STORIES FROM SIRIUSGATAN

Sammanfattning

Through plans, sections, perspective drawings, and material specifications, architecture can make spatial change appear clear, ordered, and possible to act upon. Yet some of the most decisive forces shaping spatial transformation take place elsewhere: in financial calculations, institutional decisions, legal procedures, negotiations, unequal relations, and everyday life. These processes often remain outside the frame of conventional architectural representation.This thesis explores architectural graphic storytelling as a method for making such processes readable, through the empirical case of a municipal housing renovation process at Siriusgatan in Bergsjön, Gothenburg. There, a planned renovation of bathrooms and building systems became a contested process in which technical maintenance, standard-raising measures, rent increases, affordability, tenant influence, legal authority, and the possibility of remaining in place were drawn into the same multi-layered force field.Key words:The study is based on interviews, legal documents, organisational material, technical renovation documents, media sources, and site observations. Through the analysis, empirical material is organised into analytical themes, mapped across space and time, and developed into six key tensions. These tensions structure an architectural graphic novel that traces the renovation process through actors, spaces, decisions, conflicts, and lived consequences.The graphic novel does not aim to provide a complete or neutral account of Siriusgatan. Rather, it offers a situated and empirically grounded narrative that explores how storytelling can support recognition, make unequal positions visible, and create conditions for dialogue. In this way, the thesis positions architectural graphic storytelling not as a final layer of communication, but as a method for knowledge-making in contested spatial processes.