Etikettarkiv: lodgings

Kvarteren Krikonet, Plommonet, Aprikosen, Bananen, Konstepidemin, Kastanjen, Hasselnöten

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Episodes 220 to 223 explore the remains of old Annedal – working class district and hospital area from the late 1800s.

Episode 220: kv Krikonet, kv Plommonet, kv Aprikosen, kv Bananen

District: Annedal

Photo date: 15 January 2022

District Annedal is one of those working class landshövdingehus areas that has acquired the sheen of a legendary golden age, when everything was good and true. And yes, looking at old photographs from before the transformation, it did look quite picturesque. Even some of the city officials thought so, and fought the other officials who won and razed almost the whole area in the early 1970s. But here just below the Landala Hill, a homogenous charity estate from the mid-1870s was spared. The northern part is more villa-like and was designed by Victor Adler. The southern part belongs to the Robert Dickson Foundation and was designed and built by P J Rapp.

Episode 221: Konstepidemin

District: Annedal

Photo date: 22 January 2022

Before embarking on this project, I had never been to the Art Epidemic. A couple of visits later I realise I have missed out on esthetic experiences! Not least architecturally, with buildings from the mid 1880s to the early 1920s. You can also pet a cat or converse with artists.

Episode 222: kv Kastanjen

District: Annedal

Photo date: 22 January 2022

When I studied computational linguistics around 1990, our lecture halls were spread out over the city. Our main base of operations was Humanisten but we daily trudged over the hill to Chalmers to learn programming. For one course we went to the psychology department in the old Lyckholm brewery south of Liseberg. Soon after, they moved to this typically-early-1990s building. The BASF building has been completed and the conscription office is kept busy now that Sweden finally has joined Nato. It will take a long time before the Västlänken railway tunnel is finished though…

Episode 223: kv Hasselnöten

District: Annedal

Photo date: 22 January 2022

Some older public buildings line the street too. My mother went to the seminary when she was young, and always referred to it as a happy time. The current main building was designed by one G Hermansson in a Jugend-y style. Above it sits the Media House, designed by the Krook & Tjäder bureau in 2006.

The maternity hospital next to it has also been taken over by Campus Linné. It was designed by Axel Kumlien in 1900, with a 1906 extension by Otto Dymling and a students’ lodgings from 1921.

Kvarteren Järneken, Falken, Morkullan, Anden, Sångsvanen, Sothönan, Fiskmåsen, Brushanen, Hägern, Spoven, Berget

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Episodes 216 to 219 contemplate the pros and cons of tearing down a whole district of un-modern wooden houses with a strong sense of community, to build modern machines for living where the community spirit has been lost.

Episode 216: kv Järneken, kv Falken, kv Morkullan, kv Anden

District: Landala

Photo date: 22 August 2021

Landala was once a vibrant working class district, with much crime and poverty but a strong sense of community. At least, that is what the inhabitants said in surveys after they had been uprooted in the 1970s ”sanitation” efforts, and sat in their single, lonely flats with all the mod cons. Sure the old landshövdingehus and rustic cottages were picturesque, but cold and draughty with outhouses in the courtyards and only cold water if any. Current inhabitants in the machines for living say they are pleased enough to live there.

The razed area was distributed among seven private entrepreneurs as well as the city’s housing company. The new Landala Torg and the too-brutalist block south of if were designed by Lars Ågren, Ingemar Mattsson and the K-Konsult bureau.

The little chapel that looks forlorn between the Brutalist architecture and the merciless traffic on Aschebergsgatan was built in 1885 from designs by Carl Möller.

Episode 217: kv Sångsvanen

District: Landala

Photo date: 22 August 2021

At the south end of Landala are a couple of blocks that weren’t fully sanitized in the 1970s. The landshövdingehus were some of the last to be built here, in 1915, from designs by O M Holmén and Hjalmar Cornilsen among others. The geology department of the university was located in Sångsvanen until the 1990s: a sign in one of the windows declared this. At that time, I was studying computational linguistics at the Holterman Hospital, then home to the computer science department of Chalmers. The old syphilis hospital has since been further remodelled to become a hostel for Chalmers students.

Episode 218: kv Sothönan

District: Landala

Photo date: 22 August 2021

These eleven disc houses were designed by Sven Brolid – the Brutalism can sometimes be stifling. But the Robert Dickson Foundation always adds some kind of decoration to their facades. The ones in The Coot are quite fun. I work in the same house as the Foundation, maybe I should climb the stairs one day and ask them about their artists?

Episode 219: kv Fiskmåsen, kv Brushanen, kv Hägern, kv Spoven, kv Berget, the water tower castle

District: Landala

Photo date: 22 August 2021

The Brutalist architecture continues up the Landala Hill. These houses were designed by Jaak Lohk who, before joining a private entrepreneur, was one of the architects who developed the new zoning plan for the city in the late 1960s.

The northwest side of Landala is slightly less sanitized than the rest of the district. Here are a few remaining landshövdingehus, a preschool from 2010, and three buildings from earlier expansions of the city’s critical infrastructure. The first water reservoir was constructed in 1871, the little fairy castle (and underground reservoir) came in 1892, a time when Peterson was very busy building water stations and schools, and finally the Jugend pumping station in 1905.

It is now April of 2024 and I can not remember why I didn’t go out to do any photography between September 2021 and January 2022, when the story picks up in district Annedal. How short and fickle the memory is!

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.