“The inverted monument”, 2022
Temporary summer exhibition for Stockholm Konst. In collaboration with Uglycute and architecture students from KTH
Part of the Building lab series with master studios exploring full scale construction.
Category: Architecture
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5 Färger / 5 Colors
Renovation apartment from 1954 Bagarmossen, Stockholm
Private / Builder D13 Bygg
The apartment, in a 1954 building, was originally designed as an atelier flat. During the 1940s and 50s, modernist housing areas in Sweden often included atelier apartments for artists in each block. These were usually placed in the odd leftover geometries—spaces where a “normal” apartment wouldn’t fit. You can see that logic in this building, where large standard lamella blocks meet in a corner, and the need to connect to the open courtyard and adjust to variations in volume placement created this form.
The result was a small, three-level, one-bedroom apartment with a private stairwell reminiscent of the shared semiprivate ones found elsewhere in the complex. Originally built as a municipally owned rental building, the complex was later bought by residents in the 2010s. When this apartment was sold, only two people had lived in it since it was built. The idea was to preserve it as a work/live space rather than convert it into a typical nuclear-family layout.
From the first visit, the sense of space—formed by slabs coming together—became the main guiding principle for how to treat color and materials. Walls, floors, and ceilings each have their own distinct color, like separate planes or sheets of paper. Colors meet cleanly in the corners, emphasizing that feeling of slabs joined together. A palette of five colors was tested and used consistently throughout, avoiding situations where the same color meets itself in a corner. Built-in storage was treated with the same “slab” logic.
The kitchen has been opened toward the dining area; the building here forms a thin volume, and experiencing that slender space was essential to the apartment’s character. A door was moved from the former kitchen wall to one leading into the bedroom and walk-in closet. The original kitchen cupboards were kept, extended in height, and repainted. In the kitchen’s second corner—where the “machine park” sits (stove, fridge, etc.)—new appliances were installed, hidden behind their own green “slab.”
In the bedroom, a dividing wall built from Ikea Ivar units and knife-cut plywood separates the clothes from the bed. The clothes themselves serve as a soft screen toward the outside, providing privacy when changing. This room sits above the courtyard access, and because of its “floating” character, the floor can get rather cold, so it has been covered with a warm wall-to-wall carpet, adding a touch of modernist luxury. The final “slab” in the space is a circular curtain, enclosing the bed in a green, forest-like clearing.
Downstairs, a tiny guest room has replaced the former second hallway, while the large studio space remains open—its traces of color tests and paint experiments still visible. This space now doubles as a living room and work studio.
Outside the studio, two large trees press against the windows—one blooming pink in spring, echoing a tone from the apartment’s color palette. To create the feeling of being inside the trees rather than looking out at them through a white frame, the inner sides of the window frames were painted green.
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Nacka makeover
by Karin as Secretary 2022
Private/ Builder D13 Bygg
Rewriting history through a full makeover
The building sits in a villa area on a hill, with a beautiful forest just behind. Built in the 2000s, it never really seemed comfortable on its generous plot — the largest one in the neighborhood. We wanted to help it become what we thought it wanted to be if it could dream — within the clients’ stylistic preferences, of course.
It turned out it wanted to belong, to seem like it had been there for a long time, even though everyone knew it hadn’t. It also wanted to face the street properly this time. It wanted a more symmetrical, vertical rhythm of windows — and it definitely wanted proper wooden ones, made in the traditional way. Like anyone, it wanted to feel cared for and a little important, so all the small details that lift its appearance suddenly mattered a lot. The way the façade meets the roof, the entrance canopy with its round column — small gestures that finally got the house to relax.
And like all of us, the house wanted to show some self-awareness and a bit of humor, so it decided to flip an arched window upside down — while also using it to strengthen the composition around the street-facing entrance. The rounded shapes keep showing up throughout the house; in plan they let light flow softly and make the spaces feel calm, with a touch of elegant flow.
The house also glances across the Atlantic, nodding to New England with its horizontal paneling and shallow façade. To keep that transatlantic spirit, the building was painted entirely white — a gesture that, for some reason, to us feels like a little flirt with the timber houses of the American East Coast.
The garden is a big part of the story too, with a new garage and a path leading up to the entrance stairs. The back garden was already finished, so we worked with a similar material palette. The lower part, facing the street, keeps its natural feel with moss, rocks, and berries — very typical Stockholm archipelago nature. It becomes greener and more landscaped closer to the building. The wild meets the structured in a way that feels easy. Lush bushes and plants play along with the newly constructed retaining walls.
The pool deck was extended to make room for more sunbeds, but also to enhance the feeling of being surrounded by green. The large deck outside the kitchen and living room was broken up into smaller areas by changing the direction and width of the boards. A pergola adds another layer and helps create a spot that’s both open and defined.
Inside, the ground floor was opened up for light and views. A new kitchen balcony adds rain protection for the spa entrance below — but the main character is the new staircase connecting all three floors. It becomes a sculptural object, visible from almost everywhere. It continues the rounded language, but amplified and condensed into one continuous creature. This is perhaps where the building feels most cared for — through the craftsmanship and complexity. Every time you meet it, it appears as a new version of itself, shaped by light and shadow throughout the day and the seasons. Hopefully, it will make you smile — and feel a little warm — every time.
Upstairs, the layout was reworked to add private bathrooms and an office. All surfaces were updated to more solid, traditional, and elegant materials — giving the house the feeling of having been there forever, just better dressed.
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Blocket Mini
Blocket Mini – Reuse and leftovers, Saltsjöbaden, Sweden, 2009
Private / NCE Bygg
In Sweden 80 % of the population has used the homepage blocket.se, which is similar to e-bay. In 2007 the total value of ads on the homepage was equal to 5,5% of the countries GDP. You could say that it is the largest shop in the country. In architecture this shop is not very present. The Blocket project looks into what architecture could look like if Blocket was the only catalogue of material available. The result is a building which consist of a mix of reused old materials and new materials left over from renovations or just wrong purchases. Windows are the main building element of the building since they are the most common and cheap material available on the site.
The Blocket Mini project is a built experiment based on a research project where blocket.se and the reuse of material in general were discussed, and an in-fi ll housing building (in Stockholm) was designed using the reached conclusions.
The Blocket Mini project consists of two rooms in a garden. One of the rooms is a boathouse (storage) and the other is a dining room/ bedroom. The house is 15 sqm which is the Swedish limit for building without a building permission.
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Föhr
Föhr, Nordfriesland, 2012 -with Francesco Di Gregorio
Private / Builder NCE Bygg
On a small island in the North Sea, in the former hay storage of a traditional farmhouse, we re-make the space with a wood structure covered by 3.200 tiles, each with a hand-made circular hole, 500 mt of polypropylene blue rope and treated pine wood.
Due to its geographical location, Föhr is very much in the hands of natural forces. The area has a big tide. When the water is low you walk over to other islands. It is a flat island and a large part of it is below sea level. To protect the island man made grass-walls surrounds half of the island. Still, every autumn when the big storm-floods arrive, the island goes on alert. 1634 an enormous flood erased most of the houses on the island and reshaped the map. It is a though climate for permanent inhabitants; at the same time the island changes completely in the summer months when the population raise from 8500 to 40 000 due to tourism. Föhr is an island belonging to Germany but first and foremost to Nordfriesland. The Friesians have their own language and culture. In the 17th century a school of navigation was founded on Föhr and many people became sea captains sailing on Asia and North America. Sailing on other countries brought back the tradition of ceramics and tiles from Asia. Being rich was to have as many painted Friesian tiles as possible on your dining room walls. Wood used inside was painted in Friesian colors, which are different nuances of blue-green. Beds were traditionally in bed-boxes. Houses were always in brick with thatched roofs. The rooms were small, dark and all the same size.
Our project starts with re-opening the space by taking down all dividing walls except for the ones surrounding the bathroom. A new volume is added which becomes the central wall going through and unifying the space. It is covered in ceramic tile with a simple pattern given by blue colored cement coming out through hand- drilled holes. The pattern is the result of a client having time but a limited budget. Tiles are white standard 10X10 and hand drilled by the client and us. Light is brought through the reflective ceramics and the translucent doors. Threads frame the staircase creating a transparent threshold. The bedrooms are dark bed-boxes, private like nests.
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HB6B – one home
HB6B – one home – Stockholm, Sweden 2013
Private / Builder NCE Bygg
When the apartment on Heleneborgsgatan in Stockholm, Sweden was for sale in 2012 it had been used as furniture storage for 30 years. The previous owner had begun a renovation in the 1980s but fell ill and the apartment was left untouched until his death. Time had been frozen; wallpaper was half removed, only a few tiles and a kitchen faucet were sticking out of a wall, there was no electricity and a bathroom only with signs of rats as inhabitants.
In a city like Stockholm with an enormous housing shortage and with every square meter increasing in price by the minute, this story was somehow impossible to understand and resist.
The finished apartment is a result of a fascination for this; a try to let the previous layers and stories of a space live on and at the same time fill the requirements for the new story that will take place.
The apartment is 36sqm and the goal was to fit everything desired by the occupant. In this case: generous spaces, airy sensation, walk in closet, all appliances for everyday life, a large luxury shower / bath, different possibilities of movement, a space which could be divided when wanted. Finally it had to be LIGHT and INEXPENSIVE!
The result is an apartment divided in two parts. One where everything is part of one structure, which is based on the Ikea kitchen units. Everything in this part is completely redone with electricity inside the walls and with all surfaces painted white in order to bring in and reflect light. Here all the functions are squeezed in on top of, in-between, under and inside each other. Bedroom, kitchen, wardrobe and storage are all one.
The second part is left with things free-standing with all surfaces more or less as they have been for the last 20 years. The holes in the the walls have been filled in, loose wallpaper and paint taken down and electrical cables and outlets have been added running on the outside of the walls.
The bathroom becomes the connection between the two parts
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Tiles and Concrete
Tiles and Concrete, Lasagnana – Tizzano Val Parma – Italy, 2011 – with Francesco Di Gregorio
Located in Lasagnana, on a tiny street in the middle of Val Parma in Italy, the ground level of a former stable from 1897 has been converted into an apartment / studio for a young couple.
Dimensions and forms come from the positions of existing elements: windows, walls and columns. The strongest element of the stable was, for us, the “whole space” which we fell in love with. A bathroom is the only volume added, completely covered in white 10×10 cm tiles that bring light and uniformity. It is a freestanding structure where space has been turned inside out. Inside are the functions needed, outside the circulation. The bathroom stands on a new concrete floor, which is separated from the existing walls and columns by a gap framed by steel plates that de fine the floor’s limit and absorb its flows. The electrical connections hang on stainless steel wires which also support vertical elements dividing the space. The “whole space” is the bathroom, the bathroom is the “whole space”, all supported by a uniform slab.
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66 m Lima
66 m Lima, Peru, Competition, 2012 – with Di Gregorio Associati
Extra everything
The project is built up of units. Each unit is a free space where rooms and gardens can be assembled in various ways. The circulation is kept on the side of the units in order to keep the space inside flexible and free in plan. It is a double height garden unit. It is closed to the neighboring sites providing privacy but open to the park and the sea for light and views. To achieve open-air gardens, the units are shifted back and forth so that each unit has one part where it is open to the air for a minimum of 12 m. The terraces face south and north in order to take advantage of the particular location of Lima where the sun arcs across both the northern and southern sky depending on the time of the year. The actual house sits comfortably behind a layer of private gardens.
Each unit has a flexibility-floor through which all pipes and services run. From the floor the pipes are connected to a shaft in the circulation zone. The floor also holds the gardens and the pool. It is possible to have the gardens, the pool or other recessed objects wherever desired, within the structure of the floor. The floor and walls are naturally ventilated due to their double structure. The only object that interrupts the units is a solarpipe that goes through the entire building with high reflective mirrors and a translucent glass in order to bring light into the deeper parts of the building. The entrance floor holds a cafe and the rooftop holds a communal pool and garden area.
The project creates 10 private garden houses in the sky with direct connection to both the pacific Ocean and the Golf Park / city of Lima all the way to the Andes.
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Moving “the same”
Nacka, Sweden, 2010 – with Francesco Di Gregorio
Rebuilding a burned down atrium/semi-detached house.
The municipality made it clear that the new building should keep the same shape, materials and colors as the burned-down house. So that is what we did…..almost.
The new building looks almost the same from the street. The exterior walls facing the private courtyard are almost the same, except for the window setting which is redone….but redone in a way that makes it is even more the same than the original. The only thing done to the facades that is not the same is that one part is movable. But movable in the spirit of the same, since it is hidden when closed. If you want, you have the possibility to push a part the same into your living-room and to make it something very different. Apart from the same, we have worked with light and sight lines since this is one of few “edge-houses” in the area, which means that is has a connection with nature on two sides. On one side is the very organized atrium garden and on the other side the wild nature. Windows are only 40 cm from the ground, making it possible to walk/climb through them if desired.
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Åke – the lawn mover
Åke – the lawn mover, Stockholm, Sweden, 2010 – with Svensk Standard
In the summer, it’s always nice to go somewhere. In Stockholm, many of the people leaving the city go out to the archipelago at the edge of the Baltic Sea. It is nice there. Some people go boating (or sailing) and many just stay at their summer houses doing (usually not a lot of) things like reading and having barbecues at a lawn close to the house. If they are lucky the lawn is also close to the water. This is very popular. So popular that the prices of these summer houses limit most people from actually experience this local eden. Thus many Swedes of middle to lower income travel to places like Thailand with cheap charter flights and cheap hotels.
We wanted to hang out on a lawn, reading and having barbecues. But we also wanted to hang out in the city, and we thought that it would be a little boring to be in the same place the entire summer. Lucky for us there is a lot of water in Stockholm. It is, after all, often referred to as “Venice of the North”. So we decided to build a floating lawn with a small engine to move it around.
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Plug-in
Plug-in, Nynäshamn, Sweden, 2011, Europan Competition – with Francesco Di Gregorio
The area in year 2200…
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Möja
Löka, Möja, Sweden, 2010
Interior renovation of a summer house from 1978. The house was considered claustrophobic, dark and with a clumsy fireplace blocking the space.
Instead of seeing the fireplace as a problem, it becomes the central core of the house. All walls surrounding the fireplace in the main room are taken down and the space is painted white to increase the sensation of volume. Since you now come out directly from the bedrooms into the main space, a storage wall was placed in-between in order to create a threshold and a sense of privacy. Massive doors are changed into window-doors and a new connection is made to the back with a new door. The house’s relationship with its surroundings changes due to this new connection. Previosly, the house was only turned towards one side; now it is a house that you pass through, going from one part of your garden to the other.
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Blocket House
Blocket House, Research and design project, Stockholm, Sweden, 2008 – diploma project
Blocket.se is similar to ebay and is Sweden’s number one second-hand market for everything from cars to textiles. In 2007 the total value of ads on the site was equal to 5,5% of the Swedish GDP. The project begun with the question; since Blocket is such a large part of the Swedish economy, why not use it as a material bank/catalogue for architecture in the same way that new materials are? And what would this mean for the architecture produced?
The project was divided in two parts:
1. Researching and cataloguing – A handbook was produced containing research of architecture using second-hand materials. What materials can be found, and what are the problems and possibilities with them? What projects have been done with reused and left-over materials?
A material catalogue was aslo produced with materials from blocket.se during one month, divided into categories.
2. Design of a small infill apartment building in central Stockholm using the catalogue and conclusions from phase 1. The proposal is a solid structure where the apartment layouts can differ depending on what materials are found on Blocket at the particular moment. The dividing wall are proposed to be mainly made out of windows, which is the most common building component in the Blocket catalogue since many people today change their old low-insulted windows into new and better ones. Since most of the old windows and walls found on Blocket usually have high U-value the house has an extra green house layer which helps create an in-between space, contributing to heating up the apartment and at the same time becoming an extra area 8-10 months a year.
The issue with the windows being poorly insulated creates an architecture where “the problem” becomes the main characteristics of the building enabling flexibility and an additional new space “in-between”.
Visualisations
Drawings
Examples from Catalogue
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Mixed Projects
Random Mixed Projects
FOLLY Competition Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, USA, 2012 – with Francesco Di Gregorio
Balangero, Italy, Competition, 2011 – with Gianni Di Gregorio, Francesco Di Gregorio, Vanni Meozzi, Christian D’Elia, Giacomo Mion, Francesco Musetti
A competition where the municipality of Balangero wanted to regenerate an old asbestos mine with a tourism and research center
1975 + 2010, Apartment Stockholm, 2010
The building was from 1975 and by 2010 nothing had been changed. We decided to do a renovation where we were careful to keep the 1975-athmosphere while at the same time letting it collide with 2010. The apartment was in big need of storage and desk spaces.
Connection – Extention, Sweden, 2010
Proposed extention for turning an old Summerhouse into a Permanent Villa
Järva Cemetary, Sweden, 2010, with Kristin Gausdal – Competition
Open – Closed , Malmö, Sweden 2011 – under construction
A tiny house in a small villa garden with two functions that need to be able to be used with flexibility; complete separate, as one unit, as two different functions sharing the same bathroom. etc. In order to not have to use fire-glass in the green house part, the bathroom, functions as a fire-gate in-between the two units.
Remake Parma Central, with Francesco Di Gregorio, 2011
Interior refurbishment apartment, Parma, Italy
One in One – Sweden, 2009
Proposal for a mini-living-unit and a green house. The mini-unit is put inside the greenhouse in order to take advantage of the heat produced and the in-between zone which can be used a minimum of 8 months a year.
The Journey, with Kristin Gausdal 2010, competition entry – architecture festival montpellier
2500, km – 25, 60X60 boxes, one being filled each 100 km of the trip from Stockholm, Sweden to Montpellier, France creating a garden out of a journey; a european story.
DIF arena, Frihamnen, Stockholm , 2007- with Francesco Di Gregorio
Old-New, Nacka, Sweden, 2010
A kitchen for a house from 1936, mixing the style of 1936 with modern style and technology.
Europan, The Flexible Grid, Dunquerque, 2009, with Kristin Gausdal
Module Royal, competition proposal for a new housing area in Nässjö, Sweden, 2007, with Anders Berensson & Ulf Mejergren
PIR, a baltic research station and lighthouse, 2007, with Anders Berensson
Kvist, 2007, with Anders Berensson – A flexible wall unit with integrated light.
Plastpantaren, 2007, with Anders Berensson – A machine turning grocerybags into handbags
10 Pounds, Chair, Edinburgh, 2004
Chair made with a material budget of 10 Pounds, Edinburgh
Can you sea me? a temporary space for the mondern dance theatre, 2007
