Architecture, ornament and excrement: the Crossness and Abbey Mills pumping stations

Make yourself at home : a critical retracing of the legacy of the housing utopias built in the Nordic countries in the seventies = Siéntete como en casa : una revisión crítica del legado de los utopías de vivienda construidas en los países nórdicos de los años setenta

“…139 (Fig. 3.19) In 1927 OSA inquired in the pages of its publication SA for a house commune, which was followed by a series of internal competitions, and the creation in 1928 by the Stroikom 140 of a research and design section for the standardization of housing headed by Ginzburg, editor in chief of SA. 141 Stroikom´s 3-months of work main innovation were the F-units, 142 designed for single couples or families of three, 143 with kitchennettes 144 and the corridor in the facade, hoping it became a sort of "forum for collective social exchanges".…”

“…137 In the Nordic region, it was in the Danish bigger towns, where squatting and communes culture were stronger, where this do-it-yourself aesthetics was more developed, showing a criticism towards centralization and technologization, but also adding ecological and feminist tones. 138 Rather than artists' ateliers, and besides Christiania's long shadow, it was at the temporary camps where the style was unfolded, notably in the ones that the artists/architects Susanne Ussing and Carsten Hoff organized at Thy and Vejlø. 139 They also translated their experiments into their winning proposal to the housing DAL competition in 1970 and a famous model 1:1 of the project which was exhibited at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, in connection with the exhibition "Alternative Architecture" (1977).…”

“…(Fig. 7.6.13) This idea of beauty swaying Nordic transhousing from the 1970s roots in the neo-avant-gardes and, in particular, in arte povera, 140 and their reuse of industrial spaces as spaces for art, that spread to the residential communes during the 1960s.…”