Destination Alfama IS a student housing project located in the Alfama neighbourhood in Lisbon, Portugal. The plot is a garden with old ruins in the middle of the picturesque Alfama with its colourful houses and winding streets.
The thing that struck me about the place was the contrasts in scale. In the harbour beneath Alfama laid these huge cruise ships that unloaded tourists from all over the world into the neighbourhood. The way they inhabited the scenery they almost became integrated as a part of the area’s infrastructure.
The contrast in scale and the inspiration from the cruise ships became an integral part of the project and the main focus and discussion theme.
To tackle the “problem“ of the ruins, i decided to build on top and over them. This made for an interesting approach to the project. The main component of the project is the large elevated volume containing the living areas. Three volumes connect the living area to the ground, they provide the common areas and services for the building. Connected to the ground floor there will be private and public outdoor patios nestled in the old ruins and out on the plot.
FREDRIK KARLSSON
FREDRIK KARLSSON
FREDRIK KARLSSON
FREDRIK KARLSSON
Marc Subirana.
FREDRIK KARLSSON
The third year of the architecture program at KTH is focused on urban planning, and this year the course focused on urban planning in a rural context. The first part of the year was made up of analysing the context, actors, environment, eco-systems, etc. of the area. The second part was to make an intervention that would make up our bachelor´s thesis.
Recharge is a charging station for electric cars with locally produced electricity, a meeting place for local and regional actors, and a monument for the future.
The plot of the project is located in the wasteland created by the construction of the E4 highway exit. In a future free of exhaust fumes, places like this will become attractive for development. Utilizing such land instead of building on arable land is also a sustainable approach that fits well with the times. Moreover, there are several hundred similar vacant plots along highways throughout the country, providing an interesting opportunity for project replication.
FREDRIK KARLSSON
The first part of the analysis focused on the role of the E4 highway in rural areas. The experience of a motorist traveling through the countryside was mapped by filling in the field of vision the driver has from the road while driving. The establishment of the highway in rural areas greatly affects the experience. The E4 (green) runs through dense forests and cuts through mountains to take the shortest and easiest route, which minimizes the field of view to almost only the highway. When the E4 runs through open land, the high speed prevents one from fully appreciating the beautiful nature being passed. Therefore, the field of vision is narrow and limited. The experience of the E4 was then compared to Nyköpingsvägen (blue), which follows the landscape more organically and is less often obscured by forest. Additionally, the lower speed allows the driver to take in more of the countryside and its fine nature. Also present on the drawing is the regional train line (yellow).
The conclusion of the analysis was that the E4 is not part of the countryside but rather a separate, isolated world. This insight sparked a curiosity to explore how the E4 could be integrated with the countryside and what it could contribute to the area if treated as a resource in the form of a flow of people.
This drawing of the survey of the E4 was named one of the best drawings of the year.
FREDRIK KARLSSON
Further studies were conducted on the area's ecosystem; resources, flows, and actors were mapped. Of the actors present, Burger King, Circle K, and DeVilda were deemed to create interesting questions and play a significant role in the project:
The hamburger chain Burger King has a vast ecosystem since the raw materials for the food come from various parts of the world. Additionally, the raw materials are not processed in the country where they are grown or raised, leading to extra transport. It is tricky to trace where Circle K gets its crude oil and where it is processed into fuel, but it can be concluded that it is neither locally produced nor Swedish.
DeVilda is a small shop and slaughterhouse that sells meat, primarily game. They have contracts with local hunters who supply game meat, and they only buy meat within an hour's drive radius. The meat is butchered, processed, and sold on-site.
Occasionally, one or two cattle are bought from local farmers and slaughtered. All hides are also processed and sold in the shop. Unlike the large organizations, DeVilda has a small, sustainable, and inspiring ecosystem.
The results of both investigations led to the idea of creating a program at the site that would be an inverse of Burger King and Circle K, focusing on local and sustainable resources. At the same time, it would have a strong connection to the highway and benefit from the flow of people using it.
One fact that became apparent during the mapping phase, as well as from my own experience growing up in the countryside, is that the countryside does not have the same conditions to become car-free as the city. Distances are too great, and people live too far apart for everyone to use alternative means of transport or to provide everyone access to public transport.
FREDRIK KARLSSON
The southern building houses two restaurants and a kiosk. The ground floor restaurant is designed as a fast-food restaurant with a drive-in area in front. Upstairs is a fine dining restaurant with a bar and lounge. Unlike Burger King, the restaurants rely entirely on local and small-scale producers.
The meat used in the restaurants only needs to be transported across the piazza from the northern building, where a slaughterhouse is located. The slaughterhouse is intended as a resource for local hunters and small-scale farmers to process their meat. The advantages of a small-scale slaughterhouse are numerous, but some of the most important are that it reduces animal suffering by avoiding long transports to large industrial slaughterhouses. If several smaller slaughterhouses were strategically placed, animals could be slaughtered closer to where they were raised. Next to the slaughterhouse is a market hall where the meat can be sold along with other locally produced goods. The northern building also contains two rooms that can be rented by locals for meetings or other local initiatives.
The piazza between the two buildings is a large unprogrammed area that can be used as a marketplace, for car meets, exhibitions, drive-in movies, etc. It becomes
a gathering place for locals to meet and use, like how the local square was used in the past.
The role of the car and the drive-in principle permeates the entire project. In addition to the drive-in area for the fast-food restaurant, the market hall has a spot where pre-ordered grocery bags can be picked up. The slaughterhouse is also designed so that deliveries can be made without the need to turn around.
All the different programs cross-programmed in Recharge provide perfect entertainment during the hour it takes to charge an electric car under the solar panel roof. In addition to eating locally produced food in the two restaurants, visitors can wander around the market hall and buy the ingredients their lunch was made from. However, Recharge is not built with a focus on serving the people traveling on the E4; it is equally created for those living in the countryside. The idea is to create a symbiosis between the urban world of the highway and the small-scale countryside. While Recharge is a pleasant place to charge your electric car and recharge yourself, the highway brings visitors and consumers to local producers, vintage car enthusiasts, and flea market vendors.
FREDRIK KARLSSON
Early proposal for a mobility hub with common areas, a laundry room and rentable space for a condiminium board. The aim of the project was to make better use of a parking lot and bring more value to the owners of the condiminums owning the lot. The name Lyktan means ”The Lantern” in swedish and came about due to the strategy of having spaces being lit towards the alley to the neighbouring house during night to make sure the alley felt safe.
My main focus during this project was to create easily understanable material to use in communication with the condiminium board and the municipality. I also was in charge of the design and the concept.
LYKTAN Mobility hub, Project for Bonava during internship.
Proposal for a student competiotion by swedish stair producer Weland AB. The competition was to create a single story spiral staircase. The points of critique was buildability, creativity and innovation. My proposal Avrundad (rounded) is a lightweight, minimalist, and buildable spiral staircase that showcases the versatility and aesthetics of steel. The spiral staircase not only serves as a functional element but also adds an aesthetic touch to the room. Its minimalist and airy design allows it to blend into various environments without detracting from other features, while also being capable of becoming the focal point of any space. The profile of the step, with its rounded edges, creates an interesting expression both in plan and elevation. Avrundad has been parametrically designed using Grasshopper to optimally explore various radii, step depths, step heights, etc., resulting in a balanced, functional, and aesthetic outcome. Due to its parametric design it can also quickly be reconfigured in many different ways.
FREDRIK KARLSSON
Avrundad is constructed from step modules mounted on the central supporting pillar. Each module consists of a bent steel strip that both supports the step and functions as a railing. The step is made of oiled oak to contrast the steel frame. The curves of the steel strip and the corners of the step have been rounded to create interesting profiles and to emphasize that the steel strip is one continuous piece. The design takes advantage of the repetitive nature of the staircase by allowing a simple module to be repeated, creating an interesting expression and movement up the stairs.
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FREDRIK KARLSSON
The project started of as a group collaboration with the aim to design a 30 m2 cabin located in the woods just outside of Stockholm. The cabin was named after the swedish artist because of his paintings of the deep swedish forest. Bauer cabin is a passive house with a total wooden construction. The floor plan of the cabin is planned from a main wall of cc 600mm wherein storage, shelves, cabinets a desk and glass box windows are integrated. The interior is clad in birch plywood and the exterior in thermo ash that is treated with heat to withstand wind and water. The ash continues on the roof to create a seamless expression. To implement this the roof has an integrated drainage system.
The main architectural idea of the cabin is that all window and door openings extrude out of the basic geometric shape of the cabin. To realize this idea wooden frames extend all the way from the window panes 80mm out in to the cabin. Outwardly, metal frames or glass boxes creates the extrusions. The exterior extrusions are of varying lengths to give life to the facade and strengthen the architectural idea.
The last phase of the project was to individually detail one opening in the cabin in model an drawings in 1.10 scale. For the model I wanted to replicate the way it would be built in real life with beams, insuilation and all the layers that goes into a passive house wall. All wooden material are cut by hand from raw wood planks in the schools wood workshop. Beams, frames and laths are made from linden which is a soft and easy material to work with. The interior as clad in birch flywood and the furniture is made out of birch as well. The exterior panel is made from ash, as it would be in full scale.
FREDRIK KARLSSON
BAUER CABIN
2. Year 5. KTH. Fredrik Stenberg, Per Fransson.
FREDRIK KARLSSON
BAUER CABIN Project 2. Year 5. KTH. Fredrik Stenberg, Per Fransson.
FREDRIK KARLSSON
Fredrik Stenberg, Per Fransson.
FREDRIK KARLSSON
At ETSAB I went on a study trip to Rome for the course Medir Villa Adriana with Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores as professors. The objective of the course was to investigate the ruins of Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli outside of Rome. We performed the work in groups of 6, and each group was assigned a different part of the villa to work on. We underwent the investigation through literature, drawing, measuring, and other mediums of investigations to properly understand the space. Three days of investigations was made at the villa, followed by two days of presenting our conclusions and material on a single A0 vegetal paper. It was an amazing experience to get to work with Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores in this workshop. Their dedication to the work and artform of architecture inspired the whole class and made for interesting and beautiful drawings.
