A Story Worth Telling

It’s a story about hidden innovation

The most startling aspect of Elementhus was how completely realistic it was, while also being almost insanely complicated. Especially when evaluated with the aid of hindsight, and from the perspective of measuring what was actually produced, no other modernist era architect has come close to creating such a practical and technically ambitious proposal to design a building for mass manufacturing. Few building firms anywhere, architect led or not, can claim to have produced homes in on the scale of Elementhus.

From art to science to architectural breakthroughs, Sweden is known for innovation. Elementhus is one of their best kept secrets, whose story is both worth telling, and worth preserving.

It’s the story of the community of Mockfjärd

A small town that became a center for home building, where you can still go today and find building your own home is still a normal practice, and a community where you will still find plenty of these homes still standing the test of time, preserved well, due to the breakthroughs in their design.

It’s the story about most accomplished modernist architects of the mid century that no one has ever heard of …

Bergvall and Dahlberg’s genuine mastery of industrial production was never noted, or promoted for its genius, and its application as “architecture” despite the attempt to present it as a modernist box, and not a traditional cottage, was essentially ignored. Bergvall and Dahlberg had managed to devise a completely brand new system for manufacturing wood houses that was unlike anything that had ever been proposed, and importantly the homes were built to a higher standard than the prevailing norm, at a fraction of the price … it was called “Elementhus”.