Hold the Line

Sammanfattning

This thesis project explores housing as both architectural and political question through a proposal situated at the eastern edge of Gärdet, where the modernist urbanity of the 1930s will soon meet the ongoing large-scale redevelopment of Norra Djurgårdsstaden. Positioned at this threshold, the project interrogates how different historical and socio-economic realities of the city are materialized through urban form. Combining theoretical research with design investigation, the project recognizes how contemporary city planning practice promotes a normalized image of the “good city”. Against this background, a housing building is developed on a 450-meter-long plot, conceived of as one continuous piece of infrastructure. The proposal seeks to mediate between conflicting scales, topographies, and urban morphologies, operating as a connective strip between the existing and the emerging city. Amid a narrowing of social imagination and the increasing commodification of housing, the project is an inquiry into how architecture itself operates in relation to its role, limits and possibilities.