Based on the notion of implosions and explosion by Henri Lefebvre, we need to challenge the the way we plan our cities when it comes to pushing out infrastructural support systems and industries to the edges of the city as this creates industrialized landscapes and the ongoing tendencies of core-periphery polarization.

Älvsjömässan in Stockholm is the city’s official exhibition hall and has accommodated hundreds of exhibitions and fairs over the years since its opening in 1971. As the city grows bigger and beyond its former edges buildings like Stockholmsmässan and other infrastructural dwellings are the ones being removed and replaced. As the municipality has plans to tear down mässan and make new residential blocks we risk losing a very unique building in the urban fabric of Stockholm. By pushing out what is there and replacing it with more of the same cities are facing the creation of typological mono-cultures where only a few functions can exist at once. Stockholmsmässan’s qualities of size and mass give great opportunity to implement new, unexpected mixes of functions where different programs and activities can come together to provide for each other. 

In an attempt to re-programme the extra large (XL) typology, mässan is used as an example of how this could be done. By looking at the needs of the growing city, the surrounding urban context and issues of climate changes faced in Stockholm this project seeks to use a redesign of the building as a way to activate the area and make space for the infrastructural systems and productions that are otherwise hidden in the city's edges. Taking a stance against over-demolition and REPURPOSING rather than REPLACING. In this way, dwellings that are doomed to vanish can be used as the framework for making essential functions being brought back into the urban.

Four scenarios were chosen to represent essential functions of urban life and the area of Älvsjö. These scenarios explore how such a function can be designed in the context of mässan. Looking at what parts of its process can be used together with others to create a system that fosters circularity.