During the opening decades of the twentieth century, the movement to improve urban conditions and institute housing reform in Sweden gained increased attention and support prompted by a sense of growing urgency. With the country's health statistics among the worst in Europe—statistics fed by the pressures of continuing urbanization—living conditions in cities like Stockholm had become dire. In response, polemics by social reformer Ellen Key and art historian and design proselytizer Gregor Paulsson laid the foundations for an embrace of modernization and the adoption of a version of modern architecture known as functionalism, or, more colloquially in Sweden, funkis.1 The Stockholm Exhibition of 1930, for which Paulsson was commissioner-general and Gunnar Asplund served as coordinating architect, assembled the largest display of modernist buildings until that time, presenting modern design through actual construction and industrial products rather than through polemics alone. The buildings and displays of the exhibition introduced...

You do not currently have access to this content.