Beyond Classical Allusions: Stockholm Mass Housing Experiments Before 1930

The 1930 Stockholm exhibition was promoted as a breaking point in Swedish architecture, especially for its proposals for novel housing production and design. Starting from that moment, Swedish building initiatives progressively gained worldwide acclaim on account of mass production of household goods and effective planning and housing. Suggesting that architectural experimentation with housing started before this event inevitably challenges the almost mythical allure of the exhibition. The multiple interventions by architects, planners and politicians in tackling the housing question from the Stockholm exhibition onwards are commonly thought to have been, for the first time, no longer reserved for a privileged social elite, but available to the general population. However, such a view is only partly true because already before 1930 some municipalities and building associations as well as certain newly established housing cooperatives, brought about transformations in planning provisions and erected housing blocks on an improved design for low-income groups: workers, single women and the elderly. Skimming through the pages of the functionalist manifesto Acceptera (1931), authored by the group responsible for the 1930 Stockholm exhibition, the strictures against the 1920s examples can be summarized under three main headings: employment of classical and traditional vocabulary in façades, arrangement in the form of large courtyard blocks, and insufficient typological experimentation. The goal of this paper is to legitimize the inclusion of these examples within the portrayal of a nation generally considered as inspiring for the rest of the world, especially for its contribution to housing produced in the ensuing decades. Indeed, beyond the classical allure these also express ”proto-modern qualities” (Seelow, 2016) that paved the way for the years after 1930 on.