Preservation and protest: Counterculture and heritage in 1970s Sweden

Future Anterior

Volumn 7, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 106-123

  Arrhenius, Thordis ^a  

^a OSLO SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN   (Norway)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84864727899     PISSN: 15499715     EISSN: 19346026     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/fta.2010.0018     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. On May 12, 1971, a film showing the violent clashes between police and demonstrators was broadcast in fourteen countries. The Swedish Foreign Office analyzed and outlined the changed image of Sweden in the foreign press between 1970 and 1972, noting that the previously positive image of the welfare state was increasingly challenged. Sverige i utländsk press (Stockholm: Utrikes Departmentet, 1972), 25-27.
2. Margaretha Björnstad, "Från almstriden till förhandlingsplanering, " Kulturmiljövård 5 (1989): 1-2.
3. The different groups included Rädda Stockholm, Brunkebergs Byalag, Aktion Samtal, and Arkiv Samtal. See also Alternativ Stad's own history narrated on their homepage: http://www.alternativstad.se. For a history of the group, see also Göran Folin, "Kampen om staden, Stockholm City-ett exempel, " Stadsförnyelsekampanjens skriftserie 2 (Helsingborg: Schmitds Boktryckeri, 1981).
4. Ulf Stahre's Den Alternativa Staden (Stockholm: Stockholmia Förlag, 1999), which maps the different "byalag, " (neighborhood movements) that were often initiated to save buildings from demolition. Many thanks to Rebecca Tarschys for her firsthand insights into the evolution of the groups around Alternativ Stad and the press at the time.
5. Göran Folin, "Kampen om staden, Stockholm City-ett exempel, " 10.
6. Almbråket and its relation to the political establishment is covered well in Daniel Helldén's PhD thesis "Demokratin Utmannas: Almstriden och det politiska etablissemanget" (PhD diss., Stockholm University, 2005). Earlier studies include Kjell Sundström, Processen mot Almarna Del 1-3, (Stockholm: Kungliga Tekniska Högskola, 1981).
7. Roger Bernow et al., Almarna: En Studie i opionsbildning. Socioresearch 3 (1973).
8. The modernization of Stockholm can be followed in a series of city plans in the period of 1946-77, the first of which, from 1946, included the initial and crucial decision to reshape the inner core. The aim was to maintain the center as a vital commercial area, responding to the threat that it would otherwise be abandoned because of the lack of significantly sized sites for development and the absence of the efficient traffic infrastructure demanded by large department stores, corporations, and banks. Providing car access and parking were seen as central issues. In 1951 the demolition of buildings and the erection of the first high-rise structures started, but all within quite a modest and restricted area. In the 1962 års Cityplan and in City 67, however, further proposals were presented that extended the scope and the speed of demolition. See 1962 års Cityplan (Stockholm: Stadsbyggnadskontoret, 1962), City 67 (Stockholm: Stadsbyggnadskontoret, 1967).
9. Folin, "Kampen om staden, Stockholm City-ett exempel, " 10.
10. In the city core in the parishes of Klara and Jacob, the population was 11,600 in 1940 and by 1970 that figure was just below one thousand. One can note that this radical modernization of Stockholm was followed, admired internationally, and seen as a full-scale test of the program of Congrès international d'architecture modern (CIAM) for a modern city. In 1961, for example, the Union internationale des architects (UIA) gave their Abercrombie Prize for Service d'Urbanisme to Stockholm. The international interest was also related to the initial 1932-33 international competition for Stockholm's center, with participants from thirty countries and 450 proposals, among them one from Le Corbusier. See also Göran Sidenblad's Norrmalm Förnyat 1951-81 (Stockholm: Arkitektur Förlag, 1985), 72.
11. See 1962 års Cityplan and City 67. For the history of the modernization of Stockholm, see foremost Anders Gullberg, City Drömmen om ett nytt hjärta, vols. 1-2 (Stockholm: Stockholmia Förlag, 2001).
12. Sidenblad, Norrmalm Förnyat 1951-81; and Thomas Hall, Stockholm: The Making of a Metropolis (New York: Routledge, 2009).
13. Anders Gullberg has documented the different actors and power struggles in the transformation of Stockholm's inner core. For the press's reaction to the new plan, City 67, see Gullberg, City: Drömmen om ett nytt hjärta, vol. 2, 81-88.
14. One of the most influential books for the growing environmental awareness in Sweden during the 1970s, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1962), was translated as Tyst vår (Stockholm: Tidens förlag, 1963). Sweden has a long-and early-established environmental movement that goes back to the beginning of the twentieth century. However, from the beginning Alternativ Stad had a specific interest in the social aspects of the preservation of environments in relation to city culture. Parallel to readings by radical thinkers including the young Marx, André Gorz, and Peter Kropotkin, the group was also influenced by the conservative and liberal "urban" thinkers such as Jane Jacob, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961). See also Ulf Stahre, Den Alternativa Staden (Stockholm: Stockholmia Förlag, 1999), and Folin, "Kampen om staden, Stockholm City-ett exempel. "
15. Gullberg, City: Drömmen om ett nytt hjärta, vol. 2, 186-89.
16. For example, Mert Kubu's article "Bannbulla over Klara Citygropparna Permanentas, " Dagens Nyheter, October 23, 1970.
17. Ambladet was published 1971-73 and was later replaced by Klara Paper, published 1975-82.
18. Almbladet 1-4, 1971-73.
19. Almbladet 2, 1971-72: 6-7. From the start, these clip-fold magazines mapped and narrated the history of the protest. This awareness of the critical action of making one's own "history" and the role of this action in qualifying the protest as significant in the evolution of local politics points to the strength of media awareness in the group's activism.
20. Almbladet 4, 1971-72, front cover with headlines "Atomkraftverk i Stockholm?" [Nuclear power in Stockholm?], "Vad har dom gjort med CITY?" [What have they done to the city?], "Bevare oss för Gröna Vågen!" [Beware of the Green Wave!].
21. "Alternativs Stads miljötidning Specialnumer om storstad och glesbygd, " Almbladet [3] (1971-72). Special issue on the metropolis and countryside.
22. For the role of the "norm" in the Swedish welfare state, see Helena Mattsson, " Designing the Reasonable Consumer: Standardization and Personalization in Swedish Functionalism, " in Swedish Modernism, Architecture Consumption, and the Welfare State, ed. Helena Mattsson and Sven-Olov Wallenstein, 74-99 (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2010).
23. The National Heritage Board, established in 1937 by Sweden's Social Democratic government with Sigurd Curman as a front figure, relied on strong links to museums and academia. The centralized board delegated the responsibility for heritage issues related to historic city sites to antiquarians attached to local museums. Defined by art-historical traditions and museum-based strategies of curating, these institutions demanded a clear distinction and framing of the historic object as one "of a particular past. " The urban context of Stockholm, mixed up and altered over time, constituted a set of challenges to the art-historical systems of classification on which antiquarian judgment relied. This challenge was made even more clear by the fact that this context was specifically to be modernized: the maintenance of the historic as functional and everyday was essentially antithetical to the anti quarian position represented by the National Heritage Board and its associated museums. For the early history of preservation institutions in Sweden, see Richard Pettersson, Fädernesland och framtidsland, Sigurd Curman och kulturminnesvården etablering (Umeå: Umeå University, 2001). See also Ola Wetterberg, Monument och Miljö (Göteborg: Chalmers Tekniska Högskola, 1992), and Victor Edman, En svensk restaureringstradition (Stockholm: Byggförlaget, 1999).
24. See also 1962 års Cityplan, 40-45. An intriguing counterexample to this argument is the preservation of Gamla Stan, the Old Town in Stockholm, carried out in the 1930s. The preservation was justified on the grounds of Gamla Stan's history as an urban milieu developed before industrialization, almost entirely unaffected by the addition of newer buildings. The Old Town was saved in is entirety as a historic site and classified in 1980 as "riksintresse. " See also Översiktsplan Stockholm 1999 (Stockholm: Stadsbyggnadskontoret, 2000). For the history of saving the Old Town, see Gösta Selling, Hur Gamla Stan överlevde från ombyggnad till omvårdnad 1840-1940 (Stockholm: Stockholms Stadsmuseum, 1973).
25. See also 1962 års Cityplan, 40-45, and Göran Sidenblad's Norrmalm Förnyat 1951-1981 (Stockholm: Arkitekturförlaget, 1985), 67-69. Sidenblad claims that the city planning office, which had the overall responsibility for the definition of the 1962 års Cityplan, reacted to the limitations of the list provided by the city antiquarian by identifying a further twenty-seven additions, including more recent buildings as well as the older churches and public buildings previously identified.
26. City, Del 1 Byggnadsinventering 1974-75 (Stockholm: Stockholms Stadsmuseum, 1975).
27. Sverker Janson, Kulturvård och Samhällsbildning (Stockholm: Nordiska Museet, 1974), 126-74. One could note here that the preservation of whole historic environments or milieus has a long tradition in Scandinavia; for example, the open-air museum's scenic re-creation of vernacular cultures inaugurated with the opening of Skansen in 1901. This scenic use of the old also characterized Swedish urban planning at the beginning of the twentieth century and was influenced by Camillo Sitte's theories. Sitte's Der Städtebau nach seinen Künstlerischen Grundsätzen (Vienna: Graeser, 1889) was widely read in Sweden, introduced by the young architect Per Olof Hallman, who would become one of the country's most influential city planners during the first decades of the twentieth century. With the rise of functionalism, the aesthetic use of historic structures to provide variation and pleasing settings in new urban developments started to be questioned. As preservation became professionalized, the saving of historic urban areas began to be justified increasingly by art-historical rather than aesthetic arguments, a change that is evident in Ragnar Josephson's polemic against Sitte in his book on the art of urban planning, Stadsbyggnadskonst i Stockholm intill år 1800 (Uppsala: Almqwist &Wicksell, 1918). Josephson argues for a scientific understanding of urban historical development based on periods and historical evolution. Although interest in Sitte reemerged in postmodern urban discourse in Sweden (Der Städtebau was translated into Swedish in 1982 by Göran Sidenblad), for Sverker Janson and his contemporaries in 1970s planning culture, the question of "environment" had a different meaning than in the early decades of the twentieth century. The extensive migration from country to town and the infrastructural and economic reorganization of Sweden during the postwar years generated a new urgency around the question of environ mental preservation, framed by ecological and social understandings of whole milieus or habitats rather than by aesthetic valuations. Although this extended preservation under the name of cultural environmental heritage (kulturmiljövård) would of course generate its own aesthetic, the sensibilities discussed appear to originate in a discourse owing little to Sitte. For a thorough discussion of the relation between monument and environment in early preservation discourse, see Wetterberg, "Stadsplanering och kulturhistoriska värden, " in Monument och Miljö, 239-66.
28. In the early 1970s a series of government reports on heritage, museums, and exhibitions were presented, which are known collectively as MUS 65. Kulturminnesvård: Betänkande 1965 års musei-och utställningssakkunniga. Statens Offentliga Utredningar (Stockholm: Liber förlag, 1972); Utställningar: Betänkande 1965 års musei-och utställningssakkunniga. Statens Offentliga Utredningar (Stockholm: Allmänna förlag, 1974); and Museerna: Betänkande avgivet av 1965 års musei och utställningssakkunniga, Statens Offentliga Utredningar (Stockholm: Svensk Reproduction AB, 1973).
29. Richard Pettersson, Den Svenska kulturmiljöns värdegrunder (Umeå: Umeå University, 2003), 29-35.
30. This, in many senses, reinstated the objectives of the early local heritage movements of which the National Heritage Board had remained suspicious. For the relation between the National Heritage Board and the local preservation movement in Sweden, see Wetterberg, Monument och Miljö, 361-65.
31. Ingela Blomberg and Eva Eisenhauer, Varsam ombyggnad (Stockholm: Statens råd för byggnadsforskning, 1976-78).
32. Examples of this kind of "free interpretation" in reuse projects are: the total reconstruction and redevelopment of the nineteenth-century bathhouse and shopping arcade at Sturebadet, with a new shopping galleria and health club (Hans Murman Arkitektkontor, Alf Öberg Arkitektkontor, Lennart Skoogh Arkitektkontor), and Berns Salonger, a legendary vaudeville theater and restaurant restored and structurally altered to house new offices and a hotel (Agora Arkitekter).