Etikettarkiv: sports

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 Glimmingehus, Sturefors, Örup, Svaneholm, Kastellholm, Visborg

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Episodes 131 to 135 enter the stone house city west of Heden.

Episode 131: kv Glimmingehus, kv Sturefors

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 21 February 2021

What’s in a name? In this part of the city, that is a very valid question. When the area south of the moat was developed in the late-1860s onwards, the western and oldest part was called Vasastaden after our father-king Gustaf. The eastern part, where we are now, was called Lorensberg after a famous entertainment property next to Glimmingehus. These district names are still reflected in the ordnance survey map. But the city has changed its administrative zones several times and now most of the combined districts is called Vasastaden. A clue to the original zoning is the names of the blocks themselves: in Lorensberg they are named after castles, in Vasastaden after trees.

Glimmingehus was first built up in the late 1880s, but only the courthouse remains. It was designed by Hans Hedlund and built in 1887. It was used as a courthouse until 2010 when it was turned into a highschool. To the right of it was a girls’ school that looks fabulous on old photos but it was replaced by offices and parking garage in the 1960s. The paddock to the left of it was replaced in the 1930s. Until I started reading up on local history, I had no idea there had been paddocks in the middle of the city.

In Sturefors, all the grand 1880s houses were torn down in the 1960s, for some reason. Of the new houses from that swinging era, the southern end house from 1960 was designed by Helge Zimdal, Avenyn 32 by Per-Axel Björk was built in 1967, and the rest of the block from 1965 came from the pen of F Löfberg. And by the way, the Sturefors castle is in Östergötland and was built by the noble Sture family around the year 1600, says Wikipedia.

Episode 132: kv Örup

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 21 February 2021

In architectural circles of 130 years ago, this block was nicknamed ”Adrianopel”, after big-name architect Adrian Peterson who designed these houses along Avenyn. The builder was Nils Andersson & Co and the first houses went up in 1881. At that time, the dominant style was Neo-Renaissance with lavish, I mean really lavish, decorations all over the facades. Cartouches, festoons, faces, atlants, lions, cornucopias… It takes a long time to walk around blocks with preserved 1880s facades. And it’s better to have a camera with a proper zoom to capture all the tiny details along the roof.

Only the properties at the north end of the block were replaced in the 1960s razing mania. Lorensbergsgatan 1 was designed by Owe Svärd and built in 1964, and numbers 3-5 were replaced in the 1970s. These properties were first owned by the Malmsjö family, who ran a piano factory at the eastern end of Vasagatan. Johan Gustaf Malmsjö started the factory in 1847 and it ran on until 1962 when it moved to Arvika and production ceased in 1978.

Episode 133: kv Svaneholm

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 19 December 2020

Here is a block with styles spanning a century. The house at Kristinelundsgatan 16 is the oldest, designed by Belfrage & Franck and built in 1879. The house next to it was built four years later. In 1930, part of the vacant lot after the tobacco factory was filled with a house designed by Nernst Hanson, at the tail end of 1920s Classicism. And finally, at the north end of the block a modern office building designed by the Tengbom bureau was put up in 1977. Though the style seems to look towards the 1980s and Post-Modernism.

Episode 134: kv Kastellholm

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date: 14 November 2020

The winds of change have swept through this block several times. First the farms and plantations along Södra Vägen had to go when Malmsjö’s piano factory was established here in the mid-1800s. Then came the French quarter in 1875, in splendid French Neo-Renaissance style. The houses at Södra Vägen 7-11 were designed by Hanson & Löfmark and put up in 1903. After a respite of some 30 years, it was time for the next redevelopment: on the site of the demolished piano factory, at Södra Vägen 13, a tenement building by Gunnar Hoving was built in 1931, and in 1939 the corner houses along Avenyn were replaced by splendid Modernist buildings, the north one by A M Stark and the south one designed by Nils Olsson. Olsson’s house is the one with the cinema, which is forever imprinted in my memory as where I first saw ”Snow White”.

The northeastern corner house was built in 1956, from designs by Erik Ahlsén, and long held the offices for the insurance company Folksam. Their logo spun on a spiral-shaped sign on the roof until just recently. Finally, the middle of the block along Avenyn was replaced with the current houses in 1969. Numbers 6 and 8 were designed by Johan Tuvert and numbers 10 and 12 by the Contekton bureau. Phew, so much name-checking!

The burger joint changed owners a couple of months after I photographed it, and was immediately repainted. So the winds of change still whistle briskly around the corners of this block.

Episode 135: kv Visborg

District: Vasastaden (formerly Lorensberg)

Photo date:11 October 2020

Until Sweden was pulled out of the dismal poverty that had been our lot until the early 1900s, vermin was a terrible problem. In 1934, just as politicians started flexing their muscles for raising the standard of living that became a mania of urban renewal thirty years later, the anti-vermin company Anticimex was started. Their first enemy was the horrible bed bug, today making an unwelcome comeback in Swedish homes and hotels.

Before city block Visborg was built, this was a farm called Mariefred, and it remained at the east end of the block as the western house was put up in the late 1870s. The western house was designed in elaborate Neo-Renaissance style by Carl Fahlström. The remaining farm was bought in 1910, when the eastern half of the block was built. The basement towards Avenyn has been restaurant premises for a hundred years. In 1971, Gothenburg’s first pizzeria opened here and we sometimes went there when I was a kid. Yum.

Kvarteren Topasen, Zirkonen, Månstenen, Akvamarinen, Ullevi, Heliotropen, Bärnstenen, Polishuset, Arenan

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Episodes 115 to 119 string a necklace of semi-precious stones from the mid-1900s, and engage in some sports and policing as well.

Episode 115: kv Topasen

District: Heden

Photo date: 27 February 2021

The Gothenburg 300th Anniversary Exhibition in 1923 must have been an amazing event. I wish I could have seen it! My grandmother wrote about it in her memoirs, that she went several times and had a great time. At the Gothenburg Historical Museum site you can look at loads of official photographs from Jubileumsutställningen, and dream of a hundred years ago.

Fifty years later, the city decided to spruce up the old exhibition area with sports facilities and a modern convention centre. And developments are still ongoing! Svenska Mässan is a hundred years old but the buildings on the site have come and gone. The current main building and the first Gothia Tower are from 1984. The Mercury logo is also a hundred years old, first employed during the Anniversary Exhibition and concurrent conventions.

Scandinavium was designed by Poul Hultberg and had a long and expensive gestation period. Controversies still abound: it was ultra-modern fifty years ago but today the city plans to tear it down and replace it with something else. The Valhalla Lido was built in 1956, from designs by Nils Olsson and Gustaf Samuelsson. The main swimming pool has a very zeitgeisty mosaic that you can look at instead of being splashed by the hordes of swimmers that use it daily.

But I still haven’t figured out what the sculpture by the river is…

Episode 116: kv Zirkonen, kv Månstenen, kv Akvamarinen, kv Ullevi

District: Heden

Photo date: 19 September and 24 December 2020

There are no residential buildings between Skånegatan and the Mölndal River, only schools and events centres. All of them are from the 1940s or later – except Katrinelund. The modest kindergarten was built in 1963.

The city’s property company Higab also manages Ullevi, the 75000-seat arena that is mostly used for rock concerts these days. It used to be called New Ullevi, designed by Jaenecke & Samuelsson. The Old Ullevi arena was recently torn down and rebuilt, so it should properly be named New Old Ullevi, right?

Episode 117: kv Heliotropen

District: Heden

Photo date: 24 December 2020

What a warren of schools! Even old Katrinelund has become a school, for gardening and farming. The oldest school building in The Heliotrope is the east wing of Burgården High, originally called the Gothenburg Middle School, that was built in 1938 from designs by Sigfrid Ericson. In 1947 came the Practical Middle School from the pen of Axel Forssén and the girls’ school from 1950 was designed by Erik Ragndal. The latest addition is the west wing from the 1990s, with the striking sculpture by Roland Anderson.

The Norwegian Sailors’ Church was designed by the wonderfully named architects Gudolf Blakstad and Herman Munthe-Kaas. Sailors’ churches are very useful: when my mother and I went on a voyage to Amsterdam in 1971 the ferry took damage in a storm and we were stranded, waiting for my father to arrive on his ship. The Swedish Sailors’ Church took us in and we were very well looked after.

The cineplex under the skate park was originally meant to be built inside the hill behind the Arts Museum. That project was appropriately named the Hall of the Mountain King, but when it was actually realised twenty years later, with the same name, it was as a concrete bunker. It’s functional enough though, even has a mini-IMAX these days.

Episode 118: kv Bärnstenen, kv Polishuset, kv Arenan

District: Heden

Photo date: 16 and 20 September 2020

More public buildings and offices! City block Amber was built ten years ago, filling up an open area that once was a soldiers’ cemetery and a meadow belonging to the old brick works. The new buildings were designed by White Architects, with pre-rusted iron cladding that was a big fad in 2015.

The Police House was built in 1967 and designed by the Backström & Reinius bureau. You can’t see it, though, as it is a classified building and it is forbidden to take photos of it. It was recently extended to a whole judiciary complex, with one building for courtrooms and another for holding cells. But given the current crime wave it would probably need even further extensions – Sweden has become the new Sicily.

Next to the law is sports. The New Old Ullevi arena was built in 2009 and is often used for football matches. The tennis complex harks back to 1901, when my ancestor took up office as caretaker. The 2016 highrise was designed by the Design Bureau (sic).