Ingela Blomberg: Research, travels, and networks

With an ambition to remember architect Ingela Blomberg’s contribution to architectural discourse, Lena Biörnstad Wranne and Erik Stenberg have initiated a book project with the working title “In Dialogue with Ingela Blomberg”. They envision one unpublished part of her first year housing lecture at KTH as the central driving force in the book but are looking for more angles and contributors. During the Spring of 2024 they have hosted two seminars in Swedish in order to find more contributors/authors to the book. This third seminar will be held in English and, in Ingela’s spirit, open up the invitation to engage in a dialogue with Ingela Blomberg to the wider KTH research community. At the higher seminar, Erik and Lena will introduce Ingela Blomberg’s research, travels, and networks and Anders Bergström will provide a historical backdrop of the events leading up to the establishment of the BOOM group at KTH.

Ingela Blomberg (1940-2022) was an architect educated at KTH (1969) and KKH (1973) in Stockholm. She was one of the founders of the BOOM research group at KTH, in which she was active from 1973 to her retirement in 2006. Her housing research at BOOM was centered around the term “careful renovation” coined in the report written with Eva Eisenhauer with the same name from 1976 (Varsam ombyggnad, BFR R7:1976). Starting in the early 1970’s, Ingela was also a member of and active in feminist and collective organizations in Sweden such as Grupp8, Aurora, Kvinnobulletinen, and Bo i Gemenskap (BiG). She was, for example, as a member of BiG one of ten authors of The small collective house (Det lilla kollektivhuset, BFR T14:1982). Ingela received her doctoral degree in 1991 from KTH and authored and co-authored numerous reports, books, and articles. She traveled extensively as part of and support to her networks, research and interests. One example is the report documenting the efforts to retain and renovate Bolognas historical city center (Bolognas historiska stadskärna, BFR R116:1987). After her retirement, her work continued but with greater focus on collective living and housing forms for elderly. At this time, she also mentored and supported a number of young architects and researchers. One example of the way she did this is the text “Principles for layouts of co-housing units” (2018), written together with architect Elin Persson. Another example of her contribution to the next generation was Ingela’s annual lecture to the first year architecture students at KTH on the topic of Housing from 2014-2022.

Bio’s
Erik Stenberg is an architect and Associate Professor in Architecture at KTH. Erik had the fortune of getting to know Ingela in the triangular meeting spaces of the former KTH Architecture School and was invited to a grand tour of seeing, enjoying, and eating at all the collective houses in Stockholm. He aims to continue BOOM-gruppens legacy of careful renovation of Sweden’s housing stock.

Lena Biörnstad Wranne is an architecture librarian who worked for more than thirty years at ArkDes before retiring in 2021. She is a longtime friend of Ingela whom enjoyed both dinners talks about architecture in her home in Bagarmossen and summer conversations at Ingela´s allotment garden in Tantolunden.

Anders Bergström is an architect and Associate Professor in Theory and History of Architecture at KTH. He has recently contributed with a project on urban preservation in Sweden during the 1960s, which forms a background to the formation of the BOOM group at KTH.

Further Reading material:
Varsam ombyggnad (BFR R7:1976) libris.kb.se , see especially pages 15-19 and 236-238
Text and translation to English of guest edited issue about careful renovation (Arkitektur 2/1983)
Bolognas historiska stadskärna (BFR R116:1987) libris.kb.se
Summary of disseration in English (1991)
Principles for layouts of co-housing units (2018)