ROOTED : A framework for matter that stays

Sammanfattning

Small peripheral towns across northern Sweden face declining populations, limited housing investment, and a construction model that extracts value from the communities it builds in. Conventional developers rarely operate in these contexts because production costs exceed market value, leaving municipalities dependent on systems they do not control. This thesis investigates how housing can be structured as productive local infrastructure in small peripheral towns. Through a site-specific design proposal for Hamngatan in Nordmaling, a small coastal municipality in Västerbotten, it develops a rule-based housing framework operating across three scales. The urban scale transforms a transit corridor into a civic pedestrian spine. The architectural scale delivers a dwelling system through a catalogue and handbook. The material scale grounds construction in Västerbotten’s timber industry through regional prefabrication, local completion, and a municipal material bank and workshop. The framework draws on the theoretical traditions of housing as process (Turner, Habraken), internalities as design drivers (Salgueiro and Bouzas), and the historical precedent of the Swedish Egnahemsrörelsen. It is tested through iterative research-by-design, informed by municipal data, territorial mapping, and a participatory workshop with local stakeholders. The thesis argues that housing production, when structured around regional resources, local labour, and cooperative ownership, can generate sustained economic activity within the communities it serves. The catalogue and handbook are proposed as transferable instruments applicable to comparable peripheral contexts, where the specific materials and urban conditions change but the underlying method remains constant.