Production of Architecture: Space for the Middle Class People

In Kafka’s unfinished novel The Man How Disappeared, published posthumously as Amerika in 1928, we come to visit a familiar and still somewhat uncanny place. Tiny aero planes shearing through the sky above a hundred thousand seat sport stadium, brass bands playing in illuminated hotel foyers, an Italian delegation outside La Guardia immigration hall all wearing cowboy boots. A whole universe of impressions of a world never visited. From a European perspective America was at the time Kafka wrote about it, but never visited, still understood as a mythical place. Embraced as a land of dreams and promise, it was close and simultaneous but just out of reach, mediated through gossip, speculation, images, stories, movies, posters and whispers.

These types of unchartered territories or surfaces for our projection of utopia played an important role in structuring our societies’ notion of place. Today we witness how such symbolic spaces are being transformed, islands of potentiality seem to continually be shrinking, becoming more and more striated and inscribed in an increasingly tighter and tighter network of political protocols and economic strategies. Deliberate or not, an over-arching project for an emerging alternative architectural practice would seem to be to discuss the control of the utopian dimension of society. What role does architecture and the architect play in this discussion about the future of public spaces?

When studying the material for Norra Djurgårdsstaden (Stockholm Royal Seaport), with its approximately ten thousand apartments and thirty thousand office spaces, it becomes clear that the vision laid out by the city planning office has taken all kinds of economical, environmental and technical considerations. However, there is very little said about what kind of social life that could be anticipated. On the website it says, ”inspiring opportunities and quality of life will abound throughout the area”, but what exactly does this mean?

Around 120 years ago the Folkets Hus (house for the people) movement spread through Sweden, the growing working-class came together and opened public meeting points in existing buildings. This rose from a need for community gatherings and venues for culture in a rapidly changing political landscape. In the beginning this centers were not allowed to be located in the city centers for the fear of revolutionary activities. Later on these Folkets Hus became more and more accepted and they were often specially designed for their purposes.

What would be the content of a contemporary Folkets Hus and what would it look like in our political, economical and social environment?

This course is a collaboration between Tor Lindstrand and Erik Wingquist from Testbedstudio.