The Stockholm Exhibition
In the summer of 1930 Gunnar Asplund and his colleagues present a new architecture of glass, steel and flags on Djurgården. A year later comes the manifesto “acceptera”.
Functionalism made its breakthrough in Sweden in a single summer and became the style of the folkhem, the Swedish welfare state.
Since the late 1910s the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design had worked for better everyday objects for ordinary people, and its leader, the art historian Gregor Paulsson, wanted to show what a modern Swedish architecture and design could be. Inspiration came, among other sources, from the Werkbund’s housing exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927, where Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Gropius had built model houses. Housing was a burning issue in Sweden: many families lived in cramped, poor-quality flats without their own kitchen or bathroom. Paulsson became the exhibition’s commissioner-general and Gunnar Asplund its chief architect. Asplund was known for austerely classical works such as the Stockholm Public Library, but he now took the full step towards the new.
The exhibition grounds by Djurgårdsbrunnsviken consisted of light pavilions of steel and glass, flags, banners and a tall advertising mast lit with neon. The Paradiset restaurant, with its large glass walls and roof terraces, became the focal point of the exhibition. A special area showed housing: small flats and houses with well-thought-out plans, where each room had its function, with light, air and modern kitchens. The architects included Sven Markelius, Uno Åhrén and Paul Hedqvist. Everything was temporary and was demolished after the summer, but the public flocked to it. The architecture was presented as part of a new way of life, in which technology and reason would make everyday life better for the many.
The exhibition sparked a heated debate. Critics spoke of a cold, un-Swedish machine aesthetic, while supporters saw functionalism as an answer to society’s needs. The following year Asplund, Paulsson, Markelius, Åhrén, Wolter Gahn and Eskil Sundahl published the pamphlet “acceptera” (accept), which declared that one had to accept modern reality and build for it. During the 1930s funkis quickly became the obvious way to build housing, schools and hospitals. At the same time the idea of the folkhem, the “people’s home”, launched by the Social Democrat Per Albin Hansson in 1928, gained ground, and architecture came to be seen as one of its tools. The style also spread to homeowners all over the country, with flat roofs, corner windows and white rendered façades.