Sara Brolund Fernandes De Carvalho

Im an architect and lecturer at KTH School of Architecture. My practice is situated in the borderland between architecture/urban planning and art. I have previously worked with film and as a project manager for initiatives for young people within the field of urban planning. Ive written about citizen participation in urban planning, feminist architecture, collective housing, common spaces/rooms and other themes that usually touch on concepts such as spatial care and community building. Im the co-editor, with Meike Schalk and Beatrice Stüde, of the publication Caring for Communities (Stockholm: Action Archive Publishing, 2019). In 2018-2019 I was a Reasearch Fellow at ArkDes.

Current research project

Between Technologies of Power and Notions of Solidarity: A Comparative Response to the Danish “Ghetto plan” and Swedish “utsatta områden” with colleagues from KTH-A, HDK and University of Copenhagen. Funded by ARQ Stiftelser and Sweco, 2020-2023.

Recent article

You Can Simply Say No (with Aktion Arkiv), Radical Housing Journal, 2024.

Previous project

The Political City with Meike Schalk and Helena Mattsson (SRE: Architecture in the Making (Formas), Architekturzentrum Wien, ARQ Foundation), 2017-2019

The research project explored common rooms for tenants in subsidized housing (Genossenschaften), at the development area Nordbahnhof in Vienna. Through fieldstudies, in collaboration with planner Beatrice Stude and together with residents and interviews with non-profit housing developers and district managers, 10 housing projects were examined. Common rooms were regarded through the lens of shifting policies, regulations and laws, and acts or ’rituals’ of care. The project was developed together with Architekturzentrum Wien – Az W in the international workshop Care + Repair, at Workspace Nordbahnhalle, for the Vienna Biennial (2017). The study led to the publication Caring for Communities / Für Gemeinschaften sorgen (2019) and evolved in the Forum theatre eventTheatre of Care and Repair, September 2019, produced for the exhibitionArchitecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, at Az W (2019). It discusses the shifts in welfare housing through a comparison between the current Vienna subsidized housing model and the dismantled Swedish Allmännyttan (2011). It raises awareness of the values of social sustainability in welfare housing.