Gottsunda's Common Ground

TEAM PORTRAIT

INTERVIEW
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1. How do you define the main issues of your project in relation with the theme “Re-sourcing”? Re-sourcing thanks to nature, to social dynamics, to new materiality? In which way do you think your project can contribute to an ecological and/or social evolution? And in which way do you think your project can be called a “regenerative project”?
Our project re-sources Gottsunda through all three dimensions. Nature: we de-pave a vast parking lot into a green corridor of native Nordic species, creating a carbon sink. Social dynamics: civic ground-floor programs—makerspaces, laundromats, a mosque, saunas—bridge immigrant, student, and local communities through shared daily life. New materiality: CLT construction sequesters CO₂, turning buildings into carbon stores. The project is regenerative because every surface—ground, façade, roof—shifts from consuming resources to generating them: a vertical farm on the mall façade grows food cooperatively, rooftop solar produces community energy, and native planting addresses biodiversity.

2. How did the issues of your design and the questions raised by the site mutation meet?
Gottsunda's segregation stems from its mono-functional 1970s layout: a mall island surrounded by a sea of defunct parking. Our design directly addresses this by replacing asphalt with an porous perimeter block inspired by the Swedish Skärgårdshus—distributing housing and civic programs through landscape. The site's slope becomes terraced courtyards; the mall's blank façade becomes a greenhouse farm. Each design move answers a specific site pathology.

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