the coming photos are from a trip to sweden and norway back in 2009 when our daughter agnes was about to turn three.
there was a small norwegian house I had wanted to see for years. the architect was forgotten outside his own country and his critical writings were at odds with the experiences and material longings of his oil-rich compatriots of today, but once he had provoked and inspired nordic modernists looking for a more authentic way to build and we were going to see for ourselves how he did that.
I had failed to find the address of the house, the name of the owner, and to contact the son of the long-deceased architect, so we decided to rent a campervan and just go. we knew the name of the peninsula it was on, how hard could it be?
well, after two days of smooth travelling, no accidents, and lots of singing and laughing in the car, we finally completed the four hour drive to gothenburg just north of copenhagen. this was the point when we realised that we weren't going to go very far, and not necessarily reach our destination.
but the trip had by then acquired a theme of its own, which I think we should call the architecture of the left. not all the houses we saw - and that we are going to see here - were by left-wing architects, but they were for the most part related, and together they form a tiny unscientific study into the idea that there is such a thing as an architecture of the left and that it is not identical with the well-established nordic modernism in general, but that it has its own traits and characteristics.
after that, we are going to return to copenhagen to visit the mother ship of left-wing architecture in my home town and look further into its roots. hopefully, some of the previously posted projects here, not least the works of hans christian hansen and the early works of vandkunsten, will fit in and we will be able to see them as part of a greater movement.
I am not sure if there is any left wing architecture being built today. even if the welfare state still lives on in scandinavia, we all refer to the market now and the wonderfully confrontational, polemical spirit of some of the people we will be looking at has been reduced to the stale idea of political correctness.
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bbb low-cost housing, kvistgård, elsinore, denmark.
architects: tegnestuen vandkunsten, 2004-2008.
the first group of houses we saw on our trip to sweden and norway were only about forty kilometres north of copenhagen. you can read more about the place here.
the use of cheap and unassuming materials, the somewhat romantic relationship to the surrounding landscape, the embrace of industrial production and a certain sense of community, these will all prove relevant in our study of the architecture of the left.
I had worked on this project of affordable housing for vandkunsten, and I like to tell myself that in a way I was briefly a part of this historical but forgotten movement of the left. but fact of the matter is that vandkunsten had abandoned their political aspirations decades earlier and that the plans were drawn up for a private developer working strictly on market terms. this is left wing architecture without the politics, after the fact, and we'll be seeing more of that.
we really went to kvistgård to find out if we were ready to move there ourselves. I already knew it was a great place to have kids, but our long drive confirmed a lingering fear that the daily commute could wreck our family. we would be spending a painful amount of our waking hours in queues on the motorway.
in the end, when we finally did move, we moved a bit closer to the centre of copenhagen. today, we are further from fresh air, greenery and low cost than ever. but school and kindergarten are two minutes by foot from the front door, shops too. my job is ten minutes by bike, and we don't own a car because we don't need one.
we could barely afford moving, but realised we could barely afford not to. planning is hardly rocket science; its means are mostly modest, the ambitions, well, pedestrian for lack of a better word. yet, how we fail. vandkunsten's kvistgård project demonstrates that the market can in fact supply very decent low-cost housing, but the need to find cheap land has torn it from any meaningful context.
our faith in the market has left municipalities relying on selling land on market terms for funding. this in turn leaves us without authorities strong enough to create or dictate that difficult, liveable whole in which good planning and quality of life come together. the market could not care less, or rather, it cannot afford to care. can we?
www.vandkunsten.com
www.jensthomasarnfred.dk
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moving slowly from copenhagen to norway in a rented campervan, we took the ferry on our first day from elsinore to helsingborg on the swedish side of the sound and found lewerentz' early workers' housing in eneborg.
eneborg's egnahem, workers' housing, helsingborg, skåne, sweden 1911-1918.
architect: sigurd lewerentz (1885-1975)
planning: torsten stubelius from 1907-1911, with sigurd lewerentz from 1911-1914.
(read more about it here.)
no one in their right mind would call lewerentz a left-wing architect, or a political architect for that matter, yet the first years of his career were devoted to affordable housing and he plays a natural part in our little narrative.
during his wanderjahre lewerentz had worked for three leading members of the german werkbund around the time of the initial planning of hellerau, the first german garden city. the werkbund was a ruskinian endevour to raise the quality of german craft, architecture and planning; not to gain a greater market share as would be the case today, but to improve all three and, ultimately, the lives of the germans. in the spirit of ruskin, aesthetics and morals were seen as interconnected, and housing was a key concern.
the lasting contribution of the werkbund to scandinavian architecture probably came from heinrich tessenow's writings and his enchanting drawings concerning modest housing. examples following tessenow's books closely were built around copenhagen in the early 1920's. they became popular with academics rather than the working class they were originally aimed at. this may in part explain why german werkbund housing, channeling english garden city ideals, was always a part of our left-wing architecture which in turn was always a suburban rather than an urban movement.
lewerentz' workers' housing in eneborg was a first. its influence is difficult to chart, since it has been all but forgotten, but it is worth noting that kay fisker, our own copenhagen master of regionalist brick housing, worked for lewerentz around the time it was conceived. it remains social housing to this day as I realised when I overheard an argument in serbo-croat on the stairs. how much of our later social housing can we expect to last us a hundred years?
Tags: lewerentz sigurd lewerentz stubelius torsten stubelius house building architect architecture eneborg egnahem social housing helsingborg sverige sweden arkitektur seier+seier creative commons CC
eneborg's egnahem, workers' housing, helsingborg, skåne, sweden 1911-1918.
architect: sigurd lewerentz (1885-1975)
planning: torsten stubelius from 1907-1911, with sigurd lewerentz from 1911-1914.
a look through the front door into the stairwell, great and very simple layering of space.
the dark building with the white interior since became something of a trope in nordic architecture.
the lewerentz set.
Tags: lewerentz sigurd lewerentz stubelius torsten stubelius house building architect architecture eneborg egnahem social housing helsingborg sverige sweden arkitektur seier+seier creative commons CC
eneborg's egnahem, workers' housing, helsingborg, skåne, sweden 1911-1918.
architect: sigurd lewerentz (1885-1975)
planning: torsten stubelius from 1907-1911, with sigurd lewerentz from 1911-1914.
from the stairwell.
the lewerentz set.
Tags: lewerentz sigurd lewerentz stubelius torsten stubelius stairs staircase house building architect architecture eneborg egnahem social housing helsingborg sverige sweden arkitektur seier+seier creative commons CC