VIRTUAL Barcelona

Abstract

This research evaluates the role of wholesale house moving in Northern Sweden in relation to the changing economy of the region. The focus is on sustainable practice around housing provision, building resources and land use. It is a significant activity in regard to settlement practices and raises questions about sustainability, and use of land. Research draws on the history of architecture and settlement in Northern Sweden, house construction, spatial planning, land use, legal frameworks, and methods of moving houses. It will also examine societal ideas about the culture of housing, settlement and moving buildings through the discourse analysis of a single house mover, their forty years of practice and over four hundred building moves. It investigates the functions and methods of this specific spatial restructuring within the broader sphere of spatial change and urban gentrification in the region and beyond. The process is both a physical measure of reaction to particular spatial reconfiguration (due to climate and environmental, infrastructural, or socio spatial changes) and a spatial practice that is a solution to settlement distribution problems. The research pioneers studies of wholesale building moving to develop sustainable re distribution and circular economies and as an architectural research that challenges the nature of architectural production.