Re-adapting the Laundry : Inquiring about culture-graded buildings By Participatory Action Research

Abstract: According to the Stockholm City municipality’s publication The City Museums Cultural and Historical Classifications[Stadsmuseets kulturhistoriska klassificering], culture-graded buildings in Stockholm are classified by The Stockholm CityMuseum, according to a model of evaluation created by the National Heritage Board, seeking to define what cultural heritage brings to the table (Stockholm City, 2022). As it says in the Swedish National Board of Housing´s Building and planning publication Corruption Prohibition, to ensure the preservation of the positive impacts culturally significant buildings provide for their surroundings, the municipalities enforce laws that affect the development process of the built environment (Boverket, 2021). In Stockholm, many apartment buildings were built during the functionalistic era, more commonly known as the Funkis movement. Revolving around the needs of the people, the functionalistic manifest Accept as read in Modern Swedish Design translated by Kenneth Frampton, proposed a societal necessity of instilling value in functions dependent on the needs of everyday life (Åhrén et al., 2008). This bachelor’s thesis revolves around a case in which a housing cooperative of a culture-graded Funkis building in Stockholm is looking to re-adapt an inner courtyard. Resulting in an inquiry on how a particular housing cooperative can initialise the re-adoption of their common shared space and also providing a methodological approach applicable to any projects looking to re-adapt culturally graded buildings in participation with its users. The methodological approach uses Participatory Action Research (PAR) as Marwa Dabaieh, says in her journal article Participatory Action Research as a Tool in Solving Desert Vernacular Architecture Problems in the Western Desert of Egypt, as a methodological means to an end solving common issues, in participation with the people experiencing the situation (Dabaieh, 2013).