Thordis Arrhenius – författare

Old things, historic things, smelly dirty things, all the things that were considered the very opposite of "contemporary," have suddenly irrupted forcefully into architecture and art, blurring their bound- aries. This book takes stock of the emerging generation behind this turn, and examines their experimental engagements with the preservation of culturally charged objects. Structured around a series of interdisciplinary dialogues among practitioners and thinkers, and illustrated with recent projects, the book provides a window into the unfolding intellectual frameworks, aesthetic modes, cultural ambitions, and political commitments that are the basis of experimental preservation.

Architecture was fundamental to the realization of welfare state policy in the Nordic countries, translating democratic ideals into concrete spatial materializations. An inclusive notion of “welfare for all” was embraced by a generation of architects, landscape architects, and planners, who labored to give physical form to ideas of equality, collectivity, anddemocracy, producing a vast architectural output in Scandinavia during the postwar years. Today, however, the architectural legacy of this era is contested. Welfare for all no longer enjoys the social or political consensus it once did.This publication critically engages with this contested architectural legacy and provides a nuanced portrait of postwar welfare architecture coming to terms with a contentious past and facing an uncertain future With newly commissioned photographic work by contemporary Nordic artists Based on an interdisciplinary research project by KTH Stockholm, Oslo School of Architecture, University of Copenhagen Internationally renown contributors shed light on aspects of the relationship between architecture and welfare