ARCHITECTURE

After the Club Cosmos shortfilm competition in 2019 (the theme was ”moon”, in celebration of Apollo 11) I had an idea to investigate architectural decorations in my home town Gothenburg. ”Yes that’s been done before” was the immediate reply I got and it’s true, several books and sites with much better pictures have been made — but not in painstaking and eye-watering detail!

My idea was to document every facade in every block in at least the city centre, possibly the entire city depending on when it’s no longer fun to do. And almost immediately it became a very useful project in times of pandemic and restrictions. An opportunity to go out for long walks with never the same destination. And no need to interact with contagious people.

Thus was born ”Fasadprojektet”. Starting in November 2019 and really kicking off in March 2020, I have amassed a great number of photos of lintels, decorative lions, festoons, acanthuses, mascaroons, atlants, weird cryptids, reliefs, roof slates, iron grilles, spires and all sorts of unnecessary details on the outside of buildings. Yes, that’s what I mean by ”architectural decorations”, funny things that you don’t actually need to maintain function and stability. From this follows that modern houses, from the 1930s and onwards, seldom yield interesting results. Unlike the 1880s…

The main part of the project is to go out and look at facades. But it didn’t take long before I started making videos of my findings. As I write this introduction in late December 2022, I have published 287 videos. Two hundred and eighty seven! It’s all on youtube and on my Facebook but since I acquired a WordPress account for a different project, I thought I’d collect the findings here too.

Guides to Gothenburg architecture and history can be found in Wikipedia and at the excellent site Det Gamla Göteborg which is one of the sources I use for narrative material. Other sources are the city’s conservation programme, the three books from a hundred years ago by local journalist CRA Fredberg, and all my grandmother’s many books on the old Gothenburg. Yes, her family had long roots here, the first member of our family that we know lived here immigrated from Germany in the late 1700s.

Blog posts on this subject are marked Architecture.

Götaplatsen

On the west coast of Sweden lies the city of Gothenburg, or Göteborg as its native name is. It was founde in 1621 by king Gustav II Adolf, aka the Lion from the North, who died in glorious battle on the 6th of November 1632. Until the mid-1900s he was widely celebrated as a hero warrior king and we still eat his chocolate effigy every 6th of November. Warrior-hero is no longer fashionable, but chocolate is still chocolate.

Over the years and centuries, the city grew and administration varied. In my Facade Project I try to label the episodes by district which sometimes gets very confused.

With those caveats in mind, here are the districts I’ve covered as of late December 2022:

  • Västra Nordstaden — 21 episodes
  • Östra Nordstaden, Älvstranden, bridges, the area around Centralstation — 7 episodes
  • Inom Vallgraven 1: from the moat to Östra Hamngatan — 13 episodes
  • Inom Vallgraven 2: Östra to Västra Hamngatan — 16 episodes
  • Inom Vallgraven 3: Västra Hamngatan to Ekelundsgatan — 12 episodes
  • Inom Vallgraven 4: Ekelundsgatan to Älvstranden — 15 episodes
  • Intermission: extra stuff
  • Pustervik — 3 episodes
  • Kungsparken and Trädgårdsföreningen — 2 episodes
  • Stampen — 13 episodes
  • Gårda — 12 episodes
  • Heden — 16 episodes
  • Vasastaden (with parts of Lorensberg) — 44 episodes
  • Lorensberg — 21 episodes
  • Intermission II: more extra stuff
  • Johanneberg — 17 episodes
  • Landala — 7 episodes
  • Annedal — 8 episodes
  • Haga — 27 episodes
  • Kommendantsängen — 9 episodes
  • Olivedal (with parts of Masthugget) — 20 episodes
  • Masthugget (with parts of Olivedal and Stigberget) — so far 4 episodes
  • Stigberget — next up to be visited