Architecture and Retrenchment

<p>Shortlisted for the Architects Sweden Critic's Award 2023<i> <p/>Architecture and Retrenchment </i>explores the 'neoliberal turn' in architecture through the rise and fall of the Swedish welfare state. <p/>There are few better case studies of architecture's role in the retrenchment and dismantling of the welfare state than Sweden the birthplace of the world-famous Swedish Model and now home to Europe's fastest-growing inequality. Through eight in-depth architectural case studies Helena Mattsson analyzes how neoliberalism has created conditions for a new built environment which was once closely integral to the welfare system examining how new architectural strategies and techniques were developed in order to protect the agency of architecture in a newly re-organised society and revealing the role of architecture in creating new types of segregation discrimination and social stratification. <p/>With close feminist analysis running throughout - and drawing from oral histories witness seminars and participatory workshops - <i>Architecture and Retrenchment</i> provides an original interpretation of how architecture space aesthetics and politics converged at the end of the twentieth century.</p>