent-seekers in cities all over Europe converted houses into small rooms, often without direct ventilation or light. Consequently, 17
mortality in these buildings was high and diseases such as tuberculosis proliferated. Rooms fit for one or two people were suddenly occupied by six or seven adults and their children. Despite poor conditions, rent consumed over half the income of tenants, most of whom just about managed to survive. These rooms, consisting only of a few square metres, were organised into day and night shifts, coinciding with factory shifts. Kitchens – or ‘hellholes’ as they were frequently called – were improvised in small dark rooms or basements, where gas canisters were dangerously stored. Bathrooms were non-existent, a luxury for the few. Forced cohabitation meant that these dwellings were the setting for daily conflicts. A hygienist described the drama of daily life thus: “In certain districts in London more than one family live in a single room. In one of the cellars a health inspector found two children and seven persons, the corpse of a small child that had been left rotting for two weeks. In another room, a man with a contagious disease lies next to a woman who has recently given birth to her seventh child; in yet another room an elderly widow sleeps in its only bed, while the remaining few square metres of the bare floor are occupied by three married couples”2. The housing crisis stopped being just a question of lack of accommodation to become a structural disease that eventually would infect all modern societies. Around 1850, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom started to experience housing shortages and the consequences were dramatic3. By the 1860s and 1870s, similar conditions were found in Germany and then in cities as disparate as Stockholm, London, Lyon, Prague, Brno and Bratislava. This complex and ever-changing disease spread through the economic, social, political and cultural fabric of its times, evolving at the same rate as societies themselves. It would eventually become known as “The Housing Question”, an allusion to an article of the same name published by Friedrich Engels between 1872 and 1873 in the Leipzig newspaper Volsksstaat4. 18
Engels was one of the multiple voices that emerged during the 19th century industrial era to address the dramatic problem of housing. He managed, for the first time, to describe housing in all its complex social, political, economic and cultural dimensions, and not merely see it as a cross-section of numbers and statistics: “The so-called housing shortage, which plays such a great role in the press nowadays, does not consist in the fact that the working class generally lives in bad, overcrowded and unhealthy dwellings. This shortage is not something peculiar to the present; it is not even one of the sufferings peculiar to the modern proletariat in contradistinction to all earlier oppressed classes. On the contrary, all oppressed classes in all periods suffered more or less uniformly from it”. According to Engels, the problem should be tackled from its core, rooted in the transformation of society itself: “it is not the solution of the housing question which simultaneously solves the social question, but only by the solution of the social question (…) is the solution of the housing question made possible”5. Engels’ text was revolutionary in that it shed light on the collective Housing Project, highlighting two important factors. First, it stated that ‘society’ and ‘housing architecture in the cities’ comprised an indissoluble unit. Engels described for the first time what would eventually become the current characteristics of the modern housing question. Second, he recognised this phenomenon as inherent to our civilization, thus demonstrating its permanent relevance to societies. In other words, “The Housing Question” exposed for the first time that the Housing Project is in constant metonymy with society.
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Getting Ready for 1917
At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the recently designated ‘housing question’ continued to represent an enormous challenge for a number of different societies. However, from 1917, with the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and the imminent end of the First World War, housing was placed at the very centre of architectural, political, social and cultural debates in Western societies for the first time in history. This was neither a consequence of the post-war period nor a new phenomenon. Nonetheless, the problem gained urgency because of its severity and indiscriminate expansion. The partial destruction of cities by war was an extra burden on the accumulated demand for housing that inadequate housing policies in the continent were unable to cope with. This had been compounded by a lack of construction during the war years and the population rise resulting from industrial modernisation. Therefore, at the end of the First World War, the housing question engendered new and ever more visible urban deprivation, dramatically impacting the large cities of the Western world. The magnitude of this problem caused significant changes where hardship was not only defined by geographical area. Indeed, if © T H E A U T H O R S , A R K D E S A N D S T U D E N T L I T T E R AT U R
before the war the housing crisis had mainly been a problem for the working classes, after 1917, it also afflicted the middle classes. The full social engagement of architects during the interwar years represented a watershed. Instead of accepting commissions from the wealthy, these professionals decided that they were directly responsible for providing a solution to the housing question. As a result, this era represented a heroic new period. Scientific methods, the objectives of hygienism and the use of new techniques and materials came together in the name of rational living, at the service of the majority. Nevertheless, the progress made in terms of housing issues in the interwar period would have been unthinkable without the pioneering experiences of the 19th century. Proposals of ‘ideal communities’ put forward by utopian socialists represented an advance in social terms. These solutions had a great impact on future experiences of communitarian life and the new features and functions of housing. In this respect, the New Lanark village and Robert Owen’s “New Harmony”, Étienne Cabet’s 19
egalitarian communes and Charles Fourier’s phalanstères would have extraordinary influence6. In addition to social engagement, there were other pragmatic approaches, spearheaded by doctors, hygienists and engineers, whose objective was to improve housing conditions for workers by adopting scientific parameters. In this respect, the programmes developed by American female engineers to rationalise domestic work are an example [Fig. 1]. Social progress on the rationalisation and modernisation of the domestic space during the 1920s and 1930s in Germany and Sweden would have been impossible without the work on domestic economy
undertaken by Catherine Beecher, Lillian Gilbreth and Christine Frederick, published during the last decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century7. These concepts and approaches, added to the improvements to housing for workers introduced by the architect Henry Roberts, as well as Ebenezer Howard’s garden cities, constitute intermittent waves ahead of their time8. Many of these contributions had been forgotten for years, but at the end of the First World War, they emerged with renewed vigour in various Western countries. Of course, this was also the case in Sweden9.
Fig. 1. Diagrams of inefficient kitchen (left) and efficient kitchen (right). From The New Housekeeping (1919). Christine Frederick.
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2
A Great Beginning
The housing question reached Sweden hand in hand with the process of European industrialisation. However, the country’s peculiar set of circumstances meant that its evolution was also unique. As a consequence of the late advent of the industrial revolution, electricity supply was immediately decentralised, resulting in a more homogeneous distribution of the population10. Thus, overcrowding before the First World War in Swedish cities was not as extreme as it was in the rest of the continent. Throughout the 19th century, the rural population in Sweden increased from one to three million and the urban population from two to four million, whereas the growth in cities such as Berlin was tenfold. The idiosyncratic pattern of Swedish growth was key to the different treatment of the housing question in this country. Stockholm is a prime example. Between 1850 and 1900, the population of the Swedish capital trebled from 93,000 to more than 300,000. There was not enough housing to accommodate citizens arriving from rural areas in search of work. Consequently, slums started to appear on the edge of the city [Fig. 2]. In addition to Š T H E A U T H O R S , A R K D E S A N D S T U D E N T L I T T E R AT U R
the increase in informal settlements, overcrowding rose to alarming levels. Over 40 per cent of families in the city were living in apartments consisting of just one or two rooms. The deficit in housing for workers in the region was partially met by speculators. However, dwellings provided were in most cases both deficient in quality and insufficient in numbers. Municipal laws sought to ensure a certain level of living standards by controlling construction and incorporating regulations to prevent fires and the collapse of buildings. Nonetheless, these measures were severely inadequate, given the population increase and the unhealthy environment in multifamily apartments. At the turn of the century, the gradual worsening in living standards had generated social degradation, a problem that was becoming more and more prevalent in Swedish cities. To a large extent, the profound social differences between the working and middle classes were linked to the enormous inequality between their living environments. Housing was identified as the main factor responsible for the extremely low quality of life of workers. The 21
to two other salient problems of the time: the economic development of the working classes and the need to discourage emigration to the United States by people searching for a better future12. Loans were mainly directed towards smallholder families in rural areas in order to stimulate farming. However, funding for homeowners’ associations in cities and factories was also introduced. This measure forestalled emigration, promoted settlement in Sweden and laid the foundations for building a more stable society, rooted in the importance of the family unit and the ability of its members to live better lives.
Fig. 2. View over a shanty town in Eriksberg area, Stockholm (1909). Photographer: Oscar Heimer. Stockholm City Museum.
connection between social and housing issues in Sweden was at the root of what would become the characteristic trait of the country for most of the 20th century. The housing question became part of the Swedish policy agenda in 1904. Only three years earlier, the first national policy to regulate the conditions of housing for workers had been approved in the Netherlands. Like many other countries, Sweden felt the impact of both the Dutch housing legislation and the dissemination of revolutionary ideas that spread across the European continent, encouraging new reformist positions11. In 1904, Riksdagen, the Swedish Parliament, approved legislation that introduced a scheme of national loans at low interest rates for homeowners. With this new legislative framework, the government no longer looked at the housing problem as a one-dimensional issue. For the first time, the measures implemented by Riksdagen addressed the housing question as a complex issue linked 22
Nevertheless, the First World War had a profound impact on approaches to the housing question in Sweden. During the war years, building costs trebled and private companies only managed to build a small number of new apartment blocks. The lack of both housing and housing regulations led to a disproportionate rise in the cost of rent in big cities. Most working-class families could only just about pay the higher prices set by proprietors, which often consumed over half of their income. As a result, many households, especially those with children, were evicted from their homes. Furthermore, the quality of available housing was extremely low. The Government Housing Commission Report, published in 1914, had already highlighted this issue as a growing problem. It stated that housing in Sweden cost more and was of a lower standard compared with other industrialised countries in Europe13. Between 1916 and 1917, the shortage in accommodation was more acute and housing very quickly became the country’s main problem. Fortunately, given Sweden’s neutrality during the war, its economic decline was not as severe as in other countries, and from 1917 onwards the public sector was able to embark on a programme of building new affordable homes, with housing lists shared by municipalities, housing cooperatives and the State. One of the first solutions to the housing problem was the construction of emergency accommodation by © T H E A U T H O R S , A R K D E S A N D S T U D E N T L I T T E R AT U R
municipalities. These dwellings were relatively cheap and quick to build. They were often conceived as units that formed parts of more complex urban structures, or quarters. This was the case of the Julius and Jörgen quarters in Västerås (1917), designed by John Åkerlund, and the Stativet and Tumstocken quarters in Stockholm (1917), designed by Gunnar Asplund [Fig. 3]. In the latter example, the architect organised dwellings in rows, where the street provided the whole complex with a certain sense of neighbourhood. These apartments, demolished in the 1960s, were remarkably simple and consisted of a single room and a large kitchen. It is possible to observe in the 1917 proposals a significant latent interest in both creating an urban entity and strengthening the social fabric of society through housing. In that same year, the domestic sphere attracted the attention of renowned architects at the Hemutställningen (The Home Exhibition) which took place at the Liljevalchs Art Gallery in Stockholm. From this point onwards, the need to improve comfort and raise quality standards for workers
Fig. 3. View of Gunnar Asplund’s emergency housing area in Stockholm (built in 1917). Architect: Erik Gunnar Asplund. Photographer unknown. ArkDes. © T H E A U T H O R S , A R K D E S A N D S T U D E N T L I T T E R AT U R
in the domestic realm became associated to the mass production of simple furniture at affordable prices. The housing cooperative movement also emerged during these years. In 1916, one of the main housing cooperatives in Stockholm, Stockholms Kooperativa Bostadsförening (SKB), was founded as a direct response to the appalling housing conditions prevalent in the capital. SKB concluded its first multifamily apartment block in only eight months on the outskirts of the city, the Motorn quarter (1917) [Fig. 4]. Designed by the architect Gustaf Larson, the building was arranged around an open courtyard, where the presence of the surrounding landscape played an important role. It contained 88 apartments, and although most only consisted of a single room and a kitchen, standards were very high for the time. Each apartment had a toilet and the building included a laundry room for common use on the ground floor. Solutions to the housing needs provided by this cooperative embraced issues such as urban life, public space, community life and shared services. In addition, the private sphere and families’ quality of life were also considered. Finally, several significant measures were implemented at state level. Undoubtedly, one of the most important steps taken by Riksdagen was the adoption of the Rent Regulation Act in 1917. Although this legislation was revoked in 1923, it was the first time the state assumed, through local commissions, the responsibility for directly combatting rent speculation and evictions. The commissions also had economic responsibilities. During that same year, with the objective of boosting the construction sector, the government introduced loans for renters. This was a positive beginning in terms of addressing the stagnation of the construction sector and the serious situation in which many families found themselves. The housing question would gain far more significance nationally just two years later.
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Fig. 4. Children playing croquet in the courtyard of the Motorn quarter (1920s). Architect: Gustaf Larson. Photographer unknown. Private owner.
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New Standards and First Steps
After several brief studies into living conditions conducted during the 1910s, the first national commission to define the minimum requirements for social housing was set up in 1919, in conjunction with a standardising committee. Kommittén angående bostadssociala minimifordringar (the National Committee for the Minimum Requirements in Social Housing) was established to determine the minimum requirements for the small apartments that would be built with loans and state subsidies. This was still a long way from providing satisfactory standards for working-class housing. Nevertheless, the committee defined the best possible solution in terms of the actual situation of the country at that time. The study, set out in the 1921 report, Praktiska och hygieniska bostäder (Practical and Hygienic Dwellings), recommended that apartments should have an area of only 40–45 m2 per family and that this space should be fully optimised14. The design conceived a three-floor apartment block, organised around a set of staircases providing access to two apartments per floor [Fig. 5]. Blocks like these were not new in Sweden. In fact, they were clearly based on workers’ houses that had been common in the city © T H E A U T H O R S , A R K D E S A N D S T U D E N T L I T T E R AT U R
of Gothenburg since the end of the 19th century. The buildings, known as landshövdingehus (governor houses), were built of brick on the ground floor and wood on the upper floors. In addition to being cheaper than the smaller private houses, this type of accommodation was less susceptible to fires, as there were only two kitchens per landing. Although these blocks had not been as common in Stockholm, they became much more widespread in the 1930s, with the introduction of the functionalist smalhus (narrow houses). Standardiseringskommittén (the Standardisation Committee) played an important role in the general reduction of building costs and in improving the quality of housing. Chaired by the architect Sven Markelius, its main objective was to define measures to promote the mass production of joinery fittings and other elements that, until that time, had been produced in an artisanal fashion. A detailed study was carried out with the aim of standardising fittings. The kitchen was one of the central objectives in this effort to standardise housing. An investigation of rational kitchens and kitchen equipment 25
Fig. 5. Cover and sample pages from the book Praktiska och hygieniska bostäder (Practical and Hygienic Dwellings) (1921). Photographer: Matti Östling. ArkDes.
design undertaken by the Standardisation Committee was conducted by Osvald Almqvist between 1922 and 1934 [Fig. 6]. His research on the standard design of kitchen joinery represented a significant landmark in the modernisation of housing in Sweden. Accumulated experiences on the rationalisation of kitchens, as well as functional and efficiency studies, boosted the applied research on housing taking place in Sweden. The studies were published in 1934 in Köket (The Kitchen), a manual that was the root of most of the research conducted on the rationalisation of housing from the 1940s onwards15. Almqvist also played a central role in the research behind the Praktiska och hygieniska bostäder report, published in 1921 by the National Committee on Minimum Requirements in Social Housing, and in the creation of the first national Swedish cooperative – HSB (Hyresgästernas sparkasse – och byggnadsförening) in 1923. Due to housing standardisation, HSB was able, at that time, to reduce construction costs and promote the building of better quality apartments. New blocks had central heating, 26
community laundries with modern equipment and each apartment had a bathroom. The role of rationalisation and standardisation in the process of housing modernisation in Sweden should not be underestimated. Indeed, these gains constituted a watershed in terms of new housing. They were the foundations upon which Sweden was to guarantee better standards for the domestic sphere and human dignity for all its citizens. This would continue to be the case even in the 1930s when Stockholm’s Director of Property, Axel Dahlberg, amongst others, questioned the need to incorporate bathrooms and hot water in workers’ apartments, in order to reduce costs. However, these new models were still isolated responses to the housing problem in the 1920s. Approaches that defined the city through housing were also uncommon in this decade16. In Europe, cities such as Vienna, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Frankfurt were leading the way towards a holistic vision of a housing project that was to become a main feature of the modern city. In Vienna, in 1923, an urban model based on the idea of the © T H E A U T H O R S , A R K D E S A N D S T U D E N T L I T T E R AT U R
Fig. 6. Kitchen at the Bygge och Bo exhibition in Mälarstrand, Stockholm (1924). Architect: Osvald Almqvist. Photographer unknown. Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology.
hof was conceived: a continuous residential block that included community services and was organised around a large internal urban space that would structure the city17. This approach consolidated the link between public space and multi-family housing. In the Netherlands, the urban plan for Amsterdam (1915) and particularly the residential neighbourhoods based on the Plan Berlage, in the south of the city, represented a substantive lesson by the School of Amsterdam on housing quality and its relationship with public space. In Rotterdam, on the other hand, the Housing Department (Woningdienst) provided an audacious answer to the city and its housing problems through architectural projects18. Meanwhile, in the 1920s, progress in Sweden was still very slow. Nevertheless, most efforts were the result of applying the recommendations of the 1921 Praktiska och hygieniska bostäder report in which the urban environment gained increasing importance. The residential blocks built in accordance to the report’s recommendations had to consider topography and lighting requirements. Similarly, © T H E A U T H O R S , A R K D E S A N D S T U D E N T L I T T E R AT U R
special attention had to be paid to courtyards, conceived as landscaped areas and as places for enjoying nature and fresh air. This was the case of neighbourhoods in the municipality of Kalmar, designed by the municipal architect J. Fred Olson19. Progress was also influenced by international urbanism, particularly by the garden city movement. This model of urban planning, where housing was set among open spaces, was made early use of in the plans for the garden city of Enskede (1907) in Stockholm, designed by Per Olof Hallman [Figs. 7 and 8] and, after the First World War, in Rödastan (1918), Norrköping, by the architect Sven Erik Lundqvist. These approaches aimed to design idyllic, peaceful areas, where housing and the city mutually defined each other. However, modern, ambitious urbanisation processes such as those taking place in Austria or Germany in the 1920s would only flourish in Sweden in the following decade.
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Figs. 7 and 8. Single houses and row houses in Enskede, Stockholm (1910). Urban planning: Per Olof Hallman. Photographer unknown. Stockholm City Museum.
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The Dream of a Swedish Family
The change in decade was once again marked by crisis. A domino effect caused by the 1929 financial crash had calamitous repercussions across all Western economies. In Sweden, the unemployment rate rose to critical levels. Families were seriously affected and birth rates fell dramatically. Advances in housing were still a long way from providing a structural solution to these problems. Nevertheless, in social terms, the thirties started at very different juncture when compared to the previous decade. After the 1917–1923 crisis, economic growth, the shift from an agricultural to an industrial society and the advent of electricity, mechanisation and transport fuelled the country’s modernisation. This development led to an increase in salaries for a large part of the population, and thus, modernization was seen to be closely associated with social progress. As a result, from this point onwards, most of the population expected higher living standards. The social transformation in labour relations experienced in the 1920s was possible due to a model of negotiation agreed between companies and workers that laid the foundations for what would later become known as © T H E A U T H O R S , A R K D E S A N D S T U D E N T L I T T E R AT U R
den svenska modellen (the Swedish model). In politics, the relatively constant social progress for most of the population underpinned a new conception in people’s imaginary: equality. These changes were at the root of Sweden’s transformation into folkhemmet (the people’s home), a project in which the country was conceived as a large, egalitarian family. This concept was expressed for the first time in 1928, in Riksdagen, by Per Albin Hansson, the new leader of the Social Democratic Party: “The basis of the home is community and togetherness. The good home does not recognise any privileged or neglected members, nor any favourites or stepchildren. In the good home there is equality, consideration, co-operation, and helpfulness. Applied to the great people’s and citizens’ home this would mean the breaking down of all the social and economic barriers that now separate citizens into the rich and the poor, the propertied and the impoverished, the plunderers and the plundered. Swedish society is not yet the 29
Photo: Matti Östling
Daniel Movilla Vega has a PhD in architecture and has been a guest researcher at ArkDes (Stockholm, Sweden) in 2016 and 2017. Since 2009 he has undertaken international academic research on housing, focusing on social and architectural changes that are interlinked with establishing new collective approaches to residence and the city. He has been a visiting researcher at Columbia University (US), TU Delft (The Netherlands), MARKhI (Russia), FAU-USP (Brazil) and NTNU (Norway).
99 Years of the Housing Question in Sweden This book presents the history of modern architecture in Swedish housing. It is essential reading, especially at a time when a lack of accommodation is having such a brutal impact on Swedish society. However, this has not always been the case. Decisive public policies implemented during the 20th century led to an exemplary democratisation process of housing, unparalleled in terms of equality and inclusiveness. The first part of the book presents an overview of housing responses in Sweden. It dissects the housing question, describing it as a multidimensional phenomenon that cannot be addressed without considering social, political and economic circumstances. The second part compiles texts and materials from the exhibition Bo. Nu. Då: Bostadsfrågor och svar under 99 år (Housing. Now. Then: 99 Years of Housing Issues and Responses) held at ArkDes in 2016 and curated by Dan Hallemar. Based on the rich ArkDes collections, the book features examples of architectural solutions to the housing question from 1917 to the present. 99 Years of the Housing Question in Sweden brings together different perspectives, contributions, accounts and critiques from specialists and citizens alike, each illustrating in its own way how modern Swedish housing and society have developed and evolved hand in hand. The result is an important but relatively unknown discourse on the role of housing in the construction of the welfare state which offers vital lessons for today’s world.
Art. No 39666
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