Adaptive Reuse as Situated Critical Practice Torö and Handelsresanden

Abstract

This paper examines adaptive reuse as a critical and situated architectural practice through two case studies — Torö and Handelsresanden — developed by Atelier–Heyman Hamilton in Stockholm. Both projects intervene in typhus, a typology of standardized prefabricated single-family dwellings produced during Sweden’s welfare era (1930s–1970s). These dwellings, emblematic of the egnahem movement — a state initiative to provide land and low-cost loans to sober, working men — entangle vernacular details, industrial production, domestic ideals and the moral ambitions of the welfare state. By engaging with the material, spatial, and ideological legacies of typhus, the case studies show how adaptive reuse can reorient the normative spatial and social alignments inscribed in everyday domestic architecture. The interventions are situated within a theoretical framework expanding on discourses of alteration (Scott 2008) and cultural memory (Stone 2019). It draws specifically from Suha Hasan’s analysis of “aesthetic regimes”, Sara Ahmed’s concept of “orientation”, Jane Rendell’s articulation of “insertion as montage”, and Donna Haraway’s notion of “situated knowledges”. These perspectives frame the design process as a form of critical inquiry, one that engages questions of identity, orientation, and embodied experience. Through detailed readings of the case studies, the paper shows how precise programmatic, structural, and material interventions operate as critical tools, engaging the social norms encoded in the existing homes while reconfiguring domestic space toward alternative ways of living. Taken together, Torö and Handelsresanden raise a broader question: how can situated, context-sensitive practices of adaptive reuse reposition standardized housing as a site for critical reflection on the social and political implications — historical and contemporary — of the planning of the egnahem movement and the design of typhus? By addressing typhus not as static artifacts but as active sites of negotiation, the paper argues that adaptive reuse can be a practice of both architectural and cultural critique.