To Read a Book at Sergels Torg

On Anders Wahlgren’s Staden i mitt hjärta and the Aesthetics of High Modernism

 Jelrik Hupkes

for #V. ugly housing/housing aesthetics

Differens Magazine, summer 24

On a sunny Saturday, a friend told me to meet him at Sergels torg. When arriving I saw him standing in the middle of the lower part of the square, calmly reading a book, ignoring the plurality of things happening around him. While looking out over the square at the heart of the new Klara quarters in central Stockholm, I started to think about the film Staden i mitt hjärta.[1]

In 1992 filmmaker Anders Wahlgren made a splash with this film in Sweden, putting the highly controversial remodelling of the Klara quarters once more in the public spotlight. [2] I still remember the dramatic images of Stockholm in ruins, the seemingly unstoppable bulldozers, and the lifeless and cold streetscape of the new Klara the first time I saw the film, making me feel angry and offended. Not, like Wahlgren himself, because of the mass destruction of the old Klara quarters and its replacement with high modernist architecture during the 1960s and 1970s, but because of Wahlgren’s lack of respect for this new aesthetic. [3] Whereas for Wahlgren the new Klara quarters were nothing more than lifeless ‘concrete bunkers,’ for me Kulturhuset, the Hötorg skyscrapers, Sergels torg and many more are, despite their problematic sides, spectacular and culturally significant examples of modernist architecture and city planning. It turned out that I was not alone. Over the years Wahlgren has been increasingly criticised for his views presented in Staden i mitt hjärta. But although I still wholeheartedly disagree with his ideas on built heritage from the 1960s and 1970s, it is intriguing how this space and its aesthetics has had such a different meaning for Wahlgren than it had for me.

French philosopher Henri Lefebvre writes in his ground-breaking work La production de l’espace that space is not only a physical environment but also a complex social product. For him, it is not about what a space is but what a space does.

French philosopher Henri Lefebvre writes in his ground-breaking work La production de l’espace (1974) that space is not only a physical environment but also a complex social product. For him, it is not about what a space is but what a space does. According to Lefebvre, every person, every group, and every society produces its own space. In his triad of space, he states that space consists of perceived space (spatial practice) conceived space (representations of space) and lived space (representational space). Lefebvre argues that it is the conceived space that often is dominant and, in this way, becomes a framework of power. Coming from Marxist thinking, Lefebvre states that modern capitalist society creates its own space, dominated by economic interests. This makes me wonder: does Wahlgren perceive, conceive, and live another Klara than I do? 

Upon the release of Staden i mitt hjärta, Wahlgren was an established name in the Swedish film- and television industry, having acquired a reputation as a socially engaged documentary filmmaker known for his sharp reflections on architecture and the built environment. The old Klara, with its roots in the 18th century, is depicted in the film as a beautiful cultural environment of thriving quarters with both housing and commercial activity. However, mainly due to a lack of maintenance, the built environment was in poor condition and its central location in the expanding city made it a scene of endless traffic jams. Therefore, Stockholm’s city council decided to restructure the area and create a modern commercial centre à la Manhattan, resulting in the mass demolition of the old quarters. The film shows moving images of old buildings being knocked down and eyewitnesses sharing their memories of what happened, while Wahlgren’s characteristic voice-over compares Klara to a bombed Dresden. This is put in a dialectical contrast to the dark and massive modernist architecture of the new quarters while showing images of cold and lifeless streetscapes and dilapidated alleys. The building aesthetic is dismissed by Wahlgren as one that ‘will not go down in architectural history’, produced by a city council that prioritised money and economic growth over housing, living quality, and heritage conservation. 

The building aesthetic is dismissed by Wahlgren as one that ‘will not go down in architectural history’, produced by a city council that prioritised money and economic growth over housing, living quality, and heritage conservation.

Following Lefebvre’s conceptualisation, the construction of the new Klara was more than just the establishment of a new physical environment; it was the production of a new space. A space that, as illustrated in the film, was guided by economic interests centring around commercialisation and profit. In Staden i mitt hjärta, a central issue for Wahlgren is the lack of housing. Although slightly exaggerated in the film, the amount of housing had drastically diminished in the new Klara quarters. Instead, offices and commercial spaces were prioritised. Moreover, the housing that did acquire a place in the new Klara is deemed ugly and useless, being a materialisation of a capitalist space. In this way, Wahlgren does not only turn himself against the lack of housing: he rejects the housing aesthetics of high modernism in general. The mere suggestion of turning some of the office buildings into housing, as was done in Wahlgren’s later film Stadens själ (1995), is convincingly dismissed, leaving only one possibility: demolition. For Wahlgren, this housing aesthetic is not about the colours, shapes, and forms of high modernist architectural expression. It may not even be about aesthetics to begin with. It is about how Wahlgren conceives this space: a space controlled by economic interests in which qualitative housing and a healthy living environment are considered impossible. Indeed, nowadays there is a consensus that many mistakes were made during the so-called Normalmsregleringen. Undemocratic processes did result in the demolition of a valuable built environment and the implementation of the new urban plan caused many problems in terms of liveability and criminal activity. 

But is the modernist architecture of the new Klara therefore ugly, useless and without any cultural significance? Is knocking down the modernist buildings and, as is suggested in the film, building back the old Klara ‘like they did in Warsaw,’ the only way to overcome this? To put it briefly: Is repeating history our only option? Going back to Lefebvre’s triad of space, I would want to emphasise the lived space, described by Lefebvre as ‘space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of “inhabitants” and “users,”’ and ‘the dominated – and hence passively experienced – space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate.’ [4] To counter Wahlgren’s reasoning on the aesthetic appearance of the new Klara I could stress the quality of the architecture, or highlight the cultural value of unique architectural expressions such as Kulturhuset or Klarabergsgatan. I could emphasise what an exceptional modernist planning project Normalmsregleringen was. Or I could point out that during this period, although not in Klara, a record amount of housing was built in the by Wahlgren so-hated high modernist aesthetic on the city’s outskirts, making housing accessible and affordable for many. However, drawing from Lefebvre’s triad of space I would argue that the value of the new Klara comes from something more: from the lived space. Through small acts of adaptation and change, the users of the area have renegotiated and reinterpreted the space, attaching new meanings and values to the built environment. By using the area, they have made the space their own, moving away from the profit-driven and undemocratic processes that may have been underlying motives for the establishment of high modernist architecture in the new Klara. In Staden i mitt hjärta, Wahlgren seems stuck in the old Klara that he remembers from his childhood; a part of his past that is intertwined with his identity. But what about the generations that grew up with the new Klara quarters? For them, the old Klara is something they know from pictures and stories, almost like an old myth, or in Wahlgren’s words; ‘Stockholm’s Atlantis.’ These are the quarters where they go shopping, meet up with friends, or maybe even live. Despite being deemed impossible by Wahlgren, the past decades have seen an increasing development of housing in Klara, often reusing the high modernist aesthetics. Although a lot of work still has to be done, it is through the lived space we can change, appropriate, and revalue the new Klara’s modernist built heritage and transform it into thriving living environments.    

The building aesthetic is dismissed by Wahlgren as one that ‘will not go down in architectural history’, produced by a city council that prioritised money and economic growth over housing, living quality, and heritage conservation.

This year marks the 32nd anniversary of Staden i mitt hjärta. Of course, views and perspectives change over time. As with every urban environment, the new Klara has changed over the decades and adaptations have been made to the urban space to correct previous mistakes and to improve the living environment. In his latest documentary Bo(i)Staden (2019), Wahlgren presents a more nuanced image of high modernist architecture than before, although his aversion against the new Klara still seems present. At the same time, the debate on architectural aesthetics in public space is quite prominent nowadays, with different actors gaining increasing media attention in their struggle for a more ‘beautiful’ architecture and public space, while often targeting ‘ugly’ modernism. On the question of whether the modernist aesthetics of the new Klara is ugly, I would answer no. But above all, I would argue that the discussion on Klara’s architectural aesthetics in terms of beautiful or ugly may not be that relevant to begin with. Instead of reducing the aesthetics of the built environment to a simplistic judgement, we could see these built environments as perceived, conceived, and lived spaces, materialised in complex forms of architecture. By interacting with the built environment, we attach new meaning and value to the new Klara, making it a unique living environment and historic urban landscape. The new Klara may have been cold and empty before, a product of urban planning driven by ambition and profit. And indeed, even nowadays the quarters have their problems. But that is not what I saw that day when I was meeting my friend at Sergels torg. I saw people reshaping and reclaiming the built environment through simple acts, by meeting up for a coffee, listening to a street musician playing Elvis covers on his guitar, or just like my friend, by reading a book.

Notes

  1. The film was released in English as The city in my heart and in French as La Ville de mon coeur. It was produced by Suecia Film and is nowadays available on SVT play with a geographical limitation to Sweden. 
  2.  Nowadays the term Klara is used less and less by the public, despite the fact that it is still the area’s legal name. Instead, one often refers to the area as Stockholms city or the city centre that covers a larger area than just the Klara quarters. 
  3.  High modernism (Swed: högmodernism) was an international tendency in modernist architecture from the end of the 1950s to the mid-1970s inspired by a limitless trust in science and technology. In Klara, this resulted in an aesthetic where concrete and glass were dominant, often executed in grey or dark shades, and car-centric planning.
  4.  Quotes are taken from Donald Nicholson Smith’s 1991 translation of La production de l’espace by Henri Lefebvre (1974).