The Swedish Home

摘要

Sweden has never built social housing. Quite the opposite. Sweden's ambition for housing construction, established by the governing Social Democratic Party during the 1930s was clear:' Only the best is good enough for the people.' That all citizens were to have good homes was one of the cornerstones of the Swedish model. However, Swedish housing construction is in the midst of change as the national housing policy that gave Sweden its international reputation as the land of housing construction with a passion for social justice in the 1940s and 1950s was deconstructed 15 years ago. During the 1950s, new and aesthetically appealing ideas bore fruit in the form of high-qualitative housing architecture. Architects played an important role in this development and government-organised study and research produced knowledge of the functions and dimensions of the home. By forming municipal housing companies, housing in which profit was not the first objective could be developed, and rental apartments in blocks became the most common way of living in Sweden. The chief purpose of the national housing policy was to meet the acute need for housing that, in the early 1900s, made Sweden a country with nearly the lowest standard of living in Europe, second only to Portugal. By the mid-1970s the situation was the reverse; Sweden was no longer at the bottom of the list, but at the top as having the highest standard of living in Europe.