everywhere everyone Architecture for everydeverybodyay life every time sustainability by sweden
Sveriges Arkitekter, Swedish Association of Architects Produced by the Swedish Association of Architects, 2010 with support by the Delegation for sustainable cities
Project leader: Pehr-Mikael Sällström Editor: Tomas Lauri, Katarina Nilsson Translation: Roger Tanner, John Krause Layout: Ina Flygare Printer: TSRB Nanjing
ISBN 978-91-978353-5-0
Cover photo: Kastrup Sea Bath by White architects. Photo: Åke E:son Lindman Table of contents
Architecture and Sustainable Welfare 2
Architecture matters 3
Open to changes 8
Township without empty gestures 18
The magnetism of style 27
A system of the future 32
The Strategist 39
The Politician 41
The Planner 43
Examples from the municipalities: Planning for everyday life 46
Examples from practice: Sustainable architecture and planning 63
Directory of architects 107
1 Architecture and sustainable welfare
Sweden is a nation with a long tradition of comprehensive planning and of using architectural guidelines as a means of enhancing the quality of everyday life for our citizens while conserving our natural resources for future generations. In the 1960s and 1970s, to be sure, we had some very negative experiences of planning processes that damaged large parts of our historical city centres, but we have learned a lot from our mistakes. The Swedish Government is convinced that to build a sustainable society, many parties must be involved and work together to find innovative and more resource- efficient technical solutions to our social needs.
Architecture has a crucial role in this as a bridge between human needs and technical solutions. But also as a means of cultural development and of communicating more sustainable lifestyles. Architecture can make such lifestyles more attractive and easily accessible for everyone.
Opportunities for citizens to develop and be productive members of society wherever they live are a fundamental aspect of sustainability. Spatial organisation can include or exclude. We have a strong belief in the open society. It is our experience that this has resulted in a high degree of participation, initiative and responsibility at the local level, a sense of trust and security which is the basis of our welfare. The right of our citizens to participate in the spatial planning process is laid down in the law. The development process may be time consuming, but makes it possible in the end to produce large quantities of high quality and even unique housing.
Today international delegations visit our urban development schemes and our way of working is regarded as a model by many. We believe that our approach to building sustainable cities, based on great care for the quality of everyday life of citizens, is something that other countries can benefit from. It is our experience that careful planning and architecture are part of the foundation of a sound economy in the long term. In a post-industrial society, increasingly dependent on access to knowledge, the economy will flourish in places where people want to make their lives.
Sweden has long been a nation of industrial exports. We are now entering a new era where the service and knowledge-producing sectors are becoming more important. Architecture and planning provide an exciting example of this new trend. It is therefore our great pleasure to hereby present this catalogue with many examples of how Swedish architects and planners are working to develop a sustainable society.
Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth Andreas Carlgren
Minister for Culture Minister for the Environment
Photos: Pawel Flato
2 Architecture matters
The dream of a better life is what attracts people to move to the city. 2008 was a banner year in that respect. For the first time, more than fifty percent of humanity now lives in urban areas at the same time as the world’s population reached seven billion. The urban population is expected to double in the next forty years, while the total global population grows to ten billion. By then seventy percent of the population will live in cities. The challenge will be to deal with all that growth in the face of diminishing natural resources. Sustainability is going to be about human health and about maintaining productive, profitable ecosystems that can provide for our needs while keeping the planet in good shape even for future generations. Planning and architecture are going to be important tools for creating the sustainable cities and buildings of the future. Tomorrow’s sustainable solutions need to be both technologically smart and attractive for people’s everyday lives, for everyday architecture.
The more people that will live in the city, the easier it becomes to deal with environmental problems and reduce greenhouse gas emissions with smart technologies. But for that to happen, the sustainable city needs to offer its inhabitants a better quality of life. Sustainable technical strategies must be designed from a human perspective while solving the environmental problems. Swedish efforts to develop sustainable cities and architecture are getting a great deal of attention internationally these days. In Sweden there are planning methods and an approach to the work process to achieve holistic solutions, which starts with a balanced integration of social, economic, and ecological demands and conditions. It’s what we call SymbioCity. Our approach to building a sustainable society is anchored in legislation and a regulatory process that gives all stakeholders a voice. That allows a high level of both systematization and citizen participation in our work with planning and design. It also provides good conditions for interdisciplinary collaboration among a variety of actors of complementary expertise. What it means is that the solutions we arrive at are already adapted to local conditions and have the support of the people affected. And that makes the execution of the project much more effective. We call it consensus.
For this catalogue, we have gathered together a number of talented writers to describe the Swedish model in more detail and from several different perspectives and to discuss what it means to work with Swedish architects and planners. We have also invited municipalities and architecture firms to explain how they work. Several of the contributing architects also present some of their international work. These Swedish architects can and will contribute to building sustainable buildings and cities around the world. Sweden has a long history as an export nation. We can contribute the knowledge and expertise it takes to find solutions that always are based on local conditions. What makes us so successful is our ability to come up with new solutions. We are a country built on innovation.
We would like to give warm thanks to the Swedish government whose investment in exporting sustainable cities has provided the support needed to produce this catalogue. We also want to thank all of the companies and municipalities who made the effort to make this unique compilation possible. The Swedish Association of Architects
Laila Strunke
President of Swedish Association of Architects
Photo: Urban Orzolek
3 4 everywhere everyone Architecture for everydeverybodyay life every time sustainability by sweden
5 6 Photo: Åke E:son Lindman
7 Open to changes
Sweden stands for a socially conscious architecture. It is an architecture of wood, of prefabrication, and of nature, with roots that extend back to the industrial revolution and the will to create a united and participatory society.
Page 6–7: Restaurant Tusen in the Ramundberget Everyone and grants on offer, a certain standard had to be met, ski resort, not only spatially but also in terms of urban planning. by Murman ”It seems we all agree.” The good home was defined in codes and regulations. Architects, won That’s how every successful meeting in Sweden is Since the market took over the task of providing the the award for summed up. Everyone is on the same page. All of country with new homes, the importance of the codes best holiday the Nordic countries can be described as consensus has diminished, but the vision of the home as the building at democracies. The stability of their development during nucleus of the welfare society lives on. the World practically the whole of the 20th century is rooted in a Architectural policy of consensus which has been both unusual and Consensus between citizens and government requires Festival in victorious. This pursuit of consensus has been most confidence. The perception of the state as good for one’s Barcelona in energetic in Sweden. A good solution is a solution for own welfare goes back to more indigent times than our 2009. everyone. own. Thanks to a reasonable symmetry between taking and giving, a process of urban construction was able Page 9: Playground in The policy of general welfare is visible in what has been to slowly evolve. Civil registration in Sweden, the very Vasaparken in built and planned. The general means that Sweden has foundation of governmental planning, dates back to the the center of never had any specific social housing production for the 17th century, making it the world’s oldest. And in the Stockholm. The poor. All homes must satisfy the same requirements, local community at that time, decision-making bodies redevelopment of and so Sweden today has the world’s highest housing already existed which were consensus-based. Vasaparken won standard in terms of square metres per inhabitant. The the Siena Prize greater part of Sweden’s housing stock materialised in The ironworks quickly became the pioneers of urban for best Swedish the second half of the 20th century, with the assistance development. Industrialists with strategic acumen landscape design of state funding. To qualify for the favourable credits organised not only production but also their employees’ in 2007.
8 Photo: Mauro Rongione
9 10 Photo: Åke E:son Lindman
11 lives in accordance with rational principles. With Prefabrication favoured a largeness of scale which Page 10–11: standardised homes in straight lines and with church, culminated in the 20th century. Industrial methods House in the school and medical care underpinning people’s now set the tone, not only of construction but also Stockholm upbringing and well-being, the lucrative iron industry of planning. To husband governmental resources, archipelago by was able to construct ideal communities long before the planning responsibility was transferred to the Tham Videgård breakthrough of industrial society. builder, whereas previously it had been a matter Architects. During Sweden’s industrialisation process and its between the architect and the client. Page 13: concomitant transformation from one of the poorest K:fem, a large countries in Europe to one of the wealthiest, society The diminished influence of architects caused department store was strengthened by a host of institutions, all of them artistic development to switch over to smaller in the Stockholm fashioned by a new professional category – consulting assignments such as churches and private detached suburb of architects. The schools, hospitals, railway stations, houses, where beauty was still permitted to overrule Vällingby by courthouses and churches of the 19th century left an production adjustment. The bid for the sacred also Wingårdh imprint on Sweden which lasted well into the next proved highly important, for all the smallness of Architects, was century and which to a great extent still is strong. The output. This is not so much a matter of religion selected as the image of the Swedish town is historic, even through – Sweden is one of the world’s most secularised best building more than half of all the country’s buildings are under countries – as of the natural romanticism for which for shopping 50 years old. so many Swedes have a hankering. Daylight, natural at the World materials and greenery were and remain universally Architectural The humanism of the 20th century also rested on uncontested values. Festival in rational foundations. Optimum production requires Barcelona in sound management of resources, a category in which Pining for nature has even created a settlement all 2008. both raw materials and people could be included. of its own. Weekend cottages are dotted about in Organised working conditions, organised communities the landscape, along the coasts, beside lakes, in the and healthy homes generated gains for both enterprise forests and in the mountains. In summertime more and citizens. Industry once again set the pattern of than half the population moves to such dwellings. planning. Whereas big 19th century workplaces – The lure of nature has also made the weekend breweries, for example – could be modelled on medieval cottage an interesting architectural commission castles, functionalist architecture inverted the ideals, with plentiful scope for manoeuvre. The more modelling people’s homes on the pragmatic structures unconventional lifestyle of people’s leisure and the of factory buildings. more isolated locations of the houses encourage a zest for experimentation. Growing interest in These developments were not confined to Sweden. architecture has widened the market for architect- Germany had led the way as regards both designed second homes as well as for detached industrialisation and the radicalisation of architecture, houses, a niche which for a time barely existed. but it was Sweden that succeeded in creating national programmes out of the housing policy endeavours of the 1920s. Unaffected by direct damage after the Second World War, the strong state was able to work for ”Since the market took over the task of the country’s transformation into an efficient welfare society. Architects occupied the forefront, planning providing the counrty with new homes, the suburbs where the neighbourhood ethos would be the cement joining people together. A sceptical view was importance of the codes has diminished, but taken of the muddle and apparent disorder of the city. the vision of the home as the nucleus of the Everywhere welfare society lives on.” Sweden long remained a faintly urbanised society. It was not until the mid-1950s that the urban population exceeded its rural counterpart; by the turn of the century, one inhabitant in four was a country-dweller. Nature today is also leaving its imprint on more Much of Sweden’s earlier wealth was generated in the large-scale building development. Natural materials forests, in the mines and through the energy obtainable like wood are now being used in every connection, from a waterfall. But the move towards ever more and woodland or lakeside prospects are valued large-scale structures caused the towns and cities assets in the planning context, not least where urban to outdistance the countryside growth-wise. State- development is concerned. subsidised housing production was a locomotive of the national economy in the mid-20th century. Every time Now building too began to be industrialised on a large A good building must be long-serving, in terms scale. Sweden was already exporting prefabricated of both form and technology. Functionalism, houses before industrialization, and the expanding introduced in Sweden in 1930, remains the basic timber industry was already exporting house kits ideology of architecture, even though the forms worldwide in the 19th century. Factory housing are no longer the same. The knowledge base production was already a big number in the 1930s, and demands both research and scrutiny. Government today nearly all housing is made up of more or less commissions concerning practical, hygienic homes prefabricated sections. were already initiated in the 1920s, and Swedish
12 Photo: Kasper Dudzik
building research has left few fields unexplored. more worthy of preservation than details of its design, The research findings became recommendations and and so knowledge of ways in which old structures can regulations, implying for example that everyone, be modernised has grown increasingly important. The regardless of age or disability, must be able to go same goes for the city as such. Several neighbourhoods everywhere and use every building. which at one time were condemned can now boast the country’s foremost urban qualities. The slowness of Much knowledge has also been gathered concerning the change has an intrinsic value. best ways of caring for old buildings and environments. Historic buildings make an important difference to In recent decades the art of restoration has been people’s sense of belonging. Demolitions are therefore developed into a safe haven for craftsmanship in avoided to the utmost extent possible, with the result building. At the same time, the ideology of preservation that building conservation has also become a part has found itself in complicated situations, in that of modern architecture. Good care augments the Modernist buildings and developments are now also sentimental value of buildings, and knowledge of the in need of restoration. In addition to the technical way in which old buildings should be looked after is structures being hard to preserve, there are many widespread. Often the function of a building can be environments here which do not inspire the same unalloyed devotion as austere farm cottages or graceful summertime retreats. Most debates on architecture and urban development of late have been concerned with ”This is not so much a matter of religion the limits of preservation and with who should make – Sweden is one of the world’s most decisions affecting the city – the general public, experts or politicians. secularised countries. Daylight, natural On a deeper level, however, there is a broad consensus materials and greenery were and remain in favour of our common environment confirming that we are human beings and not just consumers or universally uncontested values.” temporary visitors on this planet. To these humanist values a new environmental objective has been added,
13 Photo: Anna-Lena Mattsson
14 Page 14: namely that of the built environment not impacting silent, contemplative and introverted activity. Today, Stora on ecosystems. Nearness to unspoiled nature has if anything, the opposite is expected of new cultural Katrineberg, played a very important part in gaining support and institutions. Museums are expected to be public living housing in understanding for the environmental objectives. The rooms. Stockholm by sense of nature as a common asset was leaving its Kjellander mark on planning long before sustainable development The outdoor environment today is also being planned Sjöberg became a topic of discussion. The ancient right of with reference to everyday use. Parks formerly intended Architects. moving freely on other people’s land has among other for walking in are now settings for games and picnics, things led to prohibition of the privatisation of Sweden’s which means new demands on their resilience. In coasts and lakesides. This has preserved the landscape streets and squares today, outdoor cafés and events are as a common asset and a common responsibility. claiming more and more space, now that Swedes have adopted more Mediterranean social habits. Intensive Everyday living in a close-knit city is a powerful ideal which Improved co-operation has long been the essence of has augmented the pressure on the traditional city and the Swedish model. This concept, like the Swedish its fringes. Housing has become a choice of lifestyle, Welfare State metaphor, dates from the inter-war years with the inner city one among several options. Even in and marks the beginning of the Social Democrats’ long Stockholm one can choose to live in the country without tenure of power. The idealisation of everyday life was needing to spend more than an hour travelling to work. mirrored by the campaign to eliminate the rural custom of keeping the best room in the home closed except Swedish architecture has made great headway in for celebrations and holidays. Everyday life used to be making life convenient and rational. We know how lived in the kitchen. The new homes no longer had “fine parks, streets, homes and workplaces can be made rooms” or sitting rooms. The heart of the home was now secure and practical. We have created strategies for called the “everyday room”, i.e. living room. Then in making everyone a participant in construction and 1955 the boundary between kitchen and living room was planning processes. We have reached agreement eliminated with the launching of the all-in-one room. concerning which buildings and which environments That boundary disappeared simultaneously with the are to be safeguarded. middle-class convention of having domestic servants. The challenge today lies in preserving all these good Nowadays the all-in-one room is taken for granted, just things and at the same time allowing buildings to affect like the sharing of housework and child care between people in their everyday lives, in such a way that they both parents. Weekdays are no longer contrasted with will see their lives in a new light and have the courage “holy days”, meaning a day of rest reserved for church to break with the consensus. Architecture has the going and formal dinners, whereas now we have a day potential to both reaffirm and provote. The forms vary. of leisure. Just as the all-in-one room demolished the Today we are building copies of historic towns as well boundaries between classes and sexes in the home, as abstract additions to towns which really are historic. so has everyday living broken down the barriers in If the aim is to create environments in which people the city. The bastions of old-time highbrow culture, feel both accepted and challenged, both options are such as museums and concert halls, now address workable. Everyday architecture can sometimes be a themselves to all ages, but above all perhaps to the matter of not doing anything at all, waiting for the right young. Rafael Moneo’s Modern Museum (1990-98) was opportunity and the right building. The good society is a large and significant cultural building project in the an open one. Open to changes. heart of Stockholm. When completed it was criticised Rasmus WÆrn for its conventional view of the museum visit as a architect SAR/MSA and architecture critic
”The sense of nature as a common asset was leaving its mark on planning long before sustainable development became a topic of discussion.”
15 16 Illustration: Gabriel Wentz
17 Township without empty gestures
Three architects discuss what it means to be a Swedish architect and urban planner. “We are sharp-witted on the human level,” says Johannes Tovatt, one of the participants.
Johannes Tovatt (JT) heads Tovatt Architects & Planners, one of Europe’s leading practices in urban planning. Credits include urban development plans in London, Vienna and St. Petersburg, among other places.
Hans Murman (HM) has made himself known for an architecture in which national tradition is blended with international concepts. At the 2009 World Architecture Festival in Barcelona he received an award for a restaurant in the Swedish mountains.
Monica von Schmalensee (MvS) is CEO of White Arkitekter, one of the largest architecture practices in Europe. They were one of the designers of the Hammarby Sjöstad township, widely noted for its sustainability. The firm recently won an international competition for a new research hospital in Stockholm.
18 “We are very practical,” says Hans Murman about Swedish architects.
What services can Swedish architects offer the still something people turn to Sweden for. We know international market? about society, welfare and quality. It’s our heritage, JT: All services. Of course there are some where it is because for a long time now our everyday life has harder to compete with the local architects. There is been caringly shaped. We also know how to achieve a huge amount of very specific knowledge in various this. We have a process to offer. There is much to be countries which outsiders do not possess. What we offer gained from finding an interlocutor who can handle has to be something specifically Swedish, in either a issues of this kind. I think it’s important to understand cultural or a professional sense. I’m inclined to believe that a new society cannot be built hastily. Planning, that the cultural is what we can offer. There we have our implementation and management take time. Today, big opportunity and business concept. One can speak of with everything having to be immediate and look a Palme legacy (editor’s note: Social Democratic Prime good in pictures, there is a danger of our not allowing Minister of Sweden, 1969-76 and 1982-86). We have a the process time enough for issues and consequences sense of fairness in Sweden. That might sound a bit cocky, to be properly illuminated. It’s important here for but I believe it. We are sharp-witted on the human level. cities, policy-makers and officials to possess genuine knowledge. Sweden has been fortunate in that MvS: It’s never that easy to say “we can export this”. respect. We have been able to devote great care to the There isn’t any package. But the Swedish model is constituent parts.
19 “We have non-exclusive systems. We include everybody,” says Johannes Tovatt.
Is it true to say that there is a specific Swedish leading in the world when it comes to something like architectural culture? What are its distinguishing designing office workplaces. Also, and this is clearly characteristics? apparent from a lot of new Swedish architecture, we MvS: Most often, if one is to generalise, we work in a have learned that the exterior has an important role, user perspective, from the inside outwards. This differs as a symbol creator, as marketing and for the way from a working approach which begins from the outside the architecture is experienced. We’re dealing with a and sometimes never reaches the inside, the small part, holistic entity, with the external and internal interacting. such as the organisation of a workplace. It is important In fact, because we are mindful of both the interior that we also have to find a solution for the inner part. and the exterior, we have an extraordinary chance of One can also think in terms of a larger scale. Take creating something really powerful. a city, for example. Is it to be built from the façades or from the residents, street life, activities, everyday Isn’t this “inside knowledge” you speak of quite happenings …? difficult to get across? How do you make a picture of the practical? HM: We are very practical. And we have a great JT: The core issue here is interesting. For example, if understanding of function. For that reason we are you look at open international competitions and who
20 wins them, it’s rarely the biggest practices. Very often time, one’s attention is focused on the vision, or the it’s young ones. They’re good at images and concepts. project. That has you working in a different way. With I have a difficulty in seeing how Sweden as a culture that kind of shared focus, moving a process forward can compete with these concepts and images. Basically comes easily. And moving processes forward is the this is a question of mentality. And that, I think, is thing we are best in the world at. something we can be proud of. JT: A successful process is founded on personal MvS: I don’t think one should overstate any antithesis involvement. If you spend two days sitting with a between our way of creating architecture and an Russian oligarch, as I did in St. Petersburg, and get international way. What you say is rather the way things him to consider simple matters, you have made a lot of used to be. headway. He has bought land for a billion roubles and wants a two-billion payback. Those are the frames. But HM: Once again, our strength lies in our ability to then it has to be workable. Olga must be able to get her combine function and aesthetic. bagful of shopping from the metro to her flat. We also have a class problem to deal with. All these things are MvS: It’s interesting sometimes to see the comments manifested in the new township. How are we to solve it to the winner of an architecture competition. We won all? This is where my knowledge comes in. It’s a matter the competition for the Karolinska research hospital. of the personal aspect, knowing how to do things, what That was an international design competition. But architecture can do. Most people I have met, whatever outside Sweden it was our ideas about focusing on the their social standing, take it for granted that this patient, about care, that people paid tribute to. There is personal side is more important than the billion roubles. so much more to it than the mere outward appearance That means we can add four or five points beyond the of the hospital. Basically the point is that we have raised financial aspect. Those points are about the way we see hospital issues to a different level. That, as I see it, is each other here in Sweden. It is universally human and very Swedish. What we have highlighted are typically an extraordinary business philosophy. Swedish ideas about social values. When we base things on our heritage, our tradition, they turn out well. Does a Swedish architect care much about the everyday side of things? What are the implications of engaging a Swedish JT: Yes. And everybody wants to care. No one enters architect? into a major urban development process without caring. JT: As an architect you are often expected to be more I think that’s what makes it so hard to approach things authoritarian than you are. In my experience, it is more from the other direction, if one has been reared in an positive than negative to be non-authoritan. Clients feel authoritarian culture, accustomed to seeing things that they can step into the project, be a part of it. This from outside, to assert that one cares about the little creates an opportunity for doing something together. things, about Olga and her walking home with a bag of For many years now we have had a major urban shopping. That’s something we can do with authority. development project in Vienna (editor’s note: Flugfeld, Aspern). When they twigged our non-authoritarian Putting it the other way round and looking at attitude, we found each other in a new way. The non- Swedish architecture from the outside, is there a authoritarian is not to be confused, of course, with the typically Swedish idiom? absence of any standpoint. Not laying the law down JT: Recently I passed by a newly completed from beginning to end does not mean that you cease development, Annedal, in a Stockholm suburb. It has 20 guiding, directing and running a project. or 30 blocks, all by different architects. Even though it is not enjoined by the plan or by a design programme, MvS: Often it’s a matter of a different kind of authority. they do what architects here always do and always have done. As if we had a collective code. You can see the JT: There is a danger in seeing a weakness in not same thing in Hammarby Sjöstad. A tremendous, innate having all the answers. We know what we are out to discipline. Everything is neat and good-natured and achieve. That imparts security, stability, to the process. meticulously, caringly executed. I don’t think that could happen anywhere else. At the same time, in the middle What Swedish architects do is offer a process of it all, there is a vein of acceptance for the personal. mentality, leadership for a process. Correct? What we see in the successful Swedish projects is this MvS: We have many foreign visitors who come to look very mixture of the personal and the general. at Hammarby Sjöstad. I usually give them a description of our working approach. First I describe what things MvS: Sometimes, when called upon to speak in another often look like. Disciplines are pigeon-holed – you’re country about Swedish architecture, how we go about an architect, you’re a structural engineer, you’re a things and so on, it’s hard not to expound the history politician, you’re an electrical consultant, and so on. of Sweden – our being a small country, the way our All the pigeons toil away in their separate holes to thinking is geared to nature and, not least, to light. All the best of their ability. But the processes, such as the those dark winters and bright summers. And we have planning process, move in the other direction, cutting never been wealthy. We have created architecture on a straight through the pigeonholes. The big challenge shoestring. To this is added all our social schooling in lies in working a little more holistically, overarchingly. the 20th century. We come from a country which has Instead of linear thinking, one can put the vision at the had an institute which devised ideals for the layout of a centre of things. As in the case of Hammarby Sjöstad: kitchen. We have a conscious way of relating to schools, sustainability. Then everyone can relate to it. All the medical care and so on. We have a social commitment.
21 I am myself surprised that foreign visitors never tire You keep referring to Hammarby Sjöstad. What of going to see Hammarby Sjöstad. And time and time makes it such a powerful urban development project? again I hear the same thing said. They wonder how it HM: A powerful vision has a lot to do with it. That works. Being able to live on top of each other in flats means the presence of a holistic concept. Firstly, and still be blessed with so many spatial qualities. They the apartments are bright and attractive. Then the talk about the apartment layouts, the way they admit surroundings are well cared for. And, not least, daylight and the way the courtyards are a part of the everything works. It’s practical. At the same time, buildings. The interesting point is that few visitors look Hammarby Sjöstad looks good. specifically at the appearance of the buildings. What they look at is the way people live. Somewhere along What do people experience in Hammarby Sjöstad? the line it’s all about the relation between the residents HM: Essentially, you have the prerequisites of and the architecture. That, I venture to say, is typically urban living: play areas, shops, cafés, restaurants, Swedish. communications and schools, among other things, But then you also have a striking milieu: the water the HM: The link to nature that you mentioned is, I quaysides, the canals. It all adds up to much more than think, significant. Often we achieve things which are just a dormitory town. specifically Scandinavian or Nordic by making nature our starting point. What I have in mind is not purely aesthetic MvS: One can speak of a whole 24 hours’ activity utterances but also the fact of our then broaching issues having been assembled round an infrastructural node, that are deeply rooted within us, issues which are a part the tramway. Which is not to say that you necessarily of our cultural heritage, issues which make us unique. have to live, work and find recreation in one and the
“We work from a user’s perspective, from the inside outwards,” says Monica von Schmalensee.
22 same area, only that all the different levels are present source of amazement to many foreign visitors is the and that there are people coming and going at all times fact of our working on such a co-ordinated basis, the of the day and night. fact that we as architects work with all the consultants from the start so as together to achieve the best solution JT: The glorious thing about it is that here we have a between space and technology. We are not always in the township without empty gestures. There may be a few front line of a particular technology, but when it comes jarring instances of blue ceramic tiling, but that’s all. to application we occupy a very different position. We Architecture and urban development the world over are arrive at robust solutions. full of empty gestures. But here they are absent. You have a strong wholeness unsubverted by individual JT: Much of what one sees, for example, in Hammarby details. The secret lies in this super-traditional Sjöstad, is concerned with general systems. That is a perception of the street space. Street, pavements and legacy of ours from the development of the Swedish house front, or shop. There is another thing that makes Welfare State. It is something we have been occupying an important difference to the experience. There is no ourselves with for a long time. It is our axiomatic question of fencing in, of creating a gated community. tradition when we set about developing our activities We don’t go in for that kind of thing. Hammarby Sjöstad further. As with district heating and refuse separation. is an example of how much better things turn out if We have refined systems of that kind. Many cities are you allow the roads to continue and join up with their short of them. surroundings, no matter whether you are talking about industrial facilities or housing. HM: We take a down-to-earth approach to environmental systems. Resource conservation is the What can you say about environmental technology name of the game. And making residents a part of it. in Hammarby Sjöstad? What does the interaction between different consultants and architects look MvS: There is a kind of intelligibility about the like in Sweden? How do we address environmental Hammarby Sjöstad technical systems. The people living issues? Is there a specifically Swedish way of making there feel that they are really helping to create a better sustainable cities? environment merely by disposing of their garbage. MvS: When I show people round there, the concluding That’s a great feeling. questions are usually about the environmental aspects. All the general systems which the township is based JT: What happens in many countries is that efforts are on: the tramway, the car pool, the biogas system, made to improve the quality of the individual buildings, the vacuum suction refuse collection system, the which is a trifle exclusive. Who can afford it and who stormwater management system. But people are also can’t? It’s down to the individual. That makes it private hugely interested in the process. How did we get and introverted. We have non-exclusive systems. We everyone to pull in the same direction? Adding all the include everybody. parameters together, there are of course a lot of good things to be learned. This is a unique instance. One Interviewer: Tomas Lauri
23 24 Photo: Åke E:son Lindman
25 Photo: Åke E:son Lindman
26 The magnetism of style
Sweden today is a world leader in design. One reason is that Swedish designers stay more up-to-date than most about what’s happening in the world around them.
Norden. Savour the name. Literally Englished, it is “The a local craft tradition has today been reduced to a style North.” Who thought it up? Clearly, someone to the south indiscriminately pasted onto product after product as a of us. As if there were a bird, a fish or something midway means of jacking up the price a bit. So formalised, one between on the globe and we were living up at world’s could well believe it to be the brainchild of a publisher of end on the brink of the dragons, a place to which no one coffee-table books. in their right mind dared venture in order to ask us what we ourselves would like to be known as. The North or It isn’t, though. Open the coffee-table book and you’ll see Scandinavia – where exactly do we live? that the antecedents of Scandinavian Design are rustic, robust and austere – more unsophisticatedly Nordic than One of them has five countries, the other has three. All elegantly Scandinavian, if you get my meaning. Even of them are chilly, but they are radically different. But with such a graceful creation as Hans Wegner’s Y chair. this, perhaps, is of no consequence to anyone in “the That was designed almost 60 years ago, and while the South” or “the West” or “the East.” Americans were making glass-fibre furniture and the Ital- ians flashy padded furniture, Wegner took what he found Page 24–25: Instead it