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ARCHITECTURAL CULTURE, SOCIETY AND POSTMODERNISM
IN SCANDINAVIA 1968–1995
PROJECT LEADER:
Thordis Arrhenius
NETWORK AND PARTNERS:
Swedish Museum of Architecture, KTH School of Architecture,
NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science, and Technology
ACTIVE RESEARCHERS:
Professor Thordis Arrhenius
Helena Mattsson, Associate Professor, KTH, Stockholm
Catharina Gabrielsson, Assistant Professor, KTH, Stockholm
Martin Braathen, Researcher, NTNU
This project forms a Nordic research initiative focused on how
postmodern architecture emerged and changed in the Scandinavian
countries in relation to economy, politics, and the public debate of the
respective welfare states. The aim is to establish a research network
that enriches the theoretical and methodological discussions relating
to the architectural cultures of postmodernism.
As a starting point the network is represented by three projects:
The Architecture of Deregulation: Politics and Postmodernism in Swed-
ish Building 1975–1995
(Catharina Gabrielsson and HelenaMattsson,
KTH School of Architecture) investigates whether architecture and
the building industry may be seen to not only answer to, but also
facilitate the extensive ideological shift that occurs during the period;
Mediated Architecture – the Exhibition as Discursive Field
(Thordis
Arrhenius, Stockholm Architecture Museum/ OCCAS) examines a
series of exhibitions at the SwedishMuseum of Architecture between
1968 and 1988, and discusses how these exhibitions served as active
agents in the public debates of the time, forging new notions and
concepts of architecture and its discipline (funded by the Swedish
Arts Council);
From the Revolution of the Present to the ‘Presence of
the Past’: Instrumentality and Autonomy in Norway 1970-1980
(Martin
Braathen, NTNU) studies the transitions between architecture cul-
ture’s ideas of socio-political instrumentality and formal autonomy,
and the oscillations between ideologies of anti-design and architec-
ture as art and language.
Protesters and police at the
Almstriden
riot, Stockholm,
May 12, 1971.
AHO WORKS RESEARCH 2012
OCCAS
