While each application addressed the theme, Our Living Environment, proposals covered a wide array of topics focused on visions for tackling challenges in built and non-urban environments. An international jury comprising Liza Fior (London), Maria Lind (Berlin), Åsa Dahlin (Uppsala) och Dan Hill (Stockholm), and chaired by ArkDes Director Kieran Long and Research Coordinator Ann Maudsley, collectively assessed proposals during a seminar at ArkDes in January 2020.

Below is an outline of the three 2020 ArkDes Fellows and a link to their projects selected by the jury.

Andrea Luciani

Re-living (in) the lost modern utopia. The global village of Svappavaara

“During my career, my research has ranged from the analysis of the indoor climate in historic buildings and museums, to the assessment of the impacts of different energy retrofitting strategies on built heritage values, to the conservation of modern architecture. Since moving to northern Sweden in 2017, I have broadened my interests to the impacts of resource extraction activities in local mining towns and to how these structural changes are affecting the preservation and management of built heritage.

At Politecnico di Milano I participated in the development of the conservation plan for De Carlo’s Collegi in Urbino. During my time at Luleå University of Technology I have taken part in the Swedish national research program on energy efficiency in historic buildings Spara och Bevara and I am currently leading the pilot project 2Best on the sustainable long-term management of building stocks with cultural significance. I have also studied and discussed the concept of resilience for the preservation of built heritage.

The proposed project starts from my background as a building conservator and from my interest in the preservation of 20th century architecture, while the choice of Svappavaara as a case study is a result of my recent research on the impacts of resource extraction activities on the historic environments of northern Sweden.”

Juryns reflection
“A highly ambitious, interdisciplinary and exploratory applied in-situ research project focusing on a place with complex histories and futures. It captures key societal, architectural, heritage and economic challenges; migration, diversity, identity and an understanding of how to excavate and reinterpret value in earlier exemplary Swedish architecture and urbanism”.

Katja Rosenlind

Intention and effect: A study of official Swedish in the planning process

Since 2012, Katja Rosenlind has edited the kind of public documents which are the subject of her research project. At the Real Estate Administration of the City of Stockholm – the body tasked with advising the City’s politicians on property matters and implementing decisions linked to the domain – Katja has ensured the quality of the written information upon which political decisions are made. With the project Intention and effect – which studies the field between language, architecture and urban environment – Katja hopes to contribute to a deeper understanding on how the authority’s way to communicate could be developed, in order to create better conditions for a more collaborative planning process that fosters real inclusiveness at the same time as efficient progress takes place. Katja is a trained curator from Stockholm University, with a master’s in art.

Juryns reflection
“This is an urgent and unique, contextually rich project that uses a critical discursive approach to address the role language plays in producing political and public documents, and how that translates into design processes and built realities”.

Camilla Schlyter

The art of wood building and its place in a sustainable society

“Since 2012, I have been researching the future possibilities in wood building art with RISE / Division Built Environment /Building Technology/Wood building and housing / and the Nordic wood building industry. My point of departure is knowledge in wood construction, sustainable forestry and industrial processes within the wood industry in the Nordic countries, Russia, India and the alp region. On behalf of SFV, I am a house architect for the Ethnographic Museum and in this context I work for the World Culture Museum. I have assignments as a wooden building and heritage expert in various contexts and I hold lectures and debate on the subject.

Together with RISE, LTU and the Swedish wood industry, I am part of an ongoing multi-year research project “Facades of the city” with funding from Bioinnovationen/Vinnova/Formas/Swedish Energy Agency. The project is about product development of building systems and the art of wood building in wood-based materials and material research where the goal is to design, and through smart manufacturing, develop a sustainable building industry. Innovation and product development are combined with traditional wood craftmanship and industrial manufacturing, where focus is on design and architecture, quality, traceability and life cycle analysis. Design knowledge has proven to be an important engine in this process.”

Juryns reflection
“This is a fundamentally important project – for practice and sustainable living environments – with building in wood, thoroughly and at scale. It ties into one of the biggest opportunities we face in Sweden and further afield. It proposes a model of participatory knowledge production that suggests new directions for ArkDes’ role in contemporary debates”.