Uno Åhrén

Terraced house development Norra Ängby , Bromma

Uno Åhrén (born August 6, 1897 in Stockholm , † October 8, 1977 in Arvika ) was a Swedish architect and city ​​planner and one of the most important proponents of functionalism in Sweden.

life and work

Uno Åhrén studied at the Royal Technical University in Stockholm. He was impressed early on by Le Corbusier's architecture and by social housing in Germany during the 1920s with Walter Gropius as the leading figure. Åhrén was able to demonstrate his radical commitment to social issues at the Stockholm exhibition in 1930 . Here he showed, together with u. a. Sven Markelius , Paul Hedqvist and Sigurd Lewerentz , apartments and interior fittings for people with limited economic opportunities. He put these ideas into practice as early as 1931, and this is how the row house development in Norra Ängby in Stockholm's Bromma district was created . There were four simple rows of houses made of wood, consisting of two or three rooms with a kitchen and a cellar. However, every house also had a garden, which was mainly intended for their own supply of fruit and vegetables.

Uno Åhrén described the functionalist ideas as a critique of outdated tradition and authority that belonged to a bygone society. Every architectural style is the expression of a certain society and a particular culture, he said. If modern society was already a reality, one also had to accept the style of modernity .

Uno Åhrén was heavily involved in the theoretical issues of social planning. He diligently wrote debate articles in the trade press and published books. He was co-author of the important Swedish manifesto for modernism in architecture " Acceptera " (1931). Together with Gunnar Myrdal he published in 1933, for example, the work Bostadsfrågan som socialt planläggningsproblem (The Housing Question as a Social Planning Problem ). In practical terms, Åhrén was able to realize his ideas as an urban planner in Gothenburg (1932–43) and as head of the municipal housing association Riksbyggen (1943–45). During this time he also planned Årsta centrum in the Stockholm district of Årsta , Sweden's first suburban center based on the idea of ​​the community center , in which the shops and stores were subordinated to cultural buildings such as the library, theater and community center .

In 1947 he received the first professorship in urban planning at the Royal Technical University in Stockholm, which he held until 1963. Åhrén was a member of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne from its foundation (1928) .

Work (selection)

• Ford Motor Company AB, Stockholm Free Port 1930–31
• Flamman cinema, Hornstull, Stockholm 1930
• Row houses in Norra Ängby, Bromma 1931–40
• City plan for Johanneberg, Göteborg 1937
• Årsta centrum, Stockholm 1943–53

Vocations

• Gothenburg's head of town planning 1932–1943
• Head of Riksbyggen 1943–1945
• Professor in urban planning at the Technical University in Stockholm 1947–1963

Individual evidence

1. ↑ National Cyclopedin , [1]

Literature and source

• Stockholm's Byggnader , Bokförlaget Prisma 1977
• Svensk Arkitektur , Byggförlaget 1986