Christian Björk
 
 

Contact: Christian.Bjork@konstfack.se

Research project: My research project deals with 1930s architecture from a somewhat unexplored perspective. On the basis of three areas of analysis – city planning, house plans and decorations – I will examine the attitudes of the middle class to the radical and functionalistic architecture of the 1930s. Were there any aesthetic or ideological differences between the functionalism of the Swedish welfare state and the modernism of the middle class? Did ideals of middle-class representation survive the breakthrough of functionalism? The aim is also to put the socially established housing policy of the time, which sometimes falls under the term social engineering, in relation to the housing construction of the middle class. Were the educative and scientific arguments about decoration ideals, hygiene and standards, etc., prevalent there as well?

Principal supervisor: Hans Hayden, Department of the History of Art.

Interests: 20th century Swedish architecture and housing policy, the historical development of the welfare society, integration and segregation issues, the history and future of settlement in Stockholm.