Lucker

TEAM DATA

Team Representative: Karl Zetterholm (SE) – architect

Nybohovsgränd 10, 11763 Stockholm – Sverige
+46 73 970 32 65 – karlzetterholm@gmail.com

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^{K. Zetterholm}

INTERVIEW
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1. How did you form the team for the competition?

It is a one-man team, so the main issue was finding the time to do it on my own. The Europan timeline largely coincided with my paternity leave which opened a window of opportunity. Still, planning and time management was crucial.

2. How do you define the main issue of your project, and how did you answer on this session main topic: Adaptability through Self-Organization, Sharing and/or Project (Process)?

“Lucker” aims at three main things: 1- Create a physical structure able to foster a vital peripheral urbanity; 2- Develop a planning model able to handle unpredictability and change while creating a clear visual urban character; 3- Encourage integration and affordability.
This is done through a set of different architectural, economical and planning strategies designed to open up the site development to a vast array of possible stakeholders of different sizes.

3. How did this issue and the questions raised by the site mutation meet?

The project deals with the transformation of a centrally located oil harbour just outside central Stockholm. The site is char¬acterized by its dramatic topography and its location at the main inlet to Stockholm. The topography, partly natural, partly manmade, creates a site of great differences, which led me to a collage as a way to stitch together disparate architectural elements (greatly differing in size and function) creating a patchwork whole out of optimized parts.
The project strives towards a high degree of adaptation of existing architecture and infrastructure using the oil cisterns and road infrastructure as one point of departure in addressing the site.

4. Have you treated this issue previously? What were the reference projects that inspired yours?

The aim of the proposal was to distil some ideas that had been brewing in my brain for a few years. The Europan context is a great place to realize ideas that may not always fit within the realms of commercial projects – ideas on the place of the 20th century city and the visions of the modernist era in 21st century urban thinking and practice; the relationship between planned and unplanned; the relationship between density and the natural landscape within urban or suburban settings; the possibility of making room for individual desires and agencies within a collective form. It also grew out of a perceived lack of exciting visions for an urban periphery within the Swedish professional discourse.
Inspiration mainly came from existing urban patterns that held keys to my vision of a rejuvenated urban periphery. The integration of large-scale 20th century projects and spaces in Paris’s 13th arrondissement, South of Place d’Italie; the small-scale interiors of some big blocks in Tokyo as investigated by Atelier Bow-Wow. Another French point of reference was the 104 in Paris, demonstrating how the transformation of old large spaces can be a road towards a new kind of successful public space defined by co-creation, openness and tolerance. There is also some indirect influence from Dogma’s ideas on working/living and their large-scale urban interventions.

5. Today –at the era of economic crisis and sustainability– the urban-architectural project should reconsider its production method in time; how did you integrate this issue in your project?

The proposal seeks to marry a formal stability with a bottom-up process facilitating a collective and multi-faceted spatial production. It introduces a flexible planning tool that lets you expand or contract the building envelope of a particular plot in reaction to varying needs and economical realities. This increases flexibility and diversity by opening up for a great variety of potential developers. It allows long-term evolution of the individual sites, which in turn creates a dynamic and somewhat unpredictable development of the whole.

6. Is it the first time you have been awarded a prize at Europan? How could this help you in your professional career?

Second time participating, first time winning. It has, of course, been a giant boost of morale! The conversation with the munici¬pality is continuing and if all goes to plan I will be working together with them on trying to realize the project starting this spring (2016). They have been nothing but positive and supporting. The win has led me to quit my day job in exchange for an uncertain but excit¬ing solo flight.