Beyond Classical Resonances. Stockholm Mass-Housing Experiments Before the 1930

The goal of the 1930 Stockholm exhibition was to illustrate a national project around dwellings and household goods for the Swedish mass. Indeed, in the manifesto acceptera, the organisers masterminded by Gregor Paulsson, investigated the cultural situation (not limited to the Swedish one), the new society and the new requirements for housing, while proposing new lines of interventions. Such portray tended to overshadow previous achievements and provisions of the 1920s, as stressed in the manifesto by strictures of different intensity concerning particularly three aspects: employment of classical and traditional vocabulary in façades, arrangement in the form of large courtyard blocks and insufficient typological experimentation. The acceptera co-authors lamented how no one considered novel forms of housing, insisting that modern buildings were still governed to “don the garb of earlier cultures that will never suit them”. The housing complexes designed in the 1920s might appear alien to the functional principles and vocabulary of expression as they scathingly intended to demonstrate, but, in reality behind those resonances these have to be considered as having proto-modern qualities (Avermaete, 2015). Of a tepid tone instead are the comments about the 1920s experimentations in the perimeter of the courtyard block via the process of opening up and grouping in several blocks around green communal areas. Although these developments were not yet as much radical as those they envisaged, these “reveal a clear progression toward a totally new type of town plan”. Interventions designed before the 1930 are very poorly documented, missing comparative analyses, and practically unknown outside of Sweden. The methodology applied here comprises a systematic architectural exploration of archival items and dedicated literature, and analytical re-drawings with quantitative parameters as well. The study takes as central the relationship between urban morphology and dwelling type, because a residential district is a piece of city form. The graphic documents illustrate also the wealth of typological variations and first rational attempts of standardization.