Ola Andersson: We need a realistic architecture that looks dignified in real life

The big news when the new blue-green majority in the Stockholm city hall presented its political program in the fall, was a arkitekturfråga. The scrapping of the plans at the Nobel Center seemed to be their perhaps the most important position. The architecture through mid-century house plans stood in the center.

That architecture has become an important issue does not mean that the debate is conducted at a high level, on the contrary. Since we live on ten brought the debate among gnomes and trolls online. The level is then.

It is no exaggeration to call it the polarized. One side's attitude is that nothing will be built anywhere. It must necessarily be a it old fashioned. On the other hand, argue on the contrary that everything should be built everywhere, preferably immediately, and to cultural-historical values are uninteresting.

It is a fact that american architecture today is slentrianmässig, impersonal and carelessly built. Rarely can it measure up to what we built before. The architects and property developers, concerns are usually focused on how the house looks on the picture, not how it will be in reality. Rarely taken any more consideration to how it affects the place where it is actually built.

Also the other side has a point. We need to build very much. Population growth and the municipal planning failures over the last few decades has created a housing crisis that can only be remedied with a extensive building.

But none of the pages, the recipe works. To thwart the new buildings will not save our cities, on the contrary. Our attractive inner cities are not bigger now than they were fifty years ago, at the same time as the population increases and the sparse suburbs spread out. The more time is prevented, the higher the property values in the city we have. The driving force to tear down and build new, larger and even more profitable houses is impossible to resist. Development pressures crushes our cities if we cannot build them out. In Stockholm's central parts have the demolitions have already begun.

the new automatic is good and that it just scared people who do not like development is equally counterproductive. We raise not the level of our construction so that it actually makes our cities better will be the resistance to the new house to harden and become widespread among the electorate. Then it will be impossible to build what we need.

We need architecture that meets the needs of the

So no need to nätkrigare as arguing about whether the 1800s or the 1900s ideals were the best. What we need is the architecture and urban design that satisfies our needs. We need new streets and squares which give everyone, not just the richest, the right to the city. We need the architecture of our own time, which can be built in large enough scale for everyone to get a roof over your head.

We need not, however, the brokers ' and arkitektkontorens images of eternal summer, and boom. We need a realistic architecture that looks worthy of out in reality, even a gray Monday in February.

of high quality can be built in large enough quantities to solve the housing crisis is, of course, the architects ' task. However, so far, Sweden's association of architects of interest for the challenge has been cool. But it is not the architects that decide.

Those who have the power over the construction are the main contractors, i.e. those who order and pay for the building. Do you think that the architecture is poor, it is thus not the architects you should have a go at. It is byggherrarnas ambitions and views of themselves as mirrored in the architecture.

do you Want to influence how the architects will draw, there is only one way: Choose your own architect and construct your own house. To talk about how others should spend their money is usually rarely lead anywhere, it is about as meaningful as to require that even neighbours to dress nicer.

however, we can require is that our common construction, the building of the state, the municipality and county, shall hold the high class of us citizens. So it is not in the day. Let's start there.