State Phobia and the Reregulation of Architectural Bureaucracy in the 1980s: The Building Code as a Site of Negotiation

In Sweden around 1980 heated discussions on postmodernism, architectural norms and regulations framed the abandonment of the functionalist paradigm for new economies and new esthetic styles. The critique of regulations and rules in the early eighties not only dominated contemporary architectural debate, but also the criticism of the welfare from social, political, and economic perspectives. Moreover, it was not only the architects and planners who introduced new ideas into the built environment and sketched new imaginary futures: politicians, bureaucrats, and legal experts all came to revise their frameworks for arranging life and tested them on the site. Parallel to the esthetic turn towards postmodernism another, less remarked regulatory turn took place inside the bureaucracy of architecture, which is often labeled “deregulation” and marked by processes of neoliberalizations. Michel Foucault identified the excessive attacks on the state and argued that the “state phobia” was a symptom of a “crisis of governing” and not of the stateitself. Thearchitecturalcritiqueofregulationsandbuildingcodesintheearlyeighties became an explosive societal force when it fed into the critique of the welfare state.

Drawing on the Swedish turn towards neoliberalism, managed by the state, this paper discusses a proposal in 1982 from the Swedish National Board of Urban Planning to deregulate the Swedish Building Code (Svensk Byggnorm, SBN) that implied a move from prescriptive regulations towards performance based regulations. Laws, norms, and standards, just like lived space, are in this paper discussed as sites for organizing life that express the shifts in how human life and society ought to be governed and experienced. The Swedish Building Codes, are prescriptions that clarify the law (the Building Ordinance) and pin down what it means when broadly formulated political aims meet practice. The paper discusses, it will be discussed how the Codes closely mirrored architectural discourse, while the legislation was instigated by politicians and consequently owed more to economic and political issues. The paper will demonstrate how the Codes could be understood as a soft field in continuous flux, where resistance and affirmation commingled through negotiation and deliberation, creating a politics of consensus that prepared for coming changes to the law. This demonstrates the interdependencies between architectural practice and policy making embedded in the practice of regulation.