“What type of toilet do you have?” “No, not Siza! His architecture makes people criminal!”
“I think that this is a tiresome development”
What type UMAN of toilet do
STANDARDS
you20:have-io
“8x6 forwards upwards”
This is the third issue of UMAN, a magazine initiated by students at Umeå School of Architecture that tries to distance itself from the glossy architectural publications made by architects, for architects. We don’t want to aggrandise ourselves or the profession (if there still is one). We want people who think they don’t know architecture to read and contribute. The environment we live in is shaped by all of us – architects don’t have a monopoly. The theme of this issue is “standard”, maybe because we got tired of our own standards. Not of quality of course, but production methods. We have made changes in both organisation and production, hopefully resulting in a better magazine and happier editorial staff. Well, the biggest change is that we should not have any standards: the magazine is exactly what you, our contributors, feel it should be, from issue to issue. But back to “standard”; what is it? From the Oxford English Dictionary (also a kind of standard): Noun: A level of quality or attainment Something used as a measure, norm, or model in comparative evaluations Adjective: Used or accepted as normal or average Today, large parts of society are standardised, or homogenised, or somehow work with (or occasionally against) standards. This means that we have certain values that we see as “normal”. This can be very useful for communication, particularly with architecture that relies on collaboration. But standardisation also creates problems, since not all of the world is or should be alike. Normality can be worrying, or it can be reassuring. It can create complacency, breed contempt and neuter thought. These are things we have to consider. With a standardised world it is easy to just do things, or think, in certain way, just because it is easy, or practised, not because it is right. This is problematic. And so to work.
STANDARDS
Capital of Culture: running a race to change the standards of the framed face. What is seen by the eyes, are the persistent lies of creating what was already found in this place! Malin Holmbom
Magnus Olsson Alina de Liseo Anna Kristindottir Cecilia Hansson Eva Troive Jenny Lindberg Johanna Andersson Joshua Taylor Karl Fahrman Kim Schmidt Love Lagerkvist Ludvig Widman Mikael Omstedt Nina Bäckström Piotr Paczkowski Rafaela Taylor Tania R. Haitto Viktoria Ottosson William Taylor
Illustrations for Renovictions and the Circuits of Capital Archi-Porn A Stairwell in Haga Illustration for A Stairwell in Haga Layout Comic Standard Festival, Body Standards, photographs, layout Virtual Reality and the End of Space Knitting Suburbia ISO Architecture, layout Layout Renovictions and the Circuits of Capital Det Nya Kultur Umeå i Europa Moduli Cover design, An Introduction to European Philosophy Archi-Porn Apberget, The Hinterland The First Housing Standard, photographs
UMAN Magazine Umeå School of Architecture Östra Strandgatan 28 C 90730 Umeå SWEDEN info@uman-mag.com www.uman-mag.com
Printed at: Original i Umeå AB Umeå, 2014 1000 copies
341 841
The First Housing Standard Or Nero Wasn’t All Bad
of the people5. In his response to the fire Nero was not the pantomime villain of popular culture. Nero opened his private gardens to the victims, raising temporary structures “to receive the destitute multitude6”; he also brought food supplies up from Ostia (the port of Rome) and reduced the price of corn, which in the ancient world was a sure-fire way of winning popularity. However, the rumour of his musical performance at the time Whilst Greek historian Cassius Dio3 agrees, prevented this from being the case7. we must remember that both of these historians were writing after Nero’s death in 68AD4, by which time he had been declared an enemy To tackle the problem of fires and collapse in Rome, which were so common that the satirist “The ideal building has three elements; it is sturdy, useful, and beautiful1”. Nero has been much maligned over the years, despite his attention to Vitruvius. Suetonius tells us that during the Great Fire of Rome Nero sang of the “Sack of Ilium” while the city burned2, adding to tragedy of Rome with his tragic lyre-playing.
1 Vitruvius, De Architectura, I.iii.2 2 Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, Life of Nero, 38 3 Cassius Dio, Historia Romana LXII.16. 4 Suetonius c.AD 69/70 – after 122; Cassius Dio AD 155 – 235.
5 And thus fair game for everyone who could hold a pen (i.e. the upper-classes.) 6 Ibid. 7 Tacitus, Annals XV.39
Juvenal tells us the insulae (housing blocks) were “propped up with little more than matchsticks8”, Nero introduced the first housing regulations. These involved building houses only out of fireproof materials, a maximum height, and having a minimum width between housing blocks9. Flats also had to have a fire-fighting platform for the vigiles (Roman fire-fighters) to tackle fires from. “These changes which were liked for their utility, also added beauty to the new city10”. The rebuilding of Rome bears many resemblances to the work of Sir Christopher Wren after the Great 8 Juvenal, Satires i. 3. Though the Romans hadn’t invented matches. 9 Tacitus, Annals XV.43 10 Ibid.
Fire of London. Whilst Nero’s plan involved the infamous Domus Aurea11, Wren built more for the people, with St. Paul’s Cathedral his crowning achievement. This resulted in Nero being remembered for his wasteful spending12 on the golden house rather than his attempt to create a New Rome worthy of the Empire that encompassed the known world. 11 Tacitus, Annals XV.42-3, Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, Life of Nero, 31 12 To be fair, he once spent at least 2,000 sesterces (over two years’ pay for a legionary at the time) on one bowl to ornament his golden house, so he wasn’t all great. The house allegedly involved a rotating ceiling from which perfume and rose-petals fell, delighting the guests, and apparently asphyxiating one of them! Some party.
ARCHI-PORN
Text: Tania R Haitto Foto/layout: Anna Kristinsd贸ttir
Soon, it will have been two years since I began my studies at architecture school and I’ve started to see a pattern in what kind of architecture, or “stylistic experience” one might say, that perhaps is not explicitly taught but is seen as “good architecture”. How this stylistic expression has become “good architecture” puzzles me. It does not seem to be based on any deeper knowledge, like for instance how people feel and perceive this type of architecture, but seems more to be based on a formal approach and, in the best cases on some kind of vague philosophical standpoint. A stylistic expression that mainly, sometimes even exclusively, can only be understood and appreciated by those who have studied the subject for years.
Quite recently we were in Porto on a field trip and naturally got to study the buildings and urban planning of Alvaro Siza, one of Portugal’s most praised architects. Unsurprisingly we were informed that this architecture was magnificent and of very, very high quality. A few days, a stolen passport and mobile ‘phone later, a friend and I found ourselves at the police station and the Swedish consulate. Whilst the paper work was being handled I chatted with the policeman and my friend did likewise with the consul. When the policeman got to hear I was here to study architecture and that Siza’s architecture was one of the objects of study he reacted with dismay:
“ No, not Siza! His architecture is awful! All the public places that Siza has reshaped have been great disappointments. His architecture makes people criminal, or no, it’s more like his architecture scares off the good people and attracts the bad people. If we want to arrest anyone, for selling drugs for instance, we only need to go to Siza’s square. We always find criminals there.” My friend at the Swedish consulate got a similar reaction from the consul; “I hope you’re not studying Siza? I don’t like him. We have so much good architecture here, like the old theatre here in Porto, you should have studied that.” Of course, these two opinions are from just two of Porto’s hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, but can you say you don’t recognise these reactions? When talking to “normal people” and asking what they like and appreciate, it is usually far from what we architects get turned on by. They seem to like those shapes that are a bit softer, perhaps facades with more detailing or embellishment, not the naked and hard and devoid, but that which has a little bit more of the “unnecessary” fuss (which we, in thrall to the Modernist dogma of decoration as sin, find so sickening.) Flipping through architecture magazines, looking at the pictures, one yet again sees these stripped, naked, clean shapes, hard contrasts, absolute light and absolute darkness, and quite usually also the absence of people (since they aren’t important…?) Architecture, in magazines but also in many of our conversations and our lectures and our books is predominantly composed of objects; objects to desire and adore, to
study and be whisked away into. And yes, I do see it, and I have to admit that also I appreciate it. Archi-porn feels good. But these magazines are primarily aimed at us studying and working in the field. What we create on the other hand are places for people who do not study or work in the field: “the normal people.” What do their preferences or experiences matter? What I find lacking in our education, in the magazines, in the TV-documentaries and in the books are the real people. Not those people we so eagerly observe, somewhat like monkeys in a cage: “Yes, what will they do now? How will they interact with our fuzzy intervention? Will they understand our outstanding political statement?”
“
No, not Siza! His architecture makes people criminal.
No, the people lacking are the real ones, the mother with her son in the trolley and her screaming 4-year old by her side, the hurrying businesswoman and that 73-year old who has difficulty walking. It is they who are lacking in our discourse. If we haven’t got them with us in our discussions, our designs and our decision making it all becomes arbitrary. Shouldn’t all these years of education deserve a better ending than that? Even more importantly, don’t all those who will have to live, work and exist in our architecture deserve much, much more than pure caprice?
I believe it is a fact that a little ennui is better in Baudelaire’s rainy Paris than in a frozen Umeå. The charm of melancholy quickly wears off in our latitudes. Rationalism and mass production make it all feel just a little bit trivial. I might have been provoked.
A Stairwell in Haga Eight times six: forwards, upwards.
The effort to get there can be measured in steps, in calories, in percentages of attraction. It seems to be a declining trend in many categories. But eight times six, the steps are constant. Blue-grey lights take away all shades and nooks. The fluorescent lamps are good because they fulfill their function. Every corner is rounded here and the handrail can hold your hand all the way up. You say I should put up a painting. Wouldn’t it be nice with some art? Buy a tree and put it here in a pot. It wouldn’t do any harm to add some light to this place. You keep forgetting that we are not at your place any more. Here it’s common ground. Here there are general needs to fill. That is usually one of your main strengths. The sun-faded curtains and the pastel painted walls are a general need. We call it the perfect impersonality; it is something very concrete and it does actually suit everybody. NOTICE No objects are allowed in the stairwell. No stuff. No prams, no doormats either. Everything outside rented squares will be thrown away.
On the bottom floor the door slams. A rhythm passes us along the staircase and up through the floors. Forwards, upwards, forwards.
Every step becomes an echo, sometimes two. We try to walk in step but my thoughts are everywhere. Does everything have to be rationalised, is that really the point? Personal needs are never rational, nor irrational. Aren’t we the general public? This stairwell wants to be a large rock. It would have been enormous if it was true. There are so many things wanting to be something different around here, like a parody of something created with expression. It is all based on concrete and plastic and iron. The first impression might be saved, but there is something half-hearted over all these surfaces. I just don’t believe that plastics can ever really be honest. My door is covered with a thin wooden veneer and the flagstones on the floor are a glued-on carpet. You show one thing but mean something completely different. It would have been better if things did not try to be things they are not. From the stairways to the apartment the climate changes, the heat hits you in here. All the shoes that have come and gone have left small marks on the glued-on carpet.
text: Cecilia Hansson image: Eva Troive
Sorry: on the flagstones. The fluorescent lamp is a light bulb and there is a free hook under the hat rack.
suggest that we split the time, you and me. I mean, logically, the world would slow down to half speed then, right?
There is a note about never forgetting to close the door. That way unauthorised people cannot sneak in.
We stand under the rice lamp and you put on the clothes you’ve thrown over you shoes. The shirt, the jacket and the scarf, the headphones and the beanie. One should always try to stay warm in Norrland. You put your hands in your pockets because you lost your gloves and you leave the door for me to close.
Did you notice that the letter box never closes properly? You never need to say that you feel closed-in here. Some pieces of the surrounding world always slip in as sounds and news. You flinch every time in your sleep, but a newspaper isn’t necessarily an attempted burglary. The vestibule is the stage-set of the days; in every detail I show you who I am. This is where you take your first step in and you can take you last step out, but most of all I want you to stay. Those days passed by us at double speed or more. I tried to catch them as one should, to do something important with them, but in the end most of them I let go. I would like to
The steps down the stairs are lighter than those that followed me up. They get more and more quiet, your steps. You dance away and I can’t help but listen until it’s all silent. The reason it echoes in every stairwell is probably because of people like me. I wanted to shout to you, things like “come back”, but one shouldn’t fall for impulses like that and I know that you are right. We are far away from Paris and you are rational and reasonable. I have become just like you.
Definitions by International Standards Organisation ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011
3.1 - architecting
process of conceiving, defining, expressing, documenting, communicating, certifying proper implementation of, maintaining and improving an architecture throughout a system’s life cycle
3.2 - architecture
‹system› fundamental concepts or properties of a system in its environment embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the principles of its design and evolution
3.3 - architecture description
3.6 - architecture viewpoint
work product establishing the conventions for the construction, interpretation and use of architecture views to frame specific system concerns
3.7 - concern
‹system› interest in a system relevant to one or more of its stakeholders
3.8 - environment
‹system› context determining the setting and circumstances of all influences upon a system
work product used to express an architecture
3.9 - model kind
3.4 - architecture framework
3.10 - stakeholder
conventions, principles and practices for the description of architectures established within a specific domain of application and/or community of stakeholders
conventions for a type of modelling
‹system› individual, team, organization, or classes thereof, having an interest in a system
3.5- architecture view
work product expressing the architecture of a system from the perspective of specific system concerns
concern
(stakeholder)
“architecture�
architecting
branding
politics
architectural description
architectural viewpoint
architectural framework
environment
Apberget Nina Larsson is a fourth year student at the Laboratory of Immediate Architectural Intervention. She comes from Vännäs outside of Umeå and has been studying “Apberget” (which freely translates to “The Monkey Mountain”), a public platform in central Umeå that was torn down this past autumn. In mid-March we sat down to have a talk about Apberget and the city. Text, photography and translation by Viktoria Ottosson
What is Apberget? It was a flight of stairs, a meeting place, a stage, a rostrum. It had been there as long as I can remember.
The Laboratory of Immediate Architectural Intervention has been working with Apberget. What have you been doing? It was two weeks ago. We had a workshop with Raumlabor from Berlin. They wanted to work with something that connected to a current topic, that some of the students had worked with and something that related to the city and public space. We went for Apberget. At first, we discussed a lot. About half the week was discussions, and then we built for half a week. We built a mobile Apberget. We focused on the function as a place for sitting, and not as much on the function as a speakers corner. One of the criteria we had was that we should be able to build it in school and then move it to the site by ourselves. Of course it had to do with Apberget , but the bigger question was: who governs in the city? What influence can you have as a citizen? How easy is it? What are the rules? And so on. It was a test to see what happens. How was it met? We had no permission to do it. Were they going to tell us to leave? That was maybe what we thought, but not what actually happened. We built 25 wooden beams. At first, we tested them in different combinations at school, but when we got to the site we placed them rather intuitively. Since it turned out to be quite popular
we left it there over the weekend. That weekend was very sunny, and a lot of people hanged out at the mobile Apberget. The sunday was the 8th of March and there was a manifestation. Someone else - I don’t know who - had built a rostrum. I thought that was very nice and fun.
What reactions did you get from the municipality? The monday after that weekend the project manager of streets and parks in UmeĂĽ called me, and asked: - Hi, have you been involved in building this? - Yes, so it is. - Yes, we should actually ask you to remove it, but now we are thinking of asking you if you would like to keep it. I was very surprised. So last week, we discussed it back and forth. We also met the municipality on site. The problem was that they wanted to move it further back on the esplanade, and they also wanted to fix the beams to the ground. We did not find that very appealing, since the point of the project was that anyone should be able to remodel it. It could for example become a stage. Then they said that we could keep it open and flexible, but then we would have to be responsible if anything were to happen. That was not possible for us, the school could not be responsible for that. We would also have to keep the area clean. Then we decided to remove it after nine days.
What do you think about what happened with the old Apberget? Well, it all happened very sudden. I think
that was what made so many people upset. It was from one day to another. For me personally it felt a bit like “this is it” after many other processes in Umeå lately. It felt like: they can’t! They can’t demolish more things, or move more things. What do they think they are doing? There have been more things, big things, going on these last years than throughout the whole time I was growing up. I think it’s sad when things that is for the public, non-profit things, are being changed. They have an important function, they are common places. Apberget was a non-commercial place. You could sit there. I think that this is a tiresome development. In a way, it was symbolic that it was in connection to the opening of Utopia (the new shopping mall) - and that made it even more unpleasant in peoples eyes. Why do you think that Apberget, that was just a couple of steps, was so important? Two days before the demolition of Apberget became known, there were nazis demonstrating without a permission in town. Two days after that, there was an anti-racism manifestation that gathered 2000-3000 people in the square. And after that, we hear that Apberget is going to be demolished because of some cables! It felt bigger than a couple of steps. It was a platform that made such things possible. It was an important place. I have been to smaller manifestations at the square, gathering some hundreds of people, where there have not been a podium. It was hard to know where to stand, where to look, who was speaking. It was very weird. I think that Apberget is something that is strongly connected to Umeå as a city.
It’s something worth to protect: it’s a democratic place. It’s democratic both in terms of demonstrations and all of that, but also in that it’s sunniest spot in the square, and it’s where you want to sit. It’s a difference between a place like that and a bench, where you can sit at most three people. It’s something very beautiful.
What is going to happen now? I’ve followed this political process and the dialogue and all of that, and everything is pointing at that there is going to be a new Apberget, and that is good. It also points towards a less prominent position than before. It would probably be placed further back and be smaller as well. I think that the talk about Apberget stopping the commerce is bullshit. At least I, and people in general, would rather move where other people are. That’s the way it is. Big open squares are not very inviting. I hope that the new Apberget will be even bigger!
moduli Text and graphic: Piotr Paczkowski
< Finland, 1968. Juhani Pallasmaa and Kristian Gullichsen design a new modular summer house. If you plan to have a new get-away, you can purchase an industry made DIY assembly kit, that can be assembled without scaffolding. To start, you need foundation pillars in distance of 225 centimeters. Next, you place metal fittings and adjust the height to level the floor. Further on, there come the 225 cm pillars, joined together by beams at floor and ceiling level. The last step is to fill the structure with 75x225 cm panels, forming the floor, roof and walls, together with doors windows and shading panels. If you started today, you’re finished tomorrow. Your new wooden house is ready. One day, you may want to rearrange your window layout - no problem. Or, your family just extended - just add some new modules. If you want to spend your summers in a different place - just reverse the process, transport and reassemble. It is designed to meet all these needs. In the following years approximately 60 residential units were built. Kristian Gullichsen got one for himself as a summer house out of Helsinki. However, in 1973 the production is held by the production company as they concluded that the project makes their business unprofitable. But, this intriguing project, inspired by Japanese craftsmenship, Finnish prefabrication and Mies van der Rohe has some afterlife. One of the houses was assembled and dissasembled 10 times in various locations, remaining full usability and quality. It was
built for the last time in front of Centre Pompidou, Paris in 1979 for an international exhibition of wood architecture. More recently, Moduli 225 was exhibited in MoMA, New York in 2008 at prefab houses exhibition “Home Delivery”. I have first heard about it in 2011 on a lecture by Juhani Pallasmaa. He was explaining the ingeniouity of the aluminium joint they developed make the assembly and disassembly easy and neat. The solution derived from traditional wood joinery, but this time it is produced as an aluminium stripe, then cut into 5-centimetre identical pieces. One is attached to the column, the other is rotated 90 degrees and placed at the end of the beam. The beam is hanged on the column and secured with a simple metal pin. To make foundations, the architects proposed a pacifistic up-cycling of military equipment. Shooting a bazooka straight into the ground was providing 8000 degrees celcius temperature, melting the earth into a ceramic tube ready for pouring concrete and further assembly. Juhani Pallasmaa is known for architecture and writing, especially about the tactile qualities of architecture. He is a member of Pritzker Prize jury. Kristof Gullichsen grew up in world-class-famous Villa Mairea, commisioned to Alvar Aalto by his family. He was practicing at Aalto’s office and then eventually graduated as architect. You may see one of his projects in Umeå centre, a house completed in 2008.
< Moduli 225 was designed nearly 50 years ago. Since then, the world has vastly changed. The exchange of knowledge is easier than ever, mostly thanks to the emergence of digital communication. Electronics and IT are today the most regarded and progressive businesses. I reckon that a closer look can reveal concepts that could highly empower contemporary architecture. One of them is the emergence of various open platforms, totally redefining the relation between authors and users. The example that you may know best: Wikipedia, now worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 6th most popular website, started in 2001 with a dream about knowledge created by and shared with online community. Since then its founder, Jimmy Wales, repeatedly refused to commercialise the project. It changed the meaning of encyclopedia into a dynamic, self-improving environment. Ten years ago a teacher of Interaction Design in Ivrea, Italy wanted to bring a better and cheaper tool for his students. Together they developed a solution, that is now known as Arduino. It is the biggest open-source environment that enables practically everyone to try programming and create smart, responsive projects. In 2013 three creatives concerned about the huge volumes of electro waste decided to redesign a phone. They brought a concept of Phoneblocks - a modular smartphone consisting of pieces you can reconfigure and upgrade when needed instead of just trashing the whole device. Their video had 21 million views on Youtube, soon after the idea was caught-up by Google and is further developed as Project Ara, with more details coming in April. The origins for those projects were different, but it's clear that creating a platform instead of a product makes the result more interesting. An open solution leaves room for multi-input participation, constant self-improvement and high adjustability. Also, all those ideas started with a brave dream.
with ordering a custom project. We need to think about a house differently. What could happen if we use open collaboration to develop modular architecture? If we use a global expertise to design smarter building components? If we include the builders and users into the design process? I think of a house adjustable to various needs. With spaces that can be expanded or removed to optimise the occupation. With modularity that allows to form clusters with others to create desired social relations. With a potential to trigger new, dynamic and non-fixed urban developments. The design would be based on repeatable elements, fitting a standarised modular layout. The elements would be available as ready-made prefabs, coming from a range of producers. Or, you could build them yourself from an open-source documentation. The model would support local manufacturing and allow adaptability to various climates and economies. The pieces would be always fitting together, so adding a room or fixing a bigger window will be easy and clean. Second-hand market will be a solution for re-use. There are vast posibilities. As architects, we want to be influential and bring solutions where our approach is needed. Conventional housing is every day less compatible with the always progressive, mobile everyday. The change has already started with projects like WikiHouse. Still, this is just the beginning of architecture in 21st century. Ideas are needed. An open-source modular house may be a relevant option. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Would you have one?
Moduli 225 drawings (PDF, 12MB, Spanish)
< Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s try to imagine architecture without the exclusive relation between architect and client. Although the world has changed, housing architecture didn't follow. Labour market is unstable which makes long-term mortgages a risky undertaking. We hardly know about our everyday routines in 5 or 10 years. At the same time, we are are mobile, we can collaborate globally and we don't need much for everyday. We appreciate qualities like flexiblity, freedom and fairness. This reality does not match
WikiHouse TED Talk (Youtube, 13:11, English)
Houses are built to live in, and not to look on; therefore let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had. Francis Bacon: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Of Buildingâ&#x20AC;?
Knitting suburbia
BY KIM SCHMIDT
Just like suburbia, knitting is just about repeating a few simple elements to create a pattern that can be reproduced to infinity.
Cast on 36 stitches
k = knit p = purl k2tog = knit 2 stitches together yo = yarn over: wrap the yarn around right needle [ ] = repeat instructions inside brackets ** repeat instructions between asterisks, as directed
Row 1: p all **Row 2 : p all Row 3: k all Row 4: p all Row 5 k3, p until you have 3 left, k3 Row 6 p3, k until you have 3 left, p3 Row 7 k3, [k2, yo], until you have 3 left, k3 Row 8 p3, [k2tog, k1], until you have 3 left, p3 Row 9 k3, p until you have 3 left, k3 Row 10 p3, k until you have 3 left, p3 Row 11 k3, [k2, yo], until you have 3 left, k3 Row 12 p3, [k2tog, k1], until you have 3 left, p3**
Repeat instructions in between ** as many times as you wish, I did it three times. Row 2 : k all Row 3: p all Row 4: k all **Row 5: k3, p8, k3, p8, k3, p8, k3 Row 5: p3, k8, p3, k8, p3, k8, p3 Row 7: k3, [p2, yo, p4, yo, p2, k3] until end of row Row 8: p3, [k2tog, k6, k2tog, p3] until end of row** Repeat instructions in between ** as many times as you wish, and then start over from the beginning. Use any size needles and yarn of your preference. I used 3.5mm needles (U.K. 9/10, U.S. 4) and wool 200m/100g (U.K. 5-ply, U.S. 12 wpi)
Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how to knit? Youtube has great tutorials
Renovictions and the circuits of capital In recent years, numerous conflicts over rent increases linked to the necessary maintenance of Miljonprogrammet (“The Million Programme”: Sweden’s enormous post-war housing construction initiative) have emerged all around the country. Under the current use-value-system regulating the rent levels in Sweden, landlords are not permitted to finance the maintenance of their properties by raising the rent. However, when they are, by the appalling condition of their stock, eventually forced to undertake renovation, many landlords also take the opportunity to improve the standard of the apartments by installing new facilities, such as laundry machines and new bathrooms, and change their appearance. As the use value now goes up, so does the rent. In several neighbourhoods, such as Husby in Stockholm and Pennygången in Göteborg, the tenants have fiercely resisted this, portraying it as a process of renoviction. The term renoviction points towards how the upgrading of ill-maintained housing often results in displacement of the previous residents as they cannot afford the rent increases that follow. As the wave of renovictions has just reached the oldest parts of Miljonprogrammet, this process is bound to become one of the major issues in Swedish urban management in the coming decade, as the need for large scale renovations spreads to more and more areas. This text is an attempt to grasp the dynamics of this by locating the process within the context of wider economic restructuring. In a neo-liberal metamorphosis, Swedish housing policy has changed character. From being an integrated part of the social welfare system its rôle has shifted to that of an enabler, rather than regulator, of a market where shelter has gone from a right to one commodity among
others. This is largely an ideological shift, but it has not happened in a macro-economic vacuum. It is rather a consequence of how our cities have become much more important for the wider capitalist economy. The British geographer David Harvey has, since the 1970s, studied space, cities and their importance for capitalism. In 1978, in his landmark essay “The urban process under capitalism: a framework for analysis” he, influenced by the writings of Karl Marx, divides the economy into three parts; into three circuits of capital. • The first, primary, circuit is that of the production processes. This is capitalism’s natural home and the circuit that once brought prosperity to Sweden and other industrialised countries. • The secondary circuit of capital is the process of investment in the built environment, which in our urbanised world particularly implies investments in the city. This circuit has always been important, whole cities´ economies have relied on speculation in real estate, but because of the long turnover time of investments here the city has traditionally had the role of providing the supporting infrastructure for production and consumption rather than that of a commodity in its own right. • The tertiary circuit is all investments in activities, such as research and innovation, education and welfare services that, in a Marxist sense, reproduce the labour force, which seeks to improve and maintain the smooth functioning of the production process. These investments are often undertaken by the state as, despite raising the general productivity in the economy, they are not perceived as profitable by individual firms.
All these circuits of investments are integrated parts of the Swedish economy, but for long time it was the first, primarily industrial production, which acted as its engine. This is now changing. Since the oil crisis in 1973 the traditional manufacturing industry of the Global North has experienced a steady decline. It has become more and more difficult to sustain profitable activity in this sector. A common solution to this structural crisis has been for business to expand internationally, to solve it, at least temporarily, through what Harvey calls a “spatial fix”. That is to shift investments in space to find places where they can generate larger profits, either through taking advantage of new markets or exploiting new sources of labour. This strategy was the cause of the imperialism of the 19th century and is today evident in the outsourcing of manufacturing to China. However, as the economy has globalised there are fewer new suitable places available and other solutions are required. One such solution is that instead of spatial expansion, companies turn inwards and shift investments to the secondary and tertiary circuits of capital. In case a welfare state already dominates these circuits, with political help they open them up as new markets. As profit-seeking investment has exploded in the welfare sector (the tertiary circuit), so also the city (the secondary circuit) has become more important. Thus the building of high end, owner-occupied residential properties for a debt-fuelled market provides a lucrative new opportunity for investments. The rental sector has, on the other hand, largely been left alone until now, as the profit margins have been perceived as too small. However, this is about to change as developers have successfully lobbied the government to reform what they see as a dysfunctional rental market which for too long has been dominated by public housing corporations. In 2010 two important changes were made to the regulation of publicly owned housing.
Firstly, this sector was now to be managed in a business-like fashion as public landlords were now supposed to make profit. Secondly, the rent levels set in negotiation between the tenants and the public landlords were not longer to be the universal benchmark; private landlords should not have to take them into consideration when setting their own rents. Further deregulation came in 2012 when, among other suggestions, it was proposed that the location of the property should become more important and that greater differences in rent levels should be accepted. In attractive neighbourhoods, such as the inner parts of our big cities, it should be much more expensive to live. It is in this context that landlords realised the opportunity to attract richer groups of people to their areas through renovation of their housing stock, and the consequent indirect eviction of poorer groups. The deregulation of national housing policy and the growing need for large scale maintenance work in Miljonprogrammet coincide with a new economic order where the city has become crucial for capital accumulation. In the thriving industrial economy of the postwar era, housing, as well as welfare services could be allowed to exist outside of the market: when Miljonprogrammet was built it was more important to accommodate the labour force than to actually make a profit on the rents, but in the de-industrialising society these exceptions are no longer acceptable, and modern capital requires a fully integrated market for its investments. A couple of years ago it would have been impossible for Stena Fastigheter AB to displace its tenants at Pennygången in Göteborg through the renovation of its properties, but in times of layoffs in the industry, profit making free schools and a city that more and more takes the form of a commodity, it is just good business. This has severe implications for our society and the emerging wave of renovictions pushing poor people to the outskirts of our cities is only the first of them.
text: Mikael Omstedt illustration: Alina De Liseo
The Hinterland
In the hinterland of Norrland lies Holmsund. Where Ume채lven meets the Baltic, Holmsund grew up around two sawmills. Now the timber industry has changed and so has Holmsund. Since September 2013, UMA 2 has been studying every aspect of this small town. The old industrial areas lie empty but the villa-life flourishes. Photograph: the Obbola paper mill, from V채sterbacken.
Text and Photography by Viktoria Ottosson
An Introduction to European Philoosophy
German “We conservative Germans are reflective and thorough so like to sniff and inspect our faeces before they are flushed away. You foreigners may complain of the smell but we find that water is just a distraction. We save this for when we are sure that we are satisfied with what lies before us on the specially designed inspection platform.”
“The revolutionary French have no time “Architecture for me is the exemplary case of for this nonsense! The hole is at the back of the toilet so that their shit can where ideology is at work precisely where you disappear as hastily as don’t expect possible.” to find it.” Slavoj Žižek
French
W
hat type of toilet do you have? Is the hole at the back, the front or is it filled with water? This may sound like a strange question but according to the philosopher Slavoj Žižek (via Hegel and Erica Jong) they demonstrate just how the ideologies of the members of Hegel’s classic European Triad (the different existential attitudes of Germany, the U.K. and France) are expressed in objects in ways we don’t know we know… Rafaela Taylor
â&#x20AC;&#x153;In fact, all kinds of men, and not merely architects, can recognise a good piece of work...â&#x20AC;? Vitruvius, De Architectura, Chapter VIII, Sec. 10.
BODY STANDARDS A SUBJECTIVE LOOK AT THE POLITICS OF THE GYM
JOSHUA TAYLOR
When one thinks of Sweden, at least in Britain, the image is a mixture of grim men fighting crime in the rain, in the mould of Wallander or Martin Beck, and bucolic summer scenes with red houses, universal welfare and blonde pigtails. The reality of the Swede, and Sweden as a whole, is rather different and seems to revolve (like most of Europe) increasingly around the individualisation of everyday life, particularly the gym, where this article finds its “standard”. This is not unusual, and the neo-liberal* agenda of the past thirty or so years has meant that almost everywhere in the developed world, the logic of free-market capitalism has permeated every aspect of everyday life, to the extent that individual profit is almost always put before collective gain. The difference is that Sweden’s image is still one of genial socialism, seemingly immune to the ravages of a commercialised society. So, let us approach the issue of the body, its image and its politics with this lens of collective criticality. Umeå has IKSU, the largest indoor sports centre in northern Europe. Why, you might well ask. Traditionally, a high proportion of Sweden’s population are members of sports clubs of one sort or another. The act of setting up a club, registering, jumping through the bureaucratic hoops and finally actually meeting are almost a rite of passage for the Democratic Swede. The knowledge that regulation is part of the model, and things must be done a certain way to be legitimate is ingrained.
Before mass, timetabled leisure and large amounts of disposable income, exercise was a part of life, whether skiing to market, farming or physical labour.
“Before mass, timetabled leisure and large amounts of disposable income, exercise was a part of life...” Now, transport has been taken care of by the car, work by sitting in an office, and food by the supermarket. Exercise, therefore has become an aspect of leisure. However, the issue is more complicated than this. Why the enormous boom in specifically multi-gym membership (unknown before the 1960s, when boxing gyms were about the only possibility in the same field, and of course for men only), the obsession with a very particular paradigm of “health”, conflated with an aesthetic of muscularity and how it can be achieved? Steve Jones, writing about the theorist Antonio Gramsci, the modern preoccupation with the ‘language of excellence’ and the concept of ‘success’, argues that: Since the 1970s, the notion of a healthy ‘lifestyle’ has bridged the gap between health promotion and politically motivated attempts to roll back the frontiers of welfare provision…Commenting on a picture of a young woman gymnast used in a campaign to promote redevelopment in the historically left-wing city of Liverpool, Colin Mercer…makes the point that the image ‘says slim and trim after years of excess, decadence, sloppy welfarism and lazy state socialism’.
In this way, making health an issue or problem for the individual, sickness or an accident ceases to be ill fortune or fate, but the individual’s own fault; something they can solve with their own efforts. Some blame can be laid at the door of the Western championing of youth over age, at any cost. Now, the ideological force that leads people to compete with and compare themselves to figures in magazines, film stars and each other means the body becomes a battleground between “common sense” (which can be heavily influenced by ideologies we are unaware of ), and views activities makes a mockery of what used to be of health endlessly peddled to us by interested achieved. corporations, fitness magazines and aspirational marketing of all types. Many members drive to the gym, perhaps with their stock of protein additives and sessionHow we deal with this is interesting, and worth logging equipment, plug themselves into a considering. That it has become so common to machine to avoid the distractions of others and talk about ‘regimes’ or link our exercise patterns indulge in a prolonged, individualised regimen of to apps and websites in order to encourage a ‘improvement’. sense of competition – expressed forcefully by a shop here in Umea, called to my great delight the magnificently Jockish, lads-in-the-locker-room, “One More Rep.” – shows how deeply the culture has become ingrained, without anyone really noticing. Let us now look back to the gym as the Ancients knew it, to see the points of difference.
“In Ancient Greece, the Gymnasium was a place of all-round learning.”
Perhaps they want bigger muscles, the ability to run for longer (on the spot - a strange way to escape the rat-run), or to exude an aura of health and self-reliance: however they go about it, the benefits are for the individual, obtained by the individual.
“Like the Ancients, people go simply to show off their bodies...”
Like the Ancients, some people go simply to In Ancient Greece, the Gymnasium was a place of show off their bodies – the Greeks were famously vain – and some go purely to wait for attractive all-round learning. The head, the hand and the heart were all in balance. In the stoa surrounding looking people, to pick them up. the courtyard, philosophers talked and argued; However, a shared delight in the ephemeral the athletes oiled themselves and sweated in the vicissitude of muscular definition does not a sun; the artists and sculptors watched for the happy relationship make, and an over-developed perfectly rippling muscle and hangers-on cheered regard for the literally skin-deep beauty of the their favourite during competitions. body has been shown many times over to cause Compared with the modern gym culture, not only in Sweden, this seems almost entirely alien. Now, although knowledge of the body is far advanced, the intense specialisation of the
serious mental problems.
Now, to redress the balance slightly (the issues are of course simplified here for subjectivity and interest!) many people will of course go for
different reasons – the cold may make exercising outside burdensome, for example, but of the inside options (team games, activities where the pleasure of the actions takes precedence over the simple, mindless exercise that is taking place) the multi-gym is the only one that almost forces the participant to commune only with themselves (and, probably, their headphones). The difficulties of taking one’s exercise outside can mostly be overcome with “gear”, though many take the high-tech approach to indoors iron-pumping too. Outside, solitude can be found and power exercised too (see for example The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner) both over the self and the landscape. The advantages of the run, walk, ski or cycle outside – the scenery, the changing seasons, the sensory smorgasbord; all are excised by indoor exercise. Sweaty machines, with injunctions to “wipe after use”, televisions to further the bodily disconnexion, brightly lit rooms, membership fees and time slots – all seem ideally created to make an unfulfilling atmosphere. Of course, there are “boutique” gyms, but there the drive for “efficiency”, an odd concept that is often mistakenly used as an antonym of “waste”, merely means higher fees and possibly an “elite” clientele. (As mentioned in Cradle to Cradle, is a
cherry tree “wasteful” for dropping its blossom? Would we prefer just the one bloom?)
“Why does exercise have to be like this?” Why does exercise have to be like this? Where is the healthy, hearty walker in tweeds or the cycle tourist of yesteryear? Body image, the standards foisted upon us (the willingly receiving) by the advertising industry, the idea that one is somehow a failure for lacking muscle definition or the ability to run a four minute mile; all are constructs that we have failed to see because we are so enmeshed in the system it seems obvious to behave the way we do. It is no wonder the great social projects of the post-war period are waning, if we are responsible only for ourselves, the governments imply, then everyone else can go and boil themselves!
*Neo-Liberals support the free market, increasing the private sector at the expense of the public, and removing state intervention. Thatcher and Reagan are the most well-known proponents of this damaging ideology.
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Festival!
We have just had St. Patrick’s Day. Soon it will be Sweden’s Waffle Day.1 One devoted to a patron saints of Ireland, and one created because of an unfortunate Swede’s deafness. Apparently, vårfrudagen, “Our Lady’s Day” was misheard as våffeldagen, much like the luckless English monk who sometime in the 8th century wrote Boadicea instead of Boudicca, a mistake which has confused schoolchildren ever since. What do these two events have in common? I would say they share a certain vacuousness – a lack of meaning, provenance or raison d’être. One is an excuse to buy badly made codIrish jumpsuits and hats, put on one’s worst Father Ted impression and drink Guinness; the other to take a bite at the tired old International Cuisine – like the ubiquitous cheese that has a texture rather than a flavour. We have been sleepwalking towards this ever since we became too fastidious to eat tripe and onions2. Anyway, to recap: why have our festivals lost all meaning? Where have we lost the depth of significance (and respect) our ancestors gave the world? For example, we have no connection with the land; seasons pass us by, cocooned as we are in cars, offices and centrally-heated houses; even day and night can be forgotten as the sun is 1 On the subject of waffles, I had the finest of my life (not that I am a Waffle Fanatic) in Old Stamboul – if you are ever there, after arrival cross the road from the station and follow the alley towards the delectable smell. There’s a good barber on the top floor too. 2 Tripe, still rather popular in the north of England, is like a delicacy one reads about in travel guides to gap year countries – where they eat dogs, that sort of thing. The O.E.D. pleasantly describes it as: The first or second stomach of a ruminant, esp. of the ox, prepared as food.
replaced by fluorescent tubes, and the moon by LEDs. Forget the stars, obscured as they are by light pollution. At least we can see them through the clouds with apps. The wonders of technology! I ramble. Which of us understands the difficulties that led our ancestors to revere the harvest? Our best guess at most of the Neolithic remains still standing is that they were solar observatories. The various South American civilisations found by the Conquistadors are mostly known now for human sacrifice in thrall to the sun, or for calendars that have inspired Hollywood blockbusters.3 All this importance Barbarians afforded to things that with the benefit of progress and science, the Enlightenment and the long, measured tread of rationality we pay less and less heed to, except when we can get money from it.
In Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Writer had it half-right when he said: to live in the Middle Ages was interesting! Every home had its house spirit, every church its god. We have become unacknowledged experts, in our cossetted existences, at taking things at face value; being credulous consumers on the trail of a better deal; letting pop songs tug the heartstrings, but never more; letting smartphones remove the last vestiges of our questing minds with endless distractions and useless information; always searching for that which will keep the level plane of our existence stable; shying away from that which threatens to tip up our faultless, lubricous, gentle ride to the grave. We need a shaking up. If we’re going to know where we come from, we need difference, co-existence, tension, trouble, old songs and new celebrations, in Steve Knightley’s words: We need roots. Joshua Taylor
Here, St. Patrick is not known. Apart from wearing green, drinking green things and looking green after too many, who knows why we, here, remember a man from 1200 years ago? And one associated with Ireland? Obviously it’s a boon to Guiness, much like the commercialisation of another Christian festival was to Coca-Cola, but is it really necessary as an excuse for a party? In fifty years, will the turning of the days be marked not by hot and cold, wet and dry, plenty and famine, but simply, around the world, by universal, arbitrarily demarcated periods devoted to foodstuffs and colours?
3 That’s at least two films about calendars I can think of. Any more suggestions?
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Special thanks: Markus at Original Tullkammaren
Do you want to contribute? The theme of the next issue is ”Language”. Send your contribution to; info@uman-mag.com uman-mag.com/contribute or Uman Arkitekthögskolan Umeå Universitet 901 87 Umeå
Some ideas to get you started: architectural language, human language, communication, interpretation, nicknames, and anything else you might come up with! We welcome collages, articles, digital, physical, poems, paintings, drawings, loose ideas &c. &c. The magazine is B5 format.