Helena Mattsson – författare

Shortlisted for the Architects Sweden Critic's Award 2023Architecture and Retrenchment explores the ‘neoliberal turn’ in architecture, through the rise and fall of the Swedish welfare state.There are few better case studies of architecture’s role in the retrenchment and dismantling of the welfare state than Sweden, the birthplace of the world-famous “Swedish Model” and now home to Europe's fastest-growing inequality. Through eight in-depth architectural case studies, Helena Mattsson analyzes how neoliberalism has created conditions for a new built environment which was once closely integral to the welfare system, examining how new architectural strategies and techniques were developed in order to protect the agency of architecture in a newly re-organised society, and revealing the role of architecture in creating new types of segregation, discrimination, and social stratification.With close feminist analysis running throughout – and drawing from oral histories, witness seminars, and participatory workshops – Architecture and Retrenchment provides an original interpretation of how architecture, space, aesthetics, and politics converged at the end of the twentieth century.

Shortlisted for the Architects Sweden Critic''s Award 2023Scholars in architectural and urban history have, over the last decade, been trying to come to terms with architecture''s ''neoliberal turn'' and its various impacts - from municipal policy to the artistic imagination. However most scholarship has focussed on generalizations, with very little work to date focussing on specific cases. Architecture and Retrenchment brings one such case to the fore – investigating the relation between architecture and the Swedish Model of the welfare state. It tracks the response of architecture to the gradual retrenchment and ultimate dismantling of the Swedish welfare state – which was, in its heyday, world-famous for its integration of architecture and the built environment into the welfare system. Ultimately, neoliberal economics prevailed, yet this book reveals how new architectural strategies and techniques were developed in order to protect the agency of architecture in the newly reorganised society of the 1980s and 1990s. Through eight in-depth case-studies, the book situates the often abstract, generalised discourse of neoliberalism and privatisation in specific architectural sites, and provides an original interpretation of how architecture, space, aesthetics, and politics converged at the end of the twentieth century.

Shortlisted for the Architects Sweden Critic''s Award 2023Scholars in architectural and urban history have, over the last decade, been trying to come to terms with architecture''s ''neoliberal turn'' and its various impacts - from municipal policy to the artistic imagination. However most scholarship has focussed on generalizations, with very little work to date focussing on specific cases. Architecture and Retrenchment brings one such case to the fore – investigating the relation between architecture and the Swedish Model of the welfare state. It tracks the response of architecture to the gradual retrenchment and ultimate dismantling of the Swedish welfare state – which was, in its heyday, world-famous for its integration of architecture and the built environment into the welfare system. Ultimately, neoliberal economics prevailed, yet this book reveals how new architectural strategies and techniques were developed in order to protect the agency of architecture in the newly reorganised society of the 1980s and 1990s. Through eight in-depth case-studies, the book situates the often abstract, generalised discourse of neoliberalism and privatisation in specific architectural sites, and provides an original interpretation of how architecture, space, aesthetics, and politics converged at the end of the twentieth century.

Moderna Museet exhibition catalogue no. 416: Björn Lövin -The Surrounding Reality Co-publishers: Moderna Museet & Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König Texts: Gitte Ørskou, Matilda Olof-Ors, Rasmus Fleischer, Maria Lind & Helena Mattsson. Curator: Matilda Olof-Ors Concept and Editorial Work: Matilda Olof-Ors, Jonas Williamsson & Peo Olsson Design: Jonas Williamsson Photography: Albin Dahlström, Mats B, Ayao Yamazaki. Print: Narayana Press. About the exhibition: Björn Lövin -The Surrounding Reality Moderna Museet 2.4 – 18.9 2022 Stockholm With carefully chosen details, Björn Lövin (1937–2009) built up fictional worlds, like film sets, which the visitor could step into. In the exhibition “The Surrounding Reality”, three of Björn Lövin’s extensive environments have been reconstructed. Then, as now, visitors can enter the environments themselves and experience the art from up close. None of Björn Lövin’s original environments were preserved after being presented in their respective exhibitions in the 1970s and 1980s. The environments that you can see now in the exhibition are thus reconstructions interpreting and recreating a similar atmosphere as when the works were first shown. Extensive and winding research has been required to build up the environments. Based on photographs, films and archive documents, objects have been identified. These are the three environments that you will encounter in the exhibition: Consumer in Infinity and “Mr P’s hoard”, L’image and C – The struggle for reality. Curator: Matilda Olof-Ors About Björn Lövin Björn Lövin expanded traditional art genres and was one of the first Swedish artists in the late 1960s to make spatial installations, called environments at the time. He was born in Falun in 1937. In his youth Lövin studied in Barcelona, later attending Stockholm University and Uppsala University to study education, scientific theory and information technology. Despite his lack of formal artistic training, he had his first exhibition at Galleri Mejan in 1970, an early version of the more comprehensive exhibition Consumer in Infinity and “Mr P’s Hoard” – two environments by Björn Lövin that was presented at Moderna Museet the following year. His large scale works were critical to totalitarian systems, ranging from the People’s Home (Folkhemmet) to the consumption society, which includes some and excludes others and attract by offering an image of safety, but at the cost of individual freedom. His first solo show at Moderna Museet was curated by Pontus Hultén and later included solo shows at Centre Pompidou in Paris, Liljevalchs and Kulturhuset in Stockholm and at Malmö Konsthall amongst others.