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Honorable mention, degree project in architecture 2022 Beginning with the adjustment of a single room and culminating through an addition to the dwelling itself, this thesis describes the incremental development of a residential point-block in Hökarängen, a southern suburb of Stockholm. With a careful approach to alteration and addition, the project aims to build on the richness and social ambition of the neighbourhood’s original 1944 urban plan. Striving to reinstate as well as update those ideals of democracy, community and diversity by working in a way that sits outside the current ‘marketized’ mode of production of our cities. Striving towards a kind of symbiosis, the proposed ‘extension’ to the tower is an exploration in both typology at the building scale as well as living conditions at the scale of the apartment.

An increasing number of countries worldwide is becoming water-stressed, sub-Saharan Africa being one of the most recurrent regions within this discourse. Tanzania, one of the countries in the region, is no exception: large population growth has increased pressure on its precious water resources. The largest city, Dar es Salaam, has a poorly maintained and dimensioned water supply and wastewater system. However, as this system expands and more people are given access to the water network, the water consumption of the city is expected to increase. This is problematic for the whole city; however, peri-urban areas suffer the most from its consequences, e.g. periodical water shortages. This report seeks to investigate the potential for saving water in one of these peri-urban areas, Kibondemaji, by looking at fields of application and techniques for reuse of wastewater from showers. This is done via a literature review and interviews in the field in order to analyse and compare the different systems – reuse for tap water, irrigation and toilet flushing. The interviews showed that there is wide acceptance within the community for water reuse for toilet flushing but not for tap water or irrigation. Reuse for toilet flushing also requires less treatment than other fields of application, thus being the most promising technique for implementation in Kibondemaji.

THESIS QUESTIONS This project revolves around rebuilding a site of a destroyed building in a cultural historically important area.  Acting within the context of the depopulated city this project will investigate how a new building can answer to some of the issues symptomatic of a decreasing and increasingly older population. This project will also investigate how a new building can be adjusted into a historical milieu, not by rebuilding the past, by rather by working with a developed identity.  CONTEXT/SITE The project takes place in Söderhamn, a small city by the coast in southern Norrland, Sweden.  The site is a part of the cultural historically important town hall square.  PROPOSAL The proposal consists of three main parts: a new building, a remodeling of an old building and a part which link them two together. The proposal contains senior apartments and a meeting place shared between residents and the public.

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ABSTRACT: P.A.C.E. Theater is a non-profit performing arts group in the town of Easthampton, Massachusetts. The group’s desire to find and create a new working standard for artistic non-profits’ survival led them to purchase a 125,000 s.f. 19th century mill complex in town. Their goal is to convert the building into a community arts center with theaters, event spaces, dance studios and rehearsal studios while offering tenant space for additional local businesses such as cafes, restaurants, and offices. Some of the tenant space is also intended for multiple local non-profits in order that they can share their resources and cut their expenses even further. The bigger picture is to create a working model of self sustaining art non-profits which can more easily survive during difficult economic times. In order to bring this vision to fruition, I needed to form a workable plan for a very complicated building complex. The building (or I should say buildings) where built over the course of 150 years being added onto and subtracted from as the mill owners saw fit. This created a complex interior space filled with transition spaces via floor level changes, wall type changes, fenestration adaptations, and structural adaptations throughout the decades. The buildings are a collection of historical layers, or stratifications which have the potential to be uncovered in an “excavation” of the building. My thesis explores the process of understanding a building with these types of complexities and then addresses programming the space to create a logical, clear building plan for the end users. And lastly, I explore the stratification levels, or the archeology of the building and attempt to address its history in my design process.

Product development is continually becoming more challenging as global competition requires more efficient design methods. The reuse of company knowledge, specifically the design rationale that occurs during projects is essential to success. This thesis presents a method for integrating engineering and communication tools for purposes of automating the capture of communication-based design rationale. The method is based on four basic principles: to integrate, to make data retrievable, to minimize user interaction, and to store as much DR as possible. The core method consists of two primary operations, the first being to capture the design rationale, and the second being to provide for effective retrieval. An implementation of this method that uses NX as the engineering tool and Skype VoIP software as the communication tool was created for the purpose of testing integration as a means of DR capture. The implementation was evaluated using four separate tests, which focus on efficiency of capture and retrieval, cost analysis, and user satisfaction. These results show that the tool provides improvement in each of the tested categories. From this testing I conclude that integrating communication and engineering tools is an excellent way to capture communication-based design rationale. The tool presented is more efficient than traditional methods in the test cases and provides a user-friendly solution to DR capture. This tool also has various other important applications, such as global collaboration and expectation management. It also provides an excellent framework for upcoming multi-user CAx tools.

Nacka, east of Stockholm, is a quickly growing municipality. With the goal of adding 20 000 new housing units and 15 000 workplaces as the subway is being extended, central parts are being reorganized. The densification will potentially lead to the demolition of nearly a hounded buildings of varied sizes. Sweden’s extraction rates (per capita) are the fourth largest in the world. More than 96% of Sweden’s resources are extracted from virgin sources. As the climate crisis is pressing, we need to start rethinking what opportunities our current building stock pose. Instead of going to landfill the already built can be seen as valuable material banks, as well as valuable as they are. Rotorfabriken is an industrial building, built over time from 1946-1983, in central Nacka that is up for demolition. Its to give way for three blocks of ‘urban like’ housing. The building holds a lot of potential, it is a part of Nacka’s industrial heritage with large characteristic spaces. It now houses an organization that engages the community and small businesses of varied functions.  Does the need for more housing have to be in opposition to the development of Rotorfabriken?  How can Nacka reach its goal of becoming a more vibrant and denser municipality without exploiting our ecosystems?

In Sweden today, there are 3.7 thousand registered Swedish churches with the oldest being just over 900 years old. During the last thousand years the church has existed side by side with the Swedish society which has formed alongside of it. During a long period, the national registration was managed by the church with the parish being the most important community for the individual. As modern Swedish society developed, its relationship to religion changed. The percentage of formal members in the Swedish church has dropped to 56%. Forecasts suggest that the number will drop to 30% by 2050. In the year 2000, the church and the state separated. Since then the churches are formally owned by the Swedish church. However, the possibility of freely disposing of them is severely limited by legal protection (cultural heritage law). In compensation for the increased responsibility and additional costs for the individual parishes, a cultural heritage compensation (KAE) was introduced. This is a compensation that currently amounts to SEK 460 million per year. Despite this number, it doesn’t fill the economic gap that the maintenance of these buildings creates. As a result of this 104 churches have been taken out of use since. The trinity of Sweden, the state and religion is a complex matter and the fate of Swedens churches is still to be decieded. But the fact that cultural heritage is being torn down due to lack of interest, money and ignorance is something worth pointing out. At the same time, the discussion of reuse has never been more relevant. So what if we could reprogram the function of these churches? Making the premises active once again. This thesis work will start in the context of rethinking a Swedish church - How could a church be reprogrammed? In this project, I wish to develop an understanding of how to manage a modern solution within a cultural and historic built environment. And by this creating a new experience of the church building in correlation to how our society functions today.

This bachelor thesis in construction engineering at Uppsala University has been carried out in collaboration with Arcona AB, part of the Veidekke Group. The purpose is to examine the handling and potential of the reusable construction materials, which can be applied to Arcona. Human overconsumption of natural resources threatens the need for future generations. The construction industry contributed 13 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste in 2018, which is just over a third of Sweden's total waste. After waste prevention, reuse is the highest priority in the waste hierarchy.  The thesis provided insightful knowledge through literature study, qualitative interview study and case study. In the literature study, scientific articles and reports were studied to achieve knowledge in the related subject. Also, to get an insight into the current situation regarding reusage in the construction industry. The interview study consisted of seven qualitative interviews. These were carried out with construction-related companies to give insight of the reuse potential regarding materials and handling.  The studies presented development opportunities regarding the logistics and handling of reusable materials. It was noted that current requirements, laws and regulations reduce the amount of reused materials through low landfill fees. Another barrier regarding reuse is lack of labor resources. Several of the respondents emphasize the importance of a reuse depot that enables the reuse development. The report presented cost and climate savings which showed potential savings in several reused materials. / Människans överkonsumtion av jordens resurser hotar möjligheten att tillgodose framtida generationers behov. Byggbranschen bidrog till 13 miljoner ton bygg- och rivningsavfall år 2018, vilket utgör drygt en tredjedel av Sveriges totala avfall. Enligt avfallshierarkin är återbruk det näst högst prioriterande efter förebyggande av avfall. Examensarbetet har utförts i ett samarbete med Arcona, vilket är en del av Veidekke-koncernen. Syftet med examensarbetet är att undersöka de återbrukade materialens hantering och potential, vilket sedan kan appliceras i Arconas återbruksarbete. I rapporten ges en fördjupad kunskap genom en litteraturstudie, kvalitativ intervjustudie och fallstudie. I litteraturstudien studerades vetenskapliga artiklar och rapporter för att erhålla kunskap inom ämnet återbruk samt för att få en inblick i nuläget gällande återbruk i byggbranschen. Intervjustudien bestod av sju kvalitativa intervjuer. Dessa genomfördes med byggnadsrelaterade företag för att erhålla en kunskap om återbrukspotential kring material och hantering. För att få en uppfattning om vilka kostnad- och klimatbesparingar återbrukade material besitter, utfördes en kostnadsbesparingskalkyl av de observerade materialen i fallstudien. Intervjustudien visade att det föreligger utvecklingsmöjligheter gällande återbruksmaterialets logistik och hantering. Det uppmärksammades även att dagens krav, lagar och regler begränsar återbruksarbetet genom låga deponiavgifter. En annan begränsning gällande återbruk är bristande arbetsresurser. Flera av respondenterna lyfter fram vikten av en återbruksdepå som möjliggör utvecklingen av återbruk. Rapporten presenterar kostnads- och klimatbesparingar vilket visar att det föreligger stora besparingar i flera återbruksmaterial. Återbruk kan införas i Arconas arbetssätt genom inventering, logistik och hantering av återbruksmaterial. I projekteringsfasen kan inventeringen utföras i ett samarbete med inventeringskonsulter. För att möjliggöra utvecklingen för återbruk kan även fler etablerade återbrukskanaler användas för logistik, hantering och försäljning. Slutligen kan medverkande i ett lokalt återbruksnätverk bidra till en fortsatt etablering på återbruksmarknaden.