Spatial Traces of Societal Change: Material Manifestations of Values in the Architecture of Stockholm Schools

The thesis asks how societal values and norms become expressed in the architecture of everyday environments, and how schools and schoolyards spatially manifest such values and norms. It begins from the idea that space is shaped by society, including political and economic decisions and cultural ideals, while space in turn shapes society through the placement of urban functions and the ways these organise movement, encounters, and activities.

Because space and society are mutually related, spatial structures can be read for insights into the values and norms that formed them and continue to do so. Documents about spatial structures can further clarify these reciprocal relations. The central focus is the material manifestation of societal values and norms in the architecture of schools and schoolyards in Stockholm. The study combines analyses of documents, morphology, and visual material. The documents examined are official state or municipal texts and articles from the professional press on school design and planning.