Innehåll|Contents
Narratives about the ‘failure’ of large-scale post-World War II housing are now guiding major physical, social, and economic changes in neighborhoods all over Europe. This is true even in Denmark and Sweden, which have long been known for their welfare states and benevolent housing policies. Today, however, both countries have enacted new national anti-segregation measures that call for major physical and social changes to neighborhoods built in the postwar era, even as the opinions of local communities and residents of such neighborhoods have been only sparsely heard – if at all. By working with the method ‘witness seminars’, we – as the research collective Aktion Arkiv – foreground residents’ perspectives and their collective resistance: the effects and affects of top-down changes. While sharing their lived experiences and actions, residents say that architects and planners can ‘simply say no’ and thereby refuse to participate in these actions.
This introduction to "Solids and Flows: Architecture and Capitalism" provides a context to the articles assembled in this issue, and reflects on the implications of what can be perceived as a common approach. Drawing on Nancy Fraser's "expanded conception of capitalism" combined with Isabelle Stengers' advocacy for "resisting the coming barbarism," we offer a framework for thinking architecture's relationship to capitalism that goes beyond the spheres of property and market, and places emphasis on our capacity to move across the categories. It seems that in view of "the social institutionalisation" of capitalism, and confronted with the neoliberal market set up as "thinking machine," there is no simple return to the analysis and strategies established in the past. Rather, it becomes a matter of " learning from now on" with an acute attention to detail of the various assemblages in which architecture now operates.
Institutionen befinner sig i kris. Det gäller den politiska institutionen, den juridiska, den sociala, den polisiära, skolan, pensionssystemet, fritidsgårdarna... Och det gäller i högsta grad konstinstitutionen och vårdinstitutionen.Psykos- och rehabiliteringsavdelningarna 109 och 110 på Ulleråkers sjukhus ska renoveras. Enligt riktlinjer ska 1 % av byggkostnaden avsättas till konstnärlig gestaltning. I detta fall innebär det 210 000 kronor. Konstnärsgruppen love and devotion tar sig an det konstnärliga utsmyckningsuppdraget genom att ställa vårdmiljön snarare än konstobjektet i centrum.Inom den psykiatriska vården har antalet vårdplatser drastiskt minskat den senaste 10-årsperioden. Samtidigt är den fysiska vårdmiljön undermålig och avhandlas i stort sett aldrig. Utifrån en mängd olika perspektiv diskuterar denna bok frågor kring institutionens kris, liksom vårdens och konstens villkor i dagens samhälle.
“A ball is a ball is a ball…”: Mediating personal freedom through architecture, art and design in the Swedish welfare state “
A ball is nothing but a ball, it is what you play with it that counts.” This was stated in a review after the inauguration of the multi arena The Stockholm Globe in 1989 – at the time said to be the world’s largest spherical building. The reviewer perceived the arena as part of the invisible media construction of the city and its interiors, and it was not architecture in itself that mattered but rather how it was used. The Globe was an abstract form, or empty sign, possible to project messages on as a gigant TV-studio, but it was also a space that could be organized in different ways; The Globe was a medium in itself. Taking The Globe as a starting point this paper will discuss how architecture can be understood as a medium for notions of “personal freedom.” How did ideas of a liberal society overlap with spatial organizations and aesthetics; how was “the ball” played through history? Drawing on two pivotal historical moments, the “middle way” (Childs 1936) in the 1930s when the welfare state emerged, and the 1980s “third way” (Giddens 1998) when it declined, this paper will trace how the notion of personal freedom has shifted as a discourse articulated in space and theory with architecture as a medium. The Third Way indicates a shift in the role of architecture in society, a shift that still impact most Western welfare state societies. Earlier architecture was tied to governing national economy, for example building welfare through public housing, regulating consumption, and educating the citizen. When the state withdrew from the building sector in the 1980s architecture became a driving force in other processes: new values were built through the emerging political economy based on “human capital,” with its base in a rethought relation between the individual and the society. This paper aims at sketching a brief history of architecture as a medium for notions of liberalism now and then.
The book explores the heritage of Bruno Mathsson, one of Swedish modernism’s leading designers, through two of his architectural works.In Frösakull – a house that Mathsson both designed and lived in Olsson has interacted with the remains of the house, and like Mathsson he has experimented with the house and its possibilities.
DESIGN ACT Socially and politically engaged design today – critical roles and emerging tactics’ presents and discusses contemporary design practices that engage with political and societal issues. Since 2009, the Iaspis project DESIGN ACT has been highlighting and discussing practices, in which designers have been engaging critically as well as practically in such issues. Itself an example of applied critical thinking and experimental tactics, the process behind the DESIGN ACT project is considered as a curatorial, participatory and open-ended activity. DESIGN ACT has developed through a website with an online archive; public seminars; presentations and installations.
The dissertation analyses the relation between architecture, design and consumption according to Peter Reyner Banham’s notion of an “aesthetics of expendability”. This issue is studied through such source materials as texts, buildings, competition entries and exhibitions produced from the early fifties to the early sixties. Banham’s perspective on consumption and architecture is subjective, which makes the notion of a “free consumer” central to his ideas. From his viewpoint, commercial popular culture, in contrast to the ideal of “good taste”, opens up for a “democratic design”.
Through relating the “aesthetics of expendability” to the shift in commodity production in the postwar period, the thesis demonstrates how Banham’s notions can be seen as a consequence of the logic of consumption. Jean Baudrillard’s notion of a system of objects forms the theoretical framework for the dissertation. Baudrillard perceives of consumption as an ideology, as the overarching structure, which serves as a complement to Banham’s point of view.
The re-organization of mass production signifies a shift from mass consumption to a differentiation of objects, which means that the individual consumer becomes the object of focus. Banham observes these changes early on, and his ideas can be said to have four themes: the shift in focus from the object to the subject, the notion of a non-hierarchic aesthetic field, a change in the professional role of the architect and a shift in the organization of architecture. The dissertation shows how these themes construct a complex web in relation to architecture, and how aesthetics works as a link between personal desires and the objective system of production.
Swedish twentieth- century architecture has almost become synonymous with modernism and 'the architecture of the Welfare state'. Far less is known about the architectural conceptions that came to pass in relation to societal changes at the beginning of the 1980s, which has been termed 'the end of the Welfare state or the Third Way'. Taking the Stockholm Globe Arena (1982-1989) and the concomitant building complex Globe City as a starting point, the article discusses Third-Way ideology and its relationship to architecture. The hypothesis is that architecture can be seen as a contributing agent in shaping the ideological shift that re-arranges late-twentieth century society, but also, that architecture responds to these shifts. The article focuses on two themes. First, how conceptions of the new public good were carried through and how new relationships between private and public changed the agenda for planning and building. These transformations are investigated in relation to the production process, whilst the second theme, the capitalisation of the social domain, is analysed in relation to architecture as a cultural and material object.
This essay outlines the development of a new strategy worked out by the Swedish Cooperation Union in relation to governmental consumption policies in the late 60s and early 70s. In these years the citizen became institutionalized as a consumer through the politicization of consumption, but this is also the period when new strategies of marketing, commercials and PR were evolving which could in fact be seen as the starting point for a more liberal consumer society in the 80s. This development will be discussed through the story of two large campaigns made by the Swedish Cooperation Union: the introduction of the “meubius strip” as the new image in 1967, and the introduction of the basic wardrobe 1972. Being both a producer of design and a regulator of how to consume design the Cooperation clearly spells out strategies for designing products as well as consumers.
Ett antal skilda läsningar presenteras av både vård- och konstinstitutionen i dagens Sverige. Genom den lokala historien kan vi följa det fysiska vårdrummet utveckling och hur institutionen alltmer har förlorat i betydelse. Essän lyfter fram love and devotions projekt utifrån frågeställningen om tingen "värde" och hur en förskjutning av status gett insyn i en vanligtvis mycket sluten verklighet. Är det först när vardagen blir "konst" som livsmiljön på en sluten psykiatrisk avdelning kan få ett eget värde?