Kallebäck Experimental Housing | Erik Friberger
Sweden | 1960 | hard form
| Address: | Smörgatan 23-27, Göteborg Kallebäck |
| Work Type: | new built |
| Context: | urban periphery |
| Number of Storeys: | 4-storey |
| Type of Building: | tenement / apart. house [detached] |
| Number of Units: | 18 |
| Other Uses: | garages on ground floor |
Description
Built at the urban periphery of Göteborg, the Kallebäck housing development can best be described as a shelving unit that provides individual sites for single detached houses. It takes the concept of support structure to its logical conclusion, stripped down to the provision of the floor of the shelf, vertical circulation and a few service connections. Each house is set on a concrete floor plate, and can have its own facade treatment, floor plan and (surprisingly) roof. The front of the ‘shelf’ forms the edge of a balcony for each house. The design of the house is then based around a system of demountable partition walls, wall cupboards and doors, all fixed to the concrete floor plate. 2 people are needed for changing parts: one to hold the element, another one to fix it.
The initial idea was that the shelves would be filled up over time. However, such was the initial popularity of the scheme that all the plots were taken from the start and each of the houses designed more or less to their full extent. Whilst this might have been against the wishes of the architect, the resultant scheme still retains a playful sense of a set of mobile homes perched in the air, exuding a sense of past and future change. However, some critics have dismissed the scheme as a one-off oddity with few wider lessons (see appendix).
Two studies, one after two years of inhabitation, the other after eleven, found that changes continued to be made by the inhabitants The first study found that the majority of the occupants had chosen to buy into project specifically for the possibilities of changing things and therefore had an active commitment to the possibilities of flexible design.
References
Johansson, J., 'det radikala : Regeln och undantaget', in Revision: mama skriver om historien , ed. by Arkitekturmuseet, Stockholm: Arkitekturmuseet, 2004, pp. 5-16.
Periàñez, M., L’habitat évolutif: du mythe aux réalités , Paris: PCA, 1993.
Schneider, F., ed., Grundrißatlas Wohnungsbau - Floor plan atlas: housing , Basel: Birkhäuser, 1994.
Weiß, K.-D., 'Highrise in Göteborg : Etagengrundstücke von Erik Friberger', Deutsche Bauzeitung , 124, 1990, pp. 98-103.