1. |
- Andersson, Lena Stina, 1978-
(author)
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The Entrance, the Floor, and the Tile : Unfolding Material Histories at Museum Renovation Sites in Berlin, Stockholm, and London
- 2024
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- What can building materials and renovation processes tell us about museums? This dissertation addresses processes of architectural and material change within national museums in northern Europe; it also provides a material history of the museum and the renovation site, through an analysis of the relationship between these places. Renovation is used as a general concept for material change, which includes many different actions. The research was structured through three case studies in Berlin, Stockholm, and London, each a delimited architectural and material renovation project in which actors from the construction industry, museum institutions, as well as global actors meet. This research has aimed to unfold reasons behind why national museum buildings change, exploring museum practices, international agreements, commodity chains, local development plans and ambitions, and hidden labour and labourers—processes which take place over decades and even centuries and are motivated by a range of global, national, and local ambitions. The first case that I discuss is the Museumsinsel in Berlin, and the Pergamonmuseum entrance in the period following the Second World War; a time of material destruction, evolving internationalisation, and global governance within the museum sector. The second case lies in the renovation work that was conducted in the 1960s at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, and more specifically a floor and the necessary changes to labour that this work facilitated. The third and last case study lies in an analysis of the trajectories of building materials and their commodity chains at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. Here, I examine the significant roles played by building materials throughout the history of this museum, finally focusing on the tile produced for the Exhibition Road Courtyard. The research employed historiographical methods such as microhistory and archival research, as well as ethnographic methods and site visits. Through the dissertation, I argue for the need for new architectural histories that address renovation in new ways; I also propose that, if better and more critical descriptions and more informed architectural decisions are to be made, renovation must be studied as a process that includes institutional, historical, and material activities and agencies.
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2. |
- Boric, Bojan
(author)
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The Ghost Boulevard
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In 1947, Soviet architect Alexey Shchusev developed a large-scale urban renewal project for the post-war city of Chisinau, the then-capital of the SSR of Moldova. Part of the master plan was the construction of Boulevard D. Cantemir, which would cut through the city’s historic fabric. Only two sections of the boulevard were built before the project was abandoned. During the period of radical institutional political and economic shift towards a market economy in the early 1990s, initiatives to build the boulevard re-emerged through red lines, zoning documents, and planning regulations. The lack of political consensus caused planning paralyses over the city, creating a legal void where different actors competed to appropriate spaces. The power of the red lines has prompted various kinds of materializations of the boulevard. The real battle takes place in the sphere of the imaginary, and memory management is one of the main planning tools. Exploring the trajectory of the “Ghost Boulevard,” I reveal conflicting political and economic agendas and the many forces that constitute complex processes of planning today.
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3. |
- Fanni, Maryam, Associate Professor, et al.
(author)
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“You Can Simply Say No” : Narrating the effects and affects of Danish and Swedish housing in crisis
- 2023
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Stigmatizing narratives are now justifying major changes to the built environment, as we see again and again in large-scale, postwar housing estates all over Europe. Negative narratives and representations support renewal and demolition projects that often do not take residents’ views into account. Whose cultures and heritage will be privileged, and based on what narratives?This is our call to action: to locate alternative means and words and stories of describing the same neighbourhoods to create a messy, yet more diverse and hopeful perspective through the missing scale of individual residents and groups' experiences.In this paper, we present residents’ own narratives – as they respond to, fight against, and reimagine recent, repressive housing policies in Sweden and Denmark. The policies claim to solve urban segregation in areas built during the 1960s and 1970s and give them the stigmatizing names ‘parallel societies’, ‘ghettos’ or ‘vulnerable areas’.
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4. |
- Brolund de Carvalho, Sara, Adjunkt, 1974-, et al.
(author)
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Solidarity Report : Two Witness Seminars on Danish and Swedish Welfare Housing in Crisis
- 2024. - 1
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Book (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This report documents the conversations that occurred during two seminars, “Caring for Plans: Narratives of the Parallel Society Package”, held at the Copenhagen Architecture Festival CAFx, October 17, 2021,1 and “Solidarity in Times of Repressive Politics: A Seminar on the Effects of the Concepts ‘Particularly/Vulnerable Areas’”, held at Folkets Husby, October 15, 2022, in the Stockholm suburb of Husby.Narratives about the “failure” of large-scale housing from the postwar decades are now guiding major physical, social, and economic changes in neighborhoods all over Europe. Denmark and Sweden have long been known for their welfare-state systems and benevolent housing policies. However, in recent years, both countries have enacted new national “anti-segregation” measures that call for major physical and social changes to neighborhoods built in the 1960s and 1970s. In these processes, the opinions of local communities and residents of the neighborhoods have seldom been heard. By working with “witness seminars,” a method adopted from oral history, it is our aim to foreground residents’ perspectives and how they have enacted solidarity and collective resistance to these measures.
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5. |
- Brolund de Carvalho, Sara, Adjunkt, 1974-, et al.
(author)
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‘You can simply say no’ : Narrating the effects and affects of Danish and Swedish housing in crisis
- 2024
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In: Radical Housing Journal. - : Radical Housing Journal. - 2632-2870. ; 6:1, s. 201-219
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- 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.
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6. |
- Kajita, Heidi Svenningsen, et al.
(author)
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Between Technologies of Power and Notions of Solidarity : A Response to the Danish Ghetto Plan and Swedish Vulnerable Areas Documents
- 2022
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In: Architectures of Dismantling and Restructuring. - Zürich, Switzerland : Lars Müller Publishers. ; , s. 148-159
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Recently, a dramatic paradigm shift in notions of solidarity has occurred within Nordic welfare states. With this transformation, the universal notion of welfare for all, which has guided numerous welfare policies in the Nordic countries since World War II, is losing ground. We study the expression of this shift in official, government-sponsored documents that support and recommend the reshaping and redefinition of social housing estates in Denmark and municipal estates in Sweden.
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7. |
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Life Among Urban Planners : Practices, Professionalism, and Expertise in the Making of the City
- 2020
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Editorial collection (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Urban planners project the future of cities. As experts, they draft visions of places and times that do not yet exist, prescribing the tools to be used to achieve those visions. Their choices can determine how a city will merge its public transit and automobile traffic or how it will meet a demand for thousands of new dwelling units as quickly and with as little avoidable damage as possible. Life Among Urban Planners considers planning professionals in relation to the social contexts in which they operate: the planning office, the construction site, and even in the confrontations with those affected by their work. What roles do planners have in shaping the daily practices of urban life? How do they employ, manipulate, and alter their expertise to meet the demands asked of them? The essays in this volume emphasize planners' cultural values and personal assumptions and critically examine what their persistent commitment to thinking about the future means for the ways in which people live in the present and preserve the past.Life Among Urban Planners explores the practices and politics of professional city-making in a wide selection of geographical areas spanning five continents. Cases include but are not limited to Bangkok, Bogotá, Chicago, Naimey, Rome, Siem Reap, Stockholm, and Warsaw. Examining the issues raised around questions of expertise, participation, and the tension between market and state forces, contributors demonstrate how certain planning practices accentuate their specific relationship to a place while others are represented to a global audience as potentially universal solutions. In presenting detailed and intimate portraits of the everyday lives of planners, the volume offers key insights into how the city interacts with the world.
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8. |
- Mack, Jennifer, Associate Professor
(author)
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A "Border Concept" : Scandinavian Public Space in the 21st Century
- 2020
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In: Architecture of Coexistence. - Berlin : Architangle. ; , s. 172-183
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In July 2000, the Öresund Bridge opened between Sweden and Denmark, symbolizing the new borderless Europe and allowing a regional way of life. In 2015, this same bridge instead became the site of intense xenophobic attention. When asylum seekers fleeing the Syrian Civil War began crossing from Denmark to Sweden en masse, the border was hastily closed, clarifying that – for some – migrant publics were never included in the imaginary of this “public” transit space. In this chapter, I examine three new public spaces in Sweden and Denmark that – in contrast to the bridge – explicitly include migrants as part of the public both creating and using them. Traveling, like the migrant, from arrival to settlement, I begin with Sandi Hilal’s Living Room for refugees in the northern Swedish city of Boden, where the right to hospitality is reclaimed in a private space made public. I then investigate Disorder Collective’s renovation of two public squares in a stigmatized Malmö neighborhood, where migrant children are included in an interactive design process. Crossing to Copenhagen, I conclude with Superkilen, which relies on the “extreme participation” of diverse local residents to create a park. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the refugee as a “border concept,” I argue that, as designers and migrants collaborate in these works, they also redraw the borders of both publics and public spaces for the Scandinavian 21st century.
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9. |
- Mack, Jennifer, Associate Professor
(author)
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Breaking the Rules, Making the Ruler : Syriac Single-Family Homes and the Limits of Welfare State Planning
- 2020
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In: Life Among Urban Planners. - Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press. ; , s. 137-159
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Swedish town of Södertälje is arguably the capital of the diasporic Syriac Christians, who have arrived from across the Middle East for decades. While Syriacs have usually resided in standardized apartments in high rises, this paper examines the controversial, Syriac-dominated neighborhoods of custom-designed, single-family houses now under construction, drawing on ethnographic research among both planners and residents. While Swedish planners have long imagined immigrants to have a valuable “voice” during renovations of older neighborhoods, Syriac participation in new areas has radically exceeded such expectations, blurring the boundary between resident and planner. Here, both residents and planners navigate the limits of the plan, where not only neighborhood aesthetics, but also questions of nationalism, class, and professionalism are at stake.
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