”Change
  equals death”

I believe that proverbs and words of wisdom, however silly they seem, say something about people’s characters. There are about an equal number of them that say you shouldn’t take chances when you know what you have, as well as those that say you have to dare to do that thing that seems frightening or disagreeable. “Better the devil you know, than the devil you don’t” and “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”, are really about the same thing – our anxious relationship to change. One person who never seems to hesitate before taking the plunge is architect Thomas Sandell. During the customary lack of news in the summer, when the media tend to report cases of the killer slug and the dog days of summer, with Nordic Hotels’ owner Ejnar Söder, he has made sure that we in Stockholm have talked architecture. For or against the open air swimming bath (or hotel, depending on which side you are on) in Riddarfjärden has been the hot subject. It is gratifying to hear people talk architecture and it is encouraging that Thomas Sandell has dared to take a stand even though you might think he should have been able to foresee that a new construction on Stockholm’s (underexploited) waters would be rejected by the powers that be. Sandell & Co don’t just have the equivalent of the Commission for Architecture and Built Environments, the major daily papers and a majority of Stockholmers against them – they also have to contend with the human anxiety for change.

For architecture this anxiety is an unavoidable condition, and it is often the case that it holds up development. Architectural history is full of lost opportunities that fall through because the general public feels more secure with what it has rather than what it could have. Of course it can be good sometimes to progress slowly and tread carefully. The change that architecture brings about often involves a plot that has previously been a grove, a parking lot, a field, or perhaps nothing – now containing a building. This is not to say that buildings are for ever and that mistakes can’t be rectified, but there is still a lot at stake when architects’ visions are realised and once a building is standing, then people have to learn to live with it. And for a very long time. Nonetheless I can’t help thinking that we should listen to “Nothing ventured…” rather than “Better the devil you know…” more often, but in the debate about the open air swimming bath in Riddarfjärden, as in most cases with a controversial new building, the opponents seem to have sourced their argument from Woody Allen’s author Gabe Roth in “Husbands and Wives”, who without a shadow of doubt claims that “change equals death”. Sometimes it can seem that whole towns stand or fall because of an insignificant new building. But that is not the case. Changes seldom involve the kiss of death, more often the opposite. Change is part of life.  We can see it every day when we look in the mirror. It doesn’t only concern human beings, but towns as well. It has already been pointed out in the debate about the bathing hotel that towns are a type of living matter. In the same way as they have a pronounced character, they also have a life.

It isn’t solely the architects’ works, the towns, which are in constant flux. Even the role of the architect is constantly changing. Today it is partly a marketing role, which the German architect Jürgen Mayer H noted when he was contacted by the science and experience park Danfoss Universe in Denmark. Some of the changes we show you in this issue of Forum AID reflect the double role of the architect, as well as the ambitious architectural ventures by municipalities in former neglected areas such as child care. We have also taken a look at possibly the largest change over the last few years in this part of the world that Forum AID reports on – that Norway has become a serious contender in the Scandinavian design scene. Changes are probably, after all, often for the best.

Daniel Golling
Editor-in-chief
daniel.golling@forumaid.com