Innehållsförteckning för No. 2 - 2023 från Rum International

We can't get enough of Mattias. He is such a wonderful photographer. What is the best thing you've done so far this year? “I've spent a lot of time with my almost one year-old grandson, and he's the most joyful person.” If you could live in any house, real or fictional, which would it be? “I'm not that picky, but it needs to have a good front porch, and I've always wanted a tower.” The best piece of advice you never listened to? “To finish what I'm working on before inventing new projects.” One thing that is surprisingly difficult with being a photographer? “To have the discipline to travel light and not pack five cameras just in case.” Whom do you idolize so much you would be afraid to meet…

Yes, it's obvious that opposites attract, I think as I sit on the carpet at David Ericsson's home. Next to me is a purple and yellow, almost laughing, pressed metal chair that carefully walks the line between art and design, and opposite is a pared-back hanging chair in untreated beech, ready for mass production. On one level, they are of course exactly the same product – something to balance our bottom on – but at the same time, they are two very different characters. Like two sides of the same coin. Like human beings before that whole business with Prometheus, when we're said to have been punished for our disobedience by being split in two to search constantly for our other half. The one presupposes the other. “It's the extremes…

The Set Table Nothing during the week – except, perhaps, some of the parties I heard about but didn't attend – was as wild and crazy as Hanna Hellquist's exhibition The Set Table. And it runs all the way through until May in case you haven't made it out to Millesgården yet. There's an art to talking about important things without sounding pompous, and here it's full steam ahead from the start. Craft, feminism, class, food, aesthetics, art, the self, coexistence, life, death… are these the kind of things that interest you? Now's your chance. The approach is sympathetically chatty and inclusive, and the questions are far sharper than the table knives on display. I left with a whole cacophony of questions: How do you persuade a former royal press…

A friend's family owns a shop in the centre of Rome, which has been run by three generations for almost a hundred years. I remember the first time I entered the shop almost twenty years ago. I was immediately struck by its interior. It was over a hundred years old, having originally been built for a pharmacy that was demolished in 1925 to make way for a monument to King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. The interior was made of wood, and the shop had a very particular smell. If ever there was an antique scent, this was it. The shelves covered all the walls except the front one, and stretched from floor to ceiling. The semi-circular counter was also made of wood, with carving and fine glass panels as…

AROUND 1945, RÉMY DE HAENEN – a London-born French-Dutch aviator, sailor, playboy, entrepreneur, “gentleman smuggler” and adventurer, flew the first airplane to the island of St Barthélemy, landing on a thin strip of grassy savannah between a rocky hill and the ocean, precisely where a small airport and, one of the most iconic runways in the world would be built soon after. This tiny island – Saint Barths for the French, St. Barth for the Americans, Ouanalao for the native Carib Indians – has a surface of just twenty-one square kilometers and is nested in the Caribbean Sea latitude 17.9000°N, longitude 62.8333°W, the silhouettes of the nearby islands of Saint Martin on the South; and St Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Saba, and Sint Eustatius on the Northeast are visible on clear…

INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS Hart Berteloot Atelier Architecture Territoire There's a saying that describes the dream of all Belgians of owning their own home: “born with a brick in your stomach”. The saying also reflects a love of fired clay as a building material. And that doesn't just go for Belgium but much of north-western Europe. Anyone who has travelled through northern France will know that there too, it's easy to feel you've had an overdose of brick. Different shades of red and yellow, sometimes coarse and uneven and other times gleaming smooth surfaces of symmetrical perfection, brick is the basis for everything from simple terraces and functional industrial buildings to imposing central stations and the freestanding clock towers typical of the region. In other words, when the architects Hart Berteloot were…

I'D NEVER REALLY THOUGHT about it before, but Stockholm City Hall is the daily workplace for a few hundred people. However, this becomes apparent as I make my way through a stormy and rain-drenched Stockholm, with cars spraying cascades of water onto cheerless pedestrians (I feel cheerful, though), and observe a struggling cyclist simply buzz themselves into the majestic building designed by architect Ragnar Östberg. The bright-green bike narrowly slips through the heavy wooden door before it shuts again. My assigned entry door is alongside, and is similarly imposing, so that I feel the need to ring the bell despite the fact that the door is unlocked. It's the same at the next door, where I finally knock and two women in fitted white shirts bearing a security company logo…

A group of American architects recently toured Sweden to explore its architecture. One morning they came to Gävle's Chapel Crematorium, Skogsljus. It could have been their final stop. And it might have been enough: “Let's stay here all day and watch how the light moves and changes,” suggested one of them. That probably would have been a good idea, as the crematorium is named Skogsljus (Forest light) for good reason. The forest surrounds the building on all sides, and as a result the light reflects in different directions over the course of the day. “You just want to drink in the peace and light of the forest,” says Linda Gavell, crematorium director at the Gävle cemetery site. She loves trees and has always liked pine forests, and so she also…

Something of a hidden gem despite being in the heart of Stockholm. How did you end up here? “This is an old garage. My dad lived in the building and had garage space in the garage next door, and once when I went with him, the door through to here was ajar and I noticed that it was empty. That was ten years ago. So I relocated my studio here, remodelled it and have always loved it here, but at the same time fully intended to do something public with it. Finally, I decided that something would be a gallery.” Why? “It was a long process. I gave a TED talk about the future of 3D printing in 2009, and right then I realised that mass production will become so…

INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS Java Architecture “This project brought endless problems. Countless discussions and everyone wanting dif ferent things. The neighbours wanted one thing, and the city another. But it all worked out in the end and everyone came to believe in us,” says Florian Levy from studio Java Architecture in Paris. The seemingly never-ending list of problems to tackle all began with one phone call. The individual who called explained that he had just bought a ruined house in an inner courtyard. The question now was what he could actually do with it. The idea was to create a home for his family, which includes two children. Ideally in the form of a single-family house. But he hadn't thought beyond that. Paris is not Los Angeles, of course, and singlefamily houses…

Mattias Lundblad is a Swedish freelance photographer and writer who relocated to New London, Connecticut a few years ago. Last spring, he took his camera on a 350 mile road trip along the US Gulf Coast, from Galveston Island off Houston, Texas, to the luxurious holiday resorts of western Florida, documenting the impact of climate change on these areas. These images have now been published for the first time. Tell us about the images. I've spent a lot of time on reportage trips in these states, and I've seen how the landscape and the built environment are changing, with more hurricanes and rising sea levels. This fascinated me, but there's always time pressure when you're on the road, so I never got to stay and take photographs for as long…

Daniel Enoksson has a shark tattooed on his forearm. Apart from being the coolest tattoo in the industry, it does make you think. It's actually a myth that all sharks have to remain in constant forward motion in order to breathe, but it is true of certain species. They are known as obligate ram ventilators. Perhaps that applies to Daniel too? He likes to experiment and constantly move forward. To try difficult things. He explains that he always has an ongoing project alongside his usual, more commercial assignments. In 2022, this project revolved around lights, which is hardly surprising really. He is a former electrician and has been leading lighting courses at Beckmans for ten years. But he had never previously designed a light. Although now things are rattling along.…

The Gudenå, Denmark's longest river, meanders through a wetland area in the low-lying terrain of the municipality of Randers. This certainly sounds idyllic, and the hope is that it will be, eventually. However, at present the area often suffers from flooding — a multifaceted problem. When the water overflows, it makes it impossible for plants and animals to survive and this impacts local biodiversity. The municipality also has water problems caused by rainfall. Heavy rain results in dirty and unfiltered water from roofs, roads and car parks running straight out into the wetland area. Since 2017, C.F. Møller has been working to tackle this complex problem. Their work aims to help the municipality adapt to climate change and be well prepared for a warmer climate, as well as creating an…

HABITAT – DRAWING BOARD The district of Södra Kroppkärr in Karlstad will shortly boast no less than 31 new Nordic Swan Eco-labelled terraced houses. E/S-A Arkitekter and Sonnelids Fastigheter won the land allocation competition last summer and are now continuing work to develop two residential areas, each with its own distinct character: a sloping woodland site and a flatter site alongside an area of allotment gardens. A ground-floor room height of almost three metres, a roof terrace and visible cross-laminated internal timberwork are features that they will all share — but the homes will also be adapted to suit their specific location. The so-called forest houses will have a façade resembling the structure of a pine cone and a forest-inspired colour scheme. The garden houses will instead have a private…

FANS OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN who have travelled to southern California in the past 20 years are highly likely to have encountered the term “mid-century modern” whether they wanted to or not. Since the turn of the millennium, it has been prevalent in design discourse, popular culture and public space in Los Angeles and its surrounding area. It's everywhere from popular TV series like Mad Men, cool second-hand furniture shops, the topic of discussion on a neighbouring restaurant table to the house on the street opposite. And if on your trip you've actively chosen to take a deep dive into Modernist Californian architecture, there are plenty of destinations to choose from with the buildings Hollyhock House (1921), Schindler House (1922), Neutra VDL House (1932, rebuilt in 1963 following a fire)…

SPOTLIGHT Förstberg Ling CONTEMPORARY SWEDISH ARCHITECTURE IT MAY HAVE BEEN a certain degree of naivety that made Förstberg Ling want to run their own construction project from start to finish. But that same naivety created the very conditions that made it possible. “We wanted to keep our ideas, run the process consistently, and be able to control the outcome by sourcing the contractors ourselves,” explains Björn Förstberg. “It can't be that difficult, can it?” thought Björn and his colleague Mikael Ling, who together founded Förstberg Ling. But they soon realised that they had a lot to learn about every aspect, from entrepreneurship, financing and sales, to setting up a tenant-owners’ association. “There was a lot of paperwork, which we aren't particularly interested in. But it feels good to have done…

INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS Loop Architect THE WEST COAST OF JUTLAND can be both indescribably beautiful and unbelievably windy. The wide beaches run all the way from the southern border with Germany up to the Kattegat and attract crowds of visitors. But then that wind, strong enough to send the sand dunes heading across the landscape, was highly appreciated by all the surfers who gather around the never-ending waves of “Cold Hawaii” along the coast below Thy National Park. Since 2008, this has been Denmark's first national park, described by the local tourist office as “Denmark's largest wilderness”. It spans 244 m2 of sand dunes along the coast and behind them a moor landscape that spreads its way inland. But one of the many sand dunes on the more than 50 km…

THE HEAVY, RED DOOR with its wrought ironwork has been blasted into the wall, halfway between the city centre and the Linné district. During my 17 years in Gothenburg, I've passed Esperantoplatsen countless times without noticing it, let alone what hides within. The narrow path on the flat grassy slope is untidy and uneven, full of rotting leaves and abandoned paper cups, but today the door is – unusually – ajar. “This is a fantastic place. It's such a shame it's been forgotten. Gothenburgers have lived their entire lives here without knowing it exists – it's a forgotten gem,” says archaeologist Tom Wennberg, who will accompany us inside the Carolus Rex bastion. We step into a walled room and as we come round the corner, a large, echoey hall appears.…

INTERVIEW FOLKFORM It's just gone ten in the morning when I arrive at Folkform's small studio on Södermalm in Stockholm. They have a bottle of champagne in the fridge, given to them by a photographer they've worked with for twenty years. We open it. What else can you do on a cold December day when you've just learnt that you've been nominated for Designer of the Year? “Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends!” I'm sure Francis Bacon would have approved of our morning bubbly. Chandra Ahlsell and Anna Holmquist don't feel like half-crazy artists at all, but their design does in a way: completely original, uncompromising and exploratory. And always on a journey towards something. Their expression has a certain curiosity that's delightful in itself,…