Lagom Arkitektur - by Carl Edward Baker

Vällingby

Thursday, 14. September 2006, 09:42:57

Thanks to Jeff Ottem who told me that I should visit Vällingby.

From Wikipedia:

Vällingby is a suburban district in West Stockholm, Sweden. Vällingby was planned in the early 1950's.

In 1954, the Stockholm New Town of Vällingby was inaugurated. It soon became world famous as a unique, well-planned city district serviced by the underground metro. The ultra modern facilities at the Centre, and the white houses in green park-like surroundings became a symbol of the Swedish middle-way Welfare state.

Vällingby was the first ABC suburb, which is an acronym for Arbete - Bostad - Centrum, or Work - Housing - Centre. The residents were supposed to work, live and do their everyday shopping there, and only have to take the subway to central Stockholm in case they wanted to use the commodities of a city, such as cultural events or specialised shopping.

I went to Vällingby yesterday. The 'downtown' area, which is all pedestrian, sits on top of the subway/ train station. The transportation systems integrate exceptionally well into the scheme; the T station itself separates the cars and buses from the main pedestrian plaza but in such a way that all transportation options are clearly defined and easy to get to. The scale of the main plaza is really well done, with 1 and 2 story commercial buildings immediately adjacent to the plaza surrounded by a gradual building up of scale around it, and it feels that you are in a small and well protected valley with the landscape opening up to garden-city style housing below you; beyond that are playing fields and the lake.

The city center has been recognized as a 'historic' district, such that no invasive new structures can be built. They are building a massive canopy over a portion of a secondary pedestrian retail street, and since the movie theater outgrew it's usefulness and needed four new screens, they dug below grade to put the new theatres under the plaza so as not to disrupt the general scale and massing of the place.

One comment before I forget: for some reason accessibility for handicapped and the elderly seems to be nonexistent. This is strange considering the general welfare state politics and quest for equality that typically characterizes Sweden. It is very difficult to find elevators, large thresholds abound, and vertical distances between plazas can be significant. I had noticed this throughout my travels so far, but in Väallingby it became more obvious as I could actually see elderly people struggling to get down to the main plaza. Strangely enough, ramps for baby carriages are all over the place along the stairways; at first we thought these were for wheelchairs and thought it was an incredibly risky slope for downward travel and a true test of upper body strength for upward movement, but someone mentioned that people would be outraged if carriage ramps were not in place and the government was very responsive to this. So they modify everything for the baby carriages but nothing for the elderly...

They got a lot right at Vällingby; but are still adding to it. There isn't a lot of high-rise construction here as compared to much of the later MilljonProgrammet housing, but there is quite a bit of low to mid-rise construction clustered around smaller parks. This is a pretty typical grouping of housing (I couldn't get a good shot of the whole thing, but proportions of the cluster were really well done):

And some of the taller buildings:

One of the fascinating things to me is that they are apparently doing suburban infill, as opposed to urban infill, here. I never really thought about that possibility. But they are adding some really great housing, both low-rise and towers, to some of the open space areas right in next to the original buildings; They aren't taking away any of the main public open space, just filling in here and there, with buildings like these:

The one I was most interested in was this one:

It comes off in the photo as much more orange than it actually is. A nice woman noticed me snooping around and let me in this building to see her flat, which was a generous 2 bedrooms. I think I was most interested in it because of the way it dealt with the single-loaded corridor/ motel-style layout. The intermediate zone between the walkway and the entrances was about 6' wide, enough that people could both feel some privacy onto this space and have a 'porch'/ barbecue area. The woman that I spoke with said that privacy wasn't an issue here and that it never felt like people were right outside your apartment. Plus, everyone knew each other and felt quite comfortable and to an extent felt like part of a community. The openings over the porch areas are topped with large bubble skylights, and the 2nd floor is cut out underneath so that light moves down to the ground floor's porch area:

Finally, I thought the entries to the original 50's buildings were excellent, and I've added it to my collection of 'entry' photos:

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The East Docklands and Malmö- New Housing in Old Cities

Monday, 11. September 2006, 12:21:57

Borneo Sporenberg/ East Docklands, Amsterdam NL

The second stop on my tour of Industrial-Harbor-Turned-Dense-Residential-Development was the East Docklands in Amsterdam. The landfill harbor consists of a series of rectangular penninsulas that begin just on the periperhy of the old town. We rented bikes and rode there in about 10 minutes from the heart of the old city. The most fun part of the whole trip actually was biking through Amsterdam, it is a completely different experience to get out of people-watching mode and join the throngs. You have to get used to the rules of the road quickly though, because those moms wheeling their children and groceries around can be incredibly aggressive.

What I wasn’t expecting here was the sheer size of this redevelopment and the density of new housing there, and as I was only there for a day I wasn’t able tosee it all. I spent most of my time biking around two of the penninsulas, which are connected by two iconic red steel bridges that many of you may have seen, and which are moslty low-rise development. Some other parts of the project are much larger mid-rise apartment stlye buildings.

I didn’t have a map of the specific area with me, but the reading of the master plan is pretty clear from the perspective of the pedestrian; most of the housing is 3 story rowhouse/townhouse style units that run parralel to the waterfront edge. In some areas these townhouses are all individuated, and in some they are a part of a larger rowhouse mass. These mostly continuous bands of building are broken on each island by a massive apartment block (perimeter-style building around a courtyard) that is at an angle to the predominant geometry, and it is at these points where the geometry is broken that open space is more available and somewhat developed. The building below can be found in the plan below that; it is the large blue rectangle on the top pier that is off-axis to pier.

This plan of the project is courtesy of the net:

The responsible party for the master plan is West 8, based out of Rotterdam and doing interesting things all over the world, and their website below looks like it is all in Dutch but quite a bit of it is actually in english if you click on projects, etc.:

http://www.west8.nl/

A lot of innovative designs were tried here in terms of space planning for individual rowhouse units. Parking had to be included within the footprint of the units (very little surface parking was provided for in the master plan) which has led many people to the adoption of car elevators/lifts to store both their cars within the limits of their plot and within the space typically used for only one vehicle. Even on a weekday, both cars were parked in many of these units, a true measure of how much people here bicycle. Another challenge to the architects was that each home had to have 30%-50% void within the entire envelope of the lot, to provide for parking, daylight access, and open space for each unit. This leads to some interesting sectional characteristics:

Because of this open space requirement within the units, open space allotment for the whole neighborhood was minimized and more space was given over to units, allowing for a density of 40 units/acre which in low-rise housing is a substantial achievment. For some more information care of the master planners on the development of the project and more discussion of the 30%-50% requirement, click here:

http://www.west8.nl/W8_Projects/S/S038_Borneo-Sporenburg.html

I wasn’t able to get access to any units, which is unfortunate, but as the Dutch are generally not too private, with large windows opening directly onto the street at eye level, I had my share of glimpses inside. A very good case study in the following PDF link describes the project and includes a great drawing showing the sectional characteristics of one solution so you get and idea of the complexity of the unit designs. After opening the PDF link, which is a discussion on housing types, skip to page 11:

http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/09/04713193/0471319309.pdf

The architecture and construction of this entire area definitely provokes reaction, for myself a really positive one due to the quality of the architecture. The friends I was travelling with, 2 non-architects and 1 landscape architect, (though all of them opinionated!) were less impressed. I think I was tending to look at how certain building issues had been resolved or overall building form and composition, whereas their overall impression of the place left them cold. One thing we all agreed on: too much brick.

Overall, for dense housing I think the units provide an exceptional amount of the type of space that makes real living more possible, and certainly are a better model than US condominium/townhouse development where monotony prevails and valuable space is often wasted. People have the space within their limits to individuate their residences and have some sense of autonomy, to have privacy (even though as I've said the Dutch are not too concerned with privacy), access to daylight and air, and useable outdoor space where you can wash your car or fix your bike or create a vegetable garden all within the confines of your rowhouse and without extending beyond the building limits. It's easy to be critical of the open space around the buildings, but there has been a tradeoff where public outdoor space has been given up (and even ignored) for personal outdoor space, and it could be argued that this tradeoff is OK in this circumstance, but why not try for both?

One article about this project begins describing the “interplay between architecture and void”, in what is a true case of architectural rhetoric being mis-applied; there is no 'interplay' between the architecture and the void, only a stark distinction between the two. The very delineated environment mostly showcases the architecture to the detriment of the open space. Really wonderful ‘interplays betwen archtiecture and void’, both subtle and not so subtle, abound nearby so it is all the more obvious that this isn’t one. It makes me think of criticism that I got on my thesis’ master plan, where my open space gestures were undeveloped. The ‘voids’ in this project are just that: voids. Except for the canal that the individual townhouses are on, the spaces are not nice places to be in, even considering that the Dutch do live differently then we do. (By this I mean that there is a lack of formality to the living environment and a different understanding of public space. While on the one hand Dutch living is remarkably tidy, outdoor space is truly a realm of everyone and so if you want to take over a spot for a party or to do a building project, then it’s more than acceptable. You can park your bicycle wherver you want to, and you can put flower pots extending well beyond your front door and people do not consider this a problem, such that the sidewalk becomes stoop, park, front yard, barbecue pit, workspace, etc., but all without infringing on other people’s lives - people don't generally leave their messes behind them).

It was said by the master planners that the the quay’s presence and history as working piers were to be reinforced, and this is certainly the case; the whole neighborhood feels and looks exactly like it was dropped onto a formerly industrial pier, with no ’soft’ access to the water. More likely is that the re-working of these piers would have opened a massive can of worms and added huge sums to the costs of redevelopment, and so it was decided not to intervene with them in any way. The original pier walls down to the water, which are quite high, don’t allow the water to have any relationship besides that of a barrier to the residents, except in the portion of housing where the individual townhouses are directly on the water and the old canal type is referenced (another exception is when the Dutch mothers encourage their young children to climb out on the outside of one of the red steel bridges, 35'-40' above the water, to get to a rope swing). The proportions of the waterway in between the two main penninsulas isn’t quaint or intimate as it is in old town, and is quite unappealing as a body of water. It does look like people are starting to moor houseboats in this quay, and these do add a more lively and organic contrast to the rigid geometry of the waterfront. It seems strange that more marina functions weren’t planned for here, but maybe that is in the works. Interestingly enough, retail was kept out of the development due to an agreement with a nearby shopping center, and while cottage industries are allowed and encouraged (all ground level floor-to-floor heights were required to be tall to accept some type of storefront use and be adaptable in the future) there are no cafes or shopping areas to activate this waterfront.

Again, in some respects, this needs to be kept in context of the Dutch culture and also within the greater understanding that old town Amsterdam, with more than enough cultural bounty to go around, is a stone’s throw away. So in some repects it is a suburb of Amsterdam that you can walk to, and the ’activated’ retail street or neighborhood center is (arguably) not missed. In some ways the city does seem to be trying to tackle only the probelm of dense housing directly in proximity to old town, and not the bigger issues of creating a truly new and autonomous neighborhood; maybe that’s OK when you are so close to Amsterdam proper?

Zandvoort Housing

In the small Dutch coastal village of Zandvoort, we saw this:

This project took great advantage of a sloped site and included a lot of private open space for the tenants.

Malmö/ Vastra Hamnen/ Bo01 (Boo-noll-ett)

Back to Sweden: in the 1920’s and 30’s, the Swedish government took an active interest in subsidizing housing construction and the development of better residential construction techniques, as well as ’better’ housing design (floor plans, efficiency, access to light and air) for the masses. This is similar to a lot of social housing programs that were popular at the time throughout Europe. Housing exhibitions became a popular way to demonstrate these new techniques, and there has since been a long history of housing expos in Sweden. There is a constant refinement of mass housing happening here, and discussion about it; any random person that I talk to here knows all about the history of housing and all of the subtle nuances behind it when I tell them what my interests are. Housing has been, for so long, a political issue that is always before the voters; it’s used as taxes are in the US as an issue to rally behind. I’ve heard that Sweden did not escape the 80’s unscathed, however, and that housing built during that period was of low quality and somewhat unsightly, and most people don’t want to live in it.

There is a really great (and huge) stock of functionalist apartment blocks here from the 30’s-50’s that was a result of the government’s pressure on developers to build high quality housing, both materially and in terms of quality of life. These photos are of my functionalist neighborhood, Gardet, though these buildings can be seen all over Stockholm:

The architecture museum in Stockholm has a great exhibit on the different unit types developed over the years and there is a real line that you can follow through the rationale of what housing types were developed and why. There is also the (in some ways infamous) MilljonProgrammet housing stock that tends to be in the suburbs and, while generally of high quality, was developed around garden city ideals (probably too quickly), which left them isolated and somewhat lifeless. The MilljonProgramet was a project conceived of by the government and begun in the mid 1960’s to create 1 million housing units in 10 years throughout Sweden, where 100,000 units would be built each year for ten years. Immigrant populations and poorer folk have moved into some of these and so there is a general understanding of them by Stockholmites as ’ghettos’, and some of them were never inhabited because they were too isolated, etc. Keep in mind that the term ‘ghetto’ here (I hesitate to use the term) is hardly what we in the states would call this type of neighborhood. The fact is, however, that they do keep certain populations whether economically or ethnically different, isolated. They are also generally centered around one food shopping market chain and a pub or two, which makes them feel a bit like big-brother company towns. The government has put a large amount of effort recently into re-working these places to be viable, with the recognition that much of what was built was well-built and deserves the effort. There was a recent expo on one of these neighborhoods, called Tensta-Bo, and you can read a little bit about it at the link below (though most of the site is in Swedish, there is an english summary in the upper right, and to see photos to get an idea of the place, click on Bostäder which means ’place to live’/dwelling). In this expo/demonstration, some of the units were restored to their original look including furnishings, some were shown as they are used today, and some were reconstructed to show how they could be adapted to both todays and future uses.

http://www.tenstabo06.se/index1.htm

Fast-forward from that discussion to the mid-1990’s, when the organization in Sweden responsible for looking at housing development began to initiate a new housing expo, originally intended to coincide with the year 2000. The city of Malmö, at the Southern tip of Sweden and directly across from Copenhagen, won the competition for the site and the project eventually became known as Bo01.

There is a lot of behind-the-scenes intrigue for this project if you can wade through the hope, optimism, conflict, deadlines, and red tape that is behind all of it (which I hope to do justice to in my next post). For the less interested, suffice it to say that it was successful on some levels, and usuccessful on some levels, and yet has created a very much alive new district and has breathed a lot of new interest and investment into the city of Malmö. Malmö is a great city by the way, with a very lively old town and more ’funkiness’ in style than is typical in Sweden (based on it’s proximity to Copenhagen). My next blog post will primarily discuss Bo01.

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A Classic, Hammarby Sjostad, and Lagom

Sunday, 13. August 2006, 09:25:55

Stockholm is more of a gem than I had imagined. The city reveals itself and unfolds as you look more closely at it. It is certainly a beautiful place upon first glance, but nothing is overstated and it doesn't immediately knock you out; you are rewarded the more closely you examine it. There is a 2-dimensionality to the facades of many of the buildings, such that when there is an expressed detail or some relief or expression your eye finds it and examines it.

All of this makes a lot of sense in relation to the Swedish principle of lagom. Lagom means just the right amount. It is a principle of moderation, but not in a way that means an average, or having to do with asceticism or withholding; my understanding is that it is that sweet spot where everything is just right. There are other subtleties to the term, and it can be thought of as a repression of expression as well, where anything extreme is frowned upon.

You can read more about Lagom at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom

Skogskyrkogården
We've been rewarded with incredible weather here, and I am so thankful that I was permitted to begin this scholarship in the beginning of August. We traveled to Asplund and Lewerentz's Woodland Cemetery on a hot, clear day. The Monument Hall sheltered us from the sun for quite a while before we decided we should move on and see the rest of the grounds and buildings, but mostly we were captivated by the details and materials of construction (simple, unexpected), the proportions of the spaces, the joining of masses (also simple and unexpected), and the wonderful idiosyncracies of all of those things.

This place is a masterpiece in many obvious and not so obvious ways, but one thing that seemed odd to us was the incessant noise of all of the maintenance, and the fact that the design of the grounds would include a need for so much day to day work; it hadn't occurred to me that all of the spaces in the groves and amongst the graves were actually manicured to some degree, (I guess I was expecting less lawn, or an actual return of portions of the cemetery to nature) and while it was visually bucolic there was a frenetic energy to the place. I'm sure that on weekends and holidays it is a peaceful place, and we will be going out there as the seasons change to see it in a different light. I have a lot more to learn about it. We didn't get inside Lewerentz's chapel because of a ceremeony, and in fact, most of the chapels were being used while we were there. We got to the Woodland Chapel just after a service, and I think the small crematorium on that site was in use. Fortunately I don't have a scanner, so I can't post the bad watercolor I did of the woodland chapel, whose proportions are really great and seem simple but are difficult to grasp entirely.

See some photos here: http://my.opera.com/Lagom_Arkitektur/albums/

Hammarby Sjostad

Hammarby Sjostad contains "The Best Environmental Solutions in Stockholm", the brochure proclaims. It is a huge re-development of formerly indusrial property into high-density housing within the city.

For those of you not aware, Stockholm is located on an archipelago (they can't actually agree on how many islands are in it, I've heard 2,000 and I've heard 24,000), but there is water everywhere, some fresh (sweetwater), some brackish, and the Baltic Sea edge. Hammarby is located just across a narrow lake from Sodermalm, which as I understand it was the first island that was developed as part of the city after Gamlastan (old town). The point is that it's very close to the center of the city and is considered central but is still separated from it and requires a 10-15 minute train ride from the city center.

When it is all built, it will have 10,000 units for around 25,000 residents. At this time, about 1/3rd of it is complete. Hammarby was created around the idea that a huge infrastructure of sustainable systems could be laid down upon which a more normal-looking housing development could be created. In this way (a very lagom approach), people would not think of it as weird or outside the mainstream, but the city would be incorporating more radical sustainable technologies into a more typical lifestyle. No reason to rock the boat and create something radical looking. There was a big push to make this a demonstration to the whole world, as Stockholm made a bid for hosting the Olympics.

On a subjective note; I really liked the aesthetics of Hammarby. Maybe because in the US 'safe' and 'sellable' housing means neo-traditional to some extent, whereas in Stockholm 'safe' and 'sellable' means neo-modernist. Anyway, I should form a more articluate discussion about this, but some younger architects that I met at a party were bummed out at the lost opportunity to do something unique and edgy here, and feel that the project is something of a disgrace aesthetically. I'm not sure what they would rather have- more of Calatrava's Turning Torsos? But I'll poll some more architects and try to have a better discussion about this later. I do understand their point to some extent, because so much of the housing here comes in the form of plain and undistinguishable rectangular masses that are whites or beiges or creams.

The city of Stockholm has a pretty involved set of regulations concerning sustainable building; check out their Environmental Program (link below), where they cover everything from building materials to environmental transportation to energy use. For example, they discourage using any copper piping in any plumbing systems or copper roofing on new buildings because of the amount of copper that ends up in the Baltic Sea due to its use. It's very comprehensive and indicates the seriousness with which they believe there are viable alternatives. If you get some time, read through it:

http://www.miljobarometern.stockholm.se/default.asp?mp=EP

I believe that Hammarby Sjostad went or aimed far beyond the city's sustainable goals.

I don't understand yet exactly how it works, but apparently most of the heating for all the buildings in Stockholm comes from a central heating plant powered by the combustible waste of all the city's residents. It seems like it would be a very complicated system- but hopefully I'll have time to research how it works. Hammarby is tied into this system, so that their combustibles contribute to the overall system.

There are systems for recovering energy from waste, as well as a number of experimental systems with treating the waste water at Hammarby. The system that performs the best will eventually be implemented for the whole project. Recovered biogas from the residents' waste is used as fuel for cars and busses. (All city busses run on biogas or ethanol). All surface water runoff is treated locally before discharging into the lake, and there are many water features on the property that make use of this runoff. There is a vacuum system at Hammarby for all of the residents' garbage; people place their trash and recyclables in large tubes that take their trash to a central place, and then the garbage truck plugs into the system and sucks all the garbage out. Residents do quite a bit of sorting of their trash and recyclables, but there is generally a place for everything and so the system is very user-friendly. For example, there is a place for putting dead batteries, or old lightbulbs, or miscellaneous broken small electronics like last year's ipod. Besides the biogas that can be taken out of the organic waste, remaining sludge is treated and can be used in agriculture as fertilizer, etc. One of our stops, where we received much of our information, was the GlashusEtt, which is an information center for the area and also serves as a point of information for the residents of Hammarby. While we were talking to Josephine, who was incredibly helpful, residents kept coming in and getting garbage bags for food waste; these garbage bags are biodegradeable, made from corn, and can integrate into the whole organic waste system.

There are both solar cells and solar panels at Hammarby; due to the climate the solar cells are pretty limited in their usefulness, with each square meter of solar cells providing 3 square meters of housing with its energy needs. The amount of surface area required is pretty vast. The solar panels, where installed, are providing somewhere around 50% of the hot water to any building that has them. Residents of Hammarby are encouraged to buy their energy from a renewable energy provider, but this is not required, and apparently there has been some difficulty getting people to buy from these sources even though the cost is not that much greater.

For more photos of Hammarby, see: http://my.opera.com/Lagom_Arkitektur/albums/

I will be posting more on this project as I learn more. It seems remarkable from a large-scale urban planning point of view, and quality of construction and quality of life seems high (it has become a very desirable place to live for upper-middle class to wealthy young families). It was dissapointing that lower income families are economically shut out of Hammarby, and according to Josephine, the costs of cleanup and all of the infrastructure was so high that the costs for the units had to be higher than is typical. All buildings were required to use environmentally friendly building materials.

I have a number of questions about the performance of the project, and certain decisions that were made. One oversight is any sun control or shading devices, and I was told that air conditioning had to be introduced into some of the units because of the heat gain in the summer. By and large, the long axes of these buildings runs Northeast-Southwest, but on only one building that we saw was any shading integrated. The folks at IVL have a different view of the success of Hammarby from that of the brochure; for one thing, it is not living up to the goals that it set for energy efficient performance, and whoever is in charge won't release any information to the public about what it's ultimate consumption is. Also, while it appears to be well-constructed, it sounds like they had to cut a lot of corners on construction towards the end of the project, and some of the materials are failing. Additionally, it sounds like the people in charge of beginning the project, and those that are finishing it, have different goals or bottom lines leading to a disconnect between the original plans and the outcome. As just one example, the main information center, the GlashusEtt, is basically a glass box which in a northern climate is the ultimate in non- sustainable ideas as far as IVL is concerned.

Obviously this raises a lot of the questions that typically raise their heads in the sustainable debate. As part of this question raising and answering, it sounds like I will be a part of a project that IVL is working on in conjunction with the EU and 4 cities that have tried to implement sustainable infrastructure and 'best' building practice: Tallin (Estonia), Malmo(Denmark), Dublin, and Hillerod (Denmark). This project is getting off the ground, but you should check out their website at:

http://www.secureproject.org/

Next stops will be Amsterdam for a couple of days to see the East Docklands Borneo-Sporenberg project, then on to Copenhagen and Malmo to see Bo-01 (Vastra-Hamnen).

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