Anders Berensson Architects

Anders Berensson is proud to display the Friggatto a building desinged and built by his KTH School of architecture Master studio ”Full Scale Studio” .

Full Scale Studio has designed and built a non permit, low cost building with a maximized studio space thorough investigating Swedish law and building production. The house named “Friggato” comes from that the house is a mix between the Swedish non permit 15 m² building “Friggebod” and a non permit 25m2 house “Attefallshus”. The design is based on how thees two structures can be combined into one bigger 40 m² house to be uses as an architectural studio with out needing a building permit. The solution became to put the smaller 15m2 “Friggebod” on wheels and make it into a rolling vehicle that can attached and detached to the bigger 25 m² house “Attefallshus”. Since the studio had a limited budget but a fair amount of work ours new inventions had to be made and many building parts where made out of  secondhand materials but with a massive amount of  craftsmanship put into each detail.

The 25 m2 house ”the Attefall house”

The 25 m² house is designed as an open studio space with a work space level and a kitchen and entrance level. The house interior walls and roof is made out of Swedish fir tree plywood sheets that are easy to put upp things on. The wooden beam that carrys the roof is also constructed with plywood and some wooden studs. Since the studio could not afford to buy a massproduced gluelam beem from a factory the studio built one by material on site.  The floor is made out of mahogany that was saved from an old factory that had been demolished. In the work space part the mahogany floor is build like hatches to be able to store tools and machines under it. The windows, glass-sheets and the fire place was also bought second hand to lower the cost. Because of the low budget the studio had to build several of  their own windows. The windows are constructed by the same materials used for the interior, the mahogany is used for the window frames that needs to be weather resistant and the fir plywood tables is attached to the frame with a homemade hinge making a table at day time and a protection from insight when no ones is there. The facade of the 25 m2 is made out of burnt wood, and old Japanese technique where three wooden boards are but together into a triangle shape and put over a fire. The boards creates a chimney of fire burning the surface of the wood and making it weather resistance with out needing to ad paint or chemicals.

 

The 15 m2 house”the Friggebod”

since the 15 m2 house should be able to move the house was designed with a sandwich technique with a fir plywood glued to each side of a Styrofoam insulation board.  The exterior plywood is treated with tar and the interior is left untreated, the floor is made out of black leather that was given to studio from a friendly company. This light weight construction was then put on wheels that rolls on a metal rail. The light weight materials combined with good wheels makes is possible to move the house singlehandedly with some struggle or easily by two – to three people.

 

Swedish Law

The Swedish regulations for the 15 m2 house is the following: When moving it, it becomes a vehicle, but if it stays longer the six month at one place it becomes a house. If the 15 m2 house is standing as its own structure witch means that it is not connected physically to another house and that your able to walk around the house to maintain it, then the house is permit free. If it stands next to an other house it needs to have a permit. So the 15 m2 house can stand next to the 25 m2 for six month then you need to move it a bit and connect it again. This law suits the studio quite well since we needed a bigger indoor space during the winter and an outdoor area under the roof during the warmer month to do other full scale projects.

 

The space in between and the non existing staircase

The space in between serves as good outdoor work space or a places for lectures during the summer month. The space is protected by a roof that is 50% transparent witch you don’t need a building permit for in Sweden. If its rainy it is possible to cover it with a tarp. If something is 50% transparent in Sweden it is not a building and therefor you don’t need a building permit, so this rusty staircase leading up to the roof of the 15m2 house don’t really exist when looking through the glasses of Swedish bureaucracy. The staircase hover do exists and is the beautiful end gable of the Friggatto.

Econommy

Since the studio both designed and built the studio space we could analyze the economy of a small Swedish building. The Friggato is perhaps one of the cheapest houses built in Sweden but also one of the most expensive ones depending on how you count.. The total cost of the house was 140 000 Swedish crowns witch equals about = 14 000 Euros. That gives a cost per square meter that is = 350 euros/m2. Thats ruffly a third of what of what it is possible to build a low budget house for in Sweden if you hire a carpenter. The square meter price is only 4% of the price you pay per m2 if you buy an apartment next to the house in Stockholm. If we add the cost for tools, the total coast becomes = 16 000 euros. If we add the cost of two teachers working 40% plus a skilled carpenter in four month icluding all taxes we have to ad about 60 000 euros making the actual value of the house = 76 000 euros. (We say value now because this is a cost that would be spent in any course in any architectural studio teaching architecture to their students.)If we add the times spent by 24 students working full time in two month and compare it to a Swedish internship salary including tax. We have to ad an extra 200 000 euros to the value witch makes the following numbers:

Total value of the house = 276 000 Euros

Value per Square meter = 6900 Euro/m2

So even if we count the massive amount of money 3 teachers and 24 architectural students thinking, designing and re designing and questing are costing. And even if we count the ”why and what are we designing talk” and the building process in a quite slow pace we actually end up a bit under the price of what the cost per square meter is in Stockholm today.

 

The smell

Due to the massive amount of tar added on the building the smell of the studio mebers could be scented from a far distance making it hard to go by public transportation due to the angry eyes of fellow passengers.

About Studio 1 Fullscale

Studio 1: Full Scale is an architectural master studio at KTH Stockholm. The studio aims to be an active part of building processes of different scales,  Studio 1 focus on personal experiences and better knowledge of the production chain. The idea is to encounter constructions real-time rather than through simulated cases. Structural durability, materiality and detailing become unavoidable topics early on rather than last minute add-ons. Relations between resources, site, architecture, craft and mass-production will be exposed, feeding back into a critical approach and ultimately to a more confident conceptual focus. The idea is to be a player before becoming a coach.