TYPE: TRANSFORMATION PROJECT
LOCATION: TENSTA CENTRUM, STOCKHOLM
STATUS: CONCEPTUAL
COURSE: A21P2C: ARCHITECTURE PROJECT 2:2 TECTONICS, ORNAMENT, TRANSFORMATION YEAR 2
“I will make it,
and when the world wants to prove me wrong
I will arm myself with my mother’s
most beautiful gaze
where even water running in pots is music”
— Nawros Zakholy
and when the world wants to prove me wrong
I will arm myself with my mother’s
most beautiful gaze
where even water running in pots is music”
— Nawros Zakholy
The district of Tensta grew explosively during the late 1960s and stood as a prime example of the ideals of the Million Programme era and its vision of how everyday life should be lived. The ABC and SCAFT models served as theoretical and practical tools for organising and connecting different functions within the district. These ideas remain evident today, not least in the relationship between housing and the town centre, in the pedestrian pathways and in the placement of buildings. Despite regulated and function-driven planning, the district is not entirely static. Through surveys, measurements and interviews with residents in the area, the original planning structure is problematised through informal areas of use, temporary elements and new movement patterns. As businesses move out, their premises are appropriated for new uses, and Tensta Centrum becomes evidence of how the planning typologies of the Million Programme era are susceptible to change.
The encounter between the planned and the informal forms the starting point of the project, in which the task is to transform a premises in Tensta Centrum through adaptive reuse, understood in this case as a method of working with existing environments. The transformation seeks to create a tension between the planned and the informal by removing two columns and disrupting the existing structure, with the aim of giving rise to new ways of reading the space. This is achieved through a tectonic composition of vertical and horizontal load-bearing elements. A new modular façade system based on the existing structure is also proposed.
The project does not programme the space for a specific purpose, partly to investigate how flexible a space can be in terms of its programme, but also to explore how an intervention, such as moving a column or adding new elements, can alter the understanding of a space and its formal order, as well as the history behind it.
The encounter between the planned and the informal forms the starting point of the project, in which the task is to transform a premises in Tensta Centrum through adaptive reuse, understood in this case as a method of working with existing environments. The transformation seeks to create a tension between the planned and the informal by removing two columns and disrupting the existing structure, with the aim of giving rise to new ways of reading the space. This is achieved through a tectonic composition of vertical and horizontal load-bearing elements. A new modular façade system based on the existing structure is also proposed.
The project does not programme the space for a specific purpose, partly to investigate how flexible a space can be in terms of its programme, but also to explore how an intervention, such as moving a column or adding new elements, can alter the understanding of a space and its formal order, as well as the history behind it.