The Million Programme: Swedish Housing, Ideas and Architecture

The Million Programme was the Riksdag’s decision in 1965 to build a million homes in ten years in order to end the housing shortage and raise standards. The target was reached in 1974. The architecture is typical of the record years: three-storey lamellhus (slim slab blocks), long high-rise slabs and point blocks in concrete and brick, often built from elements made in a factory and placed in suburbs with segregated traffic, large courtyards, parkland and a centre by the metro. A large share of the homes, about a third, were nevertheless detached and terraced houses.

Facts

The housing shortage and the 1965 decision

In the 1950s and 1960s people moved in large numbers from the countryside to the towns, where industry needed labour. The birth cohorts were large and labour immigration increased. Housing queues were long, and many families lived in cramped and outdated conditions, without a bathroom of their own. The government under Tage Erlander made housing a central issue, and in 1965 the Riksdag decided that a million homes should be built in ten years.

The state gave favourable loans, and the municipalities and their public housing companies were given the main responsibility for planning and building. The target was met: between 1965 and 1974 just over a million homes were built. The flats were light and well equipped, with a bathroom, a modern kitchen and often a balcony. The term Million Programme is today often used only for the large areas of multi-family housing, but the programme covered all the homes built during the ten years, including villas and terraced houses.

The ideas behind it: neighbourhood, traffic and light

The suburbs of the Million Programme built on ideas from the 1940s and 1950s. Functionalism had demanded light, air and greenery in every flat, and the lamellhus, a narrow block standing free in a park instead of in a closed urban block, was its answer; the background is in the guide to Functionalism. After the war came the idea of the neighbourhood unit, a manageable district with its own school, shops and community hall within walking distance.

Vällingby, inaugurated in 1954 and designed by Backström & Reinius following a master plan from the city planning office under Sven Markelius, became the model: an ABC town with work, housing and a centre around a metro station. Traffic segregation, in which cars are led around the residential areas and footpaths and cycle paths pass under or over the streets, became the rule. How planning developed is explained in the guide to urban planning through history.

What the Million Programme looks like

Building was industrialised. Walls and floors were made as concrete elements in a factory and lifted into place by cranes running on rails, and the crane track often decided that the buildings lay in long, straight rows. Many of the apartment blocks are three-storey lamellhus without a lift, grouped around large courtyards. Closest to the centre stand taller slab blocks and point blocks, and farther out terraced houses. Parking was gathered in garages and on large areas at the edge of the district.

The façades are of concrete, sometimes with exposed aggregate, or of brick in red, yellow or brown, and are often complemented with cladding panels and balconies in long rows. Ornament is almost entirely absent; what distinguishes the areas is colour scheme, scale and how the buildings sit in the terrain. Typical examples are Tensta and Rinkeby in Stockholm, Hammarkullen and Bergsjön in Gothenburg and Rosengård in Malmö. The same period and thinking can be seen in the city centre, where the Hötorget skyscrapers and the Kulturhuset were built, and in the era of the record years in Swedish history.

The criticism and Pruitt-Igoe

Already at the end of the 1960s harsh criticism was directed at the new suburbs. They were described in the press as desolate, large-scale concrete environments, and in the early 1970s thousands of flats stood empty in some areas, because many people preferred to live in houses. Sometimes the first tenants moved in before schools, shops and planting were ready. The reputation of the areas affected who moved there, and over time several of them came to be marked by segregation.

The debate was international. When the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex in St. Louis, with 33 high-rise blocks from the 1950s, began to be demolished in 1972, the critic Charles Jencks pronounced it the death of modern architecture. Swedish commentators often used it as a warning, but in Sweden the response was usually refurbishment rather than demolition. The reaction led to Postmodernism and a return to urban blocks and streets; Bofill’s arc at Södra station from 1992 is a clear answer to the Million Programme’s slab blocks. The aesthetics of raw concrete are dealt with in the guide to Brutalism.

The Million Programme today

In the 1980s and 1990s some areas were rebuilt with pitched roofs, new colours and entrances. Today many of the buildings need renovation of pipework, windows and façades, and the question is how they can be renewed to save energy and improve quality without rents rising so high that residents are forced to move.

At the same time the view of the architecture has changed. Several areas are now designated as culturally and historically valuable for their courtyards, their planning and their carefully designed details, and younger generations are discovering the qualities of bright flats and large green spaces. The models are found in Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, and the Million Programme’s furniture and interiors in the design section’s periods the People’s Home and the 1970s.

How to recognise a Million Programme area

Exercise

How many homes was the Million Programme to build, and in how long?