Uro Publications hosted the launch of 4,495 Flats: A Metabolist’s Guide to New Stockholm at Composite, Collingwood Yards.

What is contemporary Swedish residential architecture doing, amidst the foggy conditions of a late-capitalist, twenty-first century Welfare State, with a view to its construction booms and housing shortages? What are the demands that this architecture answers to, and what problems of its own might it be wrestling with? What forms of life does it dream of accommodating and which does it normalize, naturalize, or exclude? 14,495 Flats: A Metabolist’s Guide to New Stockholm examines the multi-unit housing approved at the height of a recent building boom (2017) in the midst of an ongoing housing shortage in the 26 municipalities that make up the Stockholm region.

Here in Melbourne, we are confronted with a similar apartment construction boom and recent public housing policies riddled with conflicting strategies. We invited international, local industry professionals and contributors from the book 14,495 Flats: A Metabolist’s Guide to New Stockholm to discuss the lessons learned from Sweden; a rare and necessary educational opportunity for the residential architecture industry in Australia.

The book 4,495 Flats: A Metabolist’s Guide to New Stockholm includes an archive of plans from 156 projects in the Stockholm region, presenting over 600 original planning permit drawings for 337 buildings. It is a must for all architects, planners, developers, and other actors working within the housing sector, as well as students and scholars of residential architecture.

Speakers
Helen Runting, architectural theorist (PhD. Arch.), urban planner (B. UPD), and urban designer (PG Dip. UD, MSc. UPD).
Dr. Lee-Anne Khor, Senior Lecturer at Monash University and Member of Urban Lab.
Lisa Garner, Director of LIAN.
Alexis Kalagas, Head of Public Programs at Molonglo.