Etikettarkiv: Johanneberg

District

Kvarteren i Övre Johanneberg och Chalmers

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Episodes 209 to 212 explore two separate bodies of architecture: one seminal Modernist group of buildings on a hill, and one agglomeration of academia in a valley.

Episode 209: Övre Johanneberg

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 18 August 2021

In this Modernist dreamscape, every house is its own block: Hämplingen, Snöskatan, Strömstaren, Staren, Stjärtmesen, Lövsångaren, Berglärkan, Blåhaken, Sädesärlan, Steglitsan, Tornsvalan, Rödhaken, Flugsnapparen, Rörsångaren, Klippduvan, Ringtrasten, Alsiskan, Pilfinken and Snösparven.

If Albert Lilienberg was the frontman for 1920s Classicism in Gothenburg, his counterpart for Modernism was Uno Åhrén. As soon as he became planning director in 1927 he ushered in the new era, which really took off in the mid-1930s. Upper Johanneberg is one of the finest examples of early Modernism in Gothenburg. A quick search doesn’t say much about the architects themselves but Erik Friberger designed the lower houses west of Gibraltargatan, says the conservation paper on page 141.

Episode 210: kv Talltitan – Chalmers part 1

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 28 August 2021

If Poseidon and Gustav II Adolf are the physical icons of Gothenburg, Chalmers is their spiritual counterpart. It is a sprawling agglomeration of buildings that in the latest decades also has colonised the northern shore of Göta Älv. Chalmerists, i.e. the students, uphold the mercantile, engineering and clubs&orders ideals of the city’s past.

Until 1962, Chalmers ran its own architectural bureau, naturally headed by the current professor of architecture. Just after the war, this was Melchior Wernstedt who between 1949 and 1960 designed the Gustaf Dahlén Hall, the power central, the students’ union house, the high energy bunker and the library. He also oversaw the construction of the ship’s trial building in 1940. He was succeeded by Helge Zimdal who in 1968 designed the architecture and civil engineering blocks down in the valley. Jan Wallinder was professor of ”formlära” at the time and he designed the administration building and the Palmstedt hall by the campus entrance in 1961.

There was another growth spurt in the 1990s and again in recent years. The students’ union house received an extension designed by Gert Wingårdh in 2000 and the Johanneberg Science Park was built in the last five years. The northern red house acts as a link to the Zimdal buildings, much like the Park itself is a link between academia and industry. It was designed by the Tengbom bureau who also designed the parking garage next to it. The White bureau didn’t want to be upstaged so they designed the rounded southern buildings.

Episode 211: kv Talltitan – Chalmers part 2

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 28 August 2021

When Chalmers was still a private vocational school, it held an architectural competition for their new property in Gibraltar. The winners in 1921 were Arvid Fuhre, Hugo Jahnke, Conny Nyquist and Karl Samuelsson. They designed the first big physics building Origo and the smaller temple-like chemistry building next to it, in finest red-brick 1920s Classicism. Along the now-hidden main facade of the Origo building they placed medallions of famous Swedish scientists: Svante Arrhenius, Anders Ångström, Johan Carl Wilcke, Anders Celsius, Torbern Bergman, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Jöns Jacob Berzelius and Alfred Nobel.

The physics and chemistry departments soon needed a lot more space and Klas Anshelm designed the big brick buildings in 1960, since added to even further. The lecture halls and big red-brick buildings along Gibraltargatan were built in the late 1960s, early 1970s too.

The HSB Living Lab at the south end of the lab buildings is a temporary structure – what it says on the tin, a lab for living in a house. The plans are dated 2016 and the architect is Tengbom. So I guess they will soon pick up their lab and move it somewhere else. The Gibraltar Guest House is also a temporary structure, according the the current zoning plan. The lodgings along the ship’s trial were built in the early 2000s.

As a aside, I can add that my master’s thesis dealt with the gabbro underlying much of Chalmers. It was a lot of fun, mapping outcrops and taking samples, panning for zircons and going to Stockholm to zap them with the ion probe in the basement of the National Natural History Museum. Then I wrestled with Word for a semester and finally boiled down the results in my one academic paper printed in GFF. Where you need a membership to search for it.


Episode 212: kv Talltitan – Vasa Sjukhus

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 29 July 2021

The Chalmers campus has spread northwards too, down the hill towards the old asylum. In 1925, the only house here was the fantastically designed electrical substation by Conny Nyquist (page 140). Then came further physics and chemistry buildings in the 1970s, a microtech centre built by Skanska in the late 1990s and the student lodgings Chabo that was designed by the Wingårdh bureau and put up in 2005.

The Gibraltar Asylum, later hospital, was long feared and shunned as a final destination for the infirm and destitute. It was, however, a considerable improvement over the first asylums at Smedjegatan and Drottningtorget. The mentally ill were transferred to new premises in the 1930s and the hospital was in operation until 2000 when it was taken over by Chalmers and later various businesses.

Kvarteren Stenskvättan, Sidensvansen, Gärdsmygen, Domherren, Törnskatan

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Episodes 205 to 208 climb the Trollspisen hill from ancient family history, over 1920s Classicism and early to late Modernism, to end at current undefined styles.

Episode 205: kv Stenskvättan part 1

District: Heden (formerly Johanneberg)

Photo date: 15 August 2021

I have still not managed to sneak into the courtyard at Cederbourgsgatan 4, to see if any trees from the family seat still remain. The stone houses that were put up on the old cottages are too tall and impregnable to admit view. At the City Museum catalogue I can find architectural plans for the newer of the two houses on the plot. Also a newspaper clipping with my grandmother’s writing in the margin! Here is a model that her father made, with a possibly-Messman painting of the houses in the background:

No 85
12:e roten nr 85 Fredhem eller Hallekrogen


The original name Hallekrogen marks it as one of the Gallows Inns that once lined the road south towards Halland. The area had a very bad reputation, not just for the people taking a grog or three before an execution but mostly for the unruly farmers heading back south. And apparently the road was miserable too.

Episode 206: kv Stenskvättan – the Carlander Hospital

District: Heden (formerly Johanneberg)

Photo date: 15 August 2021

The Carlander hospital sits grandly at the top of a slope. Let’s hope the rock and joints are sturdy enough to allow all the tunnels that have been built right underneath it… It stands in the grounds of one of the many old farms in the area, of which the garden is a reminder. It has not yet been developed. Since the hospital was built in the 1920s, only an extension has been added at a place where an original wing was never built. The blueprints for the extension are signed by the White bureau.

Episode 207: kv Sidensvansen, kv Gärdsmygen, kv Domherren

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 13 August 2021

As we climb the street and the hill, we rise up through the architectural stratigraphy. 1920s Classicism gives way to clean Modernism, a 1960s hotel and student lodgings and at the top is late 2010s Neo-Modernism or whatever you want to call it.

The hotel and the adjoining student lodging were designed by Johan Tuvert in 1959. The new lodgings at the bottom of the street were built by Wallenstam. And the pumping station, now offices, was built in 1923 from designs by Eugen Thorburn, with a discreet extension from 1985. The late-2010s highrise called Jarlaplatsen was designed by the Erséus bureau for Skanska.

Episode 208: kv Törnskatan

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 29 July 2021

On top of the hill is a school, where I was caught by a thunderstorm when photographing it. Luckily there were galleries to hide in – also good for hiding shady businesses! Mandus Mandelius is a wonderful name, he should have designed more houses in Gothenburg just for the pleasure of saying his name.

In the 1920s and 1930s Gothenburg had grown so much it had to renew its critical infrastructure. Several water towers were built on the highest hills, like this one designed by Eugen Thorburn in 1924. There is another one near where I live, from 1930. Some of the water towers were converted to student lodgings in the late 1990s.

Kvarteren vid Trollspisberget och runt Liseberg

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Episodes 201 to 204 cover a suite of architectural styles from the early 1910s to the early 2020s, with a bit of natural design thrown in for good measure.

Episode 201: kv Entitan, kv Koltrasten, kv Blåmesen, kv Munkeboda, Trollspisen

District: Johanneberg (parts formerly in Lorensberg)

Photo date: 13 August 2021

The block called Munkeboda was originally part of district Lorensberg but got chucked into Johanneberg at the latest administrative reshuffle. Based on architecture and population, it really should still be part of Lorensberg, though, with a consulate, a posh villa by Johan Jarlén, now a school, and yet another lodge. It also has a brand new house designed by the Inobi bureau and put up during the last year. For the other blocks in this episode I refer to a general description of the area, page 126ff.

My grandmother wrote in her memoirs how they used to climb up the hill behind their house and in a crevice light a fire to make coffee. This same crevice gave the name to the hill and it still exists today! For the 1923 exhibition a path was cleared to the hill, for those boring persons who didn’t want to travel by funicular.

Some ten years ago I made a rock survey for a new zoning plan that wants to excavate half the Troll Stove hill and put up two tall houses in the new pit. But that would entail 30 metres high rock cuttings and it is placed right on top of sewers which would give inescapable ”aromas” in the new, expensive condos… The houses have yet to be built. The hill consists of mainly gabbro with various grain sizes. Very pretty.

Episode 202: kv Skokloster

District: Johanneberg (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 13 August 2021

Here is another block that is properly part of Lorensberg. The zones, districts and sub-districts are really confused here… Maybe it’s the ghosts of those who were executed here that play havoc with the minds of city officials? The ghosts didn’t seem to bother my grandmother and her ancestors who lived here for a century. But for the 1923 exhibition, a cable-car was drawn right over this block, which was yet to be built, and over their garden – and sometimes the gondolas stopped and the passengers had to be rescued. So she said.

Episode 203: kv Getebergsäng – inside Liseberg

District: Heden

Photo date: 16 August 2021

Liseberg was one of the many small farms that dotted the area until 1923 or thereabouts. A few of the farm buildings still exist but the gardens have long gone – except maybe here, if you count the funfair as a garden. In her memoirs, my grandmother writes how she visited the manor house once, before the funfair had transformed the idyllic park. She was visiting a school friend who was staying with her relative, the architect Eugen Thorburn.

The 1923 Anniversary Exhibition was a temporary affair, almost ephemeral. And it was a riot of design! Sigfrid Ericson and Arvid Bjerke were the main architects and they created something fairytale-like. All photos from the time are black-and-white but written memories all mention how colourful it was. It was a very ambitious undertaking, with a historical section on the Johanneberg hill and a modern technical section at what became Svenska Mässan. And annexed to that part was the Liseberg funfair, the only part of the venture that wasn’t a spectacular financial loss. So it was decided to keep it and it has generated profit ever since.

Structures at Liseberg come and go, either in planned redevelopment or in sudden fires. The Congress Hall went up in flames in 1973, and the brand new adventure lido that was meant to save the entire tourism sector in Gothenburg melted in a horrid fire a month ago. Wikipedia says the two entrance towers were designed by Axel Jonsson and put up in 1940, as a nod to the two towers from the original exhibition. The pink colour permeating the whole park is said to be the original colour from the exhibition.

Episode 204: kv Getebergsäng (outside Liseberg), kv Sandmusslan, kv Pilgrimsmusslan, kv Immeln, kv Spindeln

District: Heden, Krokslätt (parts formerly Bö and Skår)

Photo date: 16 August 2021

Some 30 years ago I had a job just south of Liseberg and used to walk, run and tram along Södra Vägen almost daily. The big wooden villas and small landshövdingehus that my grandmother knew from her childhood were still there – but just a few years later they had to go to make way for the science centre (designed by Gert Wingårdh) and the award-winning culture museum (designed by Cécile Brisac and Edgar Gonzalez). And for the last six years also for Västlänken. Only the modernist house next to the southern entrance to Liseberg remains, for now…

East of the Mölndal creek the funfair has taken over the city block called Pilgrimsmusslan, where there used to be factories and before that very cheap housing for industrial workers. One part of a larger estate was set off as a sports field and named Balders Hage. This is where the ÖIS football club was started. The factories produced everything from sweets to yarn to engines and some of them were closed only 30 years ago. The Wingårdh bureau also designed the Grand Curiosa Hotel and the lido that burned down earlier this year.

Kvarteren Taltrasten, Näktergalen, Tofsmesen, Göken, Grönsiskan, Lappmesen

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Episodes 196 to 200 enter district Johanneberg, a relatively young administrative unit from 1920. The northern or lower part was built up a hundred years ago to an older type of city plan.

Episode 196: kv Taltrasten

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 31 July 2021

The first plan for this part of the city was drawn up in 1901, revised in 1904 and 1917 and again in 1936. It was built up in the mid-1920s to late-1930s – and by that time the styles visualised in the plans had shifted from Jugend over National Romanticism to 1920s Classicism and finally crowned by glorious Modernism.

The lower or northern part of Johanneberg was built to Albert Lilienberg’s plan of 1917. This means curved streets and large enclosed courtyards without outhouses. So the flats in the tenement buildings, like in this block by Hugo Jahnke, were built with all the mod cons like a WC and a bathroom. Even working class landshövdingehus started to get amenities like this at the time, even though the bourgeoisie decried it as an unnecessary and immoral luxury.

Episode 197: kv Näktergalen

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 26 July 2021

Taltrasten and Näktergalen were planned as non-identical twins, a portal to the upper parts of the hill. From the lower Viktor Rydbergsgatan, curved driveways lead up to almost Egyptian-type pylons, as to a grand manor house or castle of yore. Along the street are retaining walls and abutments for the overlying slopes – all carefully designed for sober beauty and monumentality. The architects were Harald Ericson and Ragnar Ossian Swensson.

Episode 198: kv Tofsmesen

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 31 July 2021

When my grandmother’s father suddenly died in 1931, her widowed mother moved to Teknologgatan from the rather pretty little villa in Skår where they were relocated after the city expropriated their century-old family cottage in 1926. During her time here, she would have seen this little block completed in the mid-1930s, and all the radical changes that were soon to come to the Johanneberg area.

Episode 199: kv Göken

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 1 August 2021

More houses should have informative plaques! That would make it much easier writing these narrations. In Majorna, the city’s management company Familjebostäder has put up several plaques relating the history of the landshövdingehus blocks they have preserved rather than torn down and replaced with concrete boxes.

Until all these stone houses were built, district Johanneberg was forested wilderness on the edge of the farms Gibraltar, Johanneberg and the Executioner’s. A creek ran down towards the west more or less along Vidblicksgatan. There is not much else to say about the Cuckoo, a typical late-1920s Classicism courtyard block. However, it’s rather big, and it has signed reliefs on the main facade. But would famous sculptor Carl Eldh really have stooped to such an insignificant assignment?

Episode 200: kv Grönsiskan, kv Lappmesen

District: Johanneberg

Photo date: 1 August 2021

My possibly-gay great-uncle Helmer was a banker who lived in a long flat at Walleriusgatan 2. We visited him and his possible-partner many times and it was a flat full of beautiful ceramics and modernist paintings. I say full but it was in no way cluttered, the flat was as elegant as he himself. When he died, my uncle Martin sold some of the paintings he inherited to finance building projects at his country house, so it was ”real” art that uncle Helmer collected. Not bad for a lad born to a caretaker for tennis pavillions!

Grönsiskan sits at the edge of the old planning style with big enclosed courtyards and looks out on the open style that followed. The church also straddles the two eras, Classicism and Modernism, with basically no decorations except a few crosses. My great-uncle used to complain about the bells tolling straight into their flat.