House for Mother or how can I explain it to my mum

The project by Swedish firm, Förstberg Architektur och Formgivning (FAF) is all about what for many architects is a huge challenge: designing a home for your parent, grasping the essence of a person dear to you, their needs and their sometimes unexpressed wishes.

“House for Mother”, a project by young Swedish artist Björn Förstberg, howcases the house he designed for his mother. A Scandinavian house divided into two volumes, with a corrugated aluminium skin and warm, luminous light wood interiors – a house that just makes you want to live there, when it’s finished in 2017.
Yes, because it’s actually still a work in progress, made public by Björn Förstberg in the form of renders that he created especially so he could share everything right down to the finest details with the client – his mother.

Yes, because it’s actually still a work in progress, made public by Björn Förstberg in the form of renders that he created especially so he could share everything right down to the finest details with the client – his mother. As Mara Corradi writes in her essay “How to look at architecture on the web” in the book “Architecture on the Web. A critical approach to communication” , edited by Paolo Schianchi: “rendering showcases the work from the best perspective possible, a bit like when a model poses in a particular outfit, forcing time into an instant that only exists in the snapshot.” 

The “House for Mother” project by Björn Förstberg set off yet another debate about the use of renders to communicate architectural works. He certainly doesn’t hide it in his description: “House for mother is a work in progress with construction starting in August 2014. The project is located in Linköping, Sweden, and part of the Linköpingsbo 2017 housing exhibition.” 
Sometimes, all you need to do is read the descriptions, go beyond the mere images, which, as Mara Corradi says, “are tools we have at our disposition to help us get to know works that otherwise we wouldn’t even know existed, like what used to happen in the pre-web and pre-digital media era. The answer lies in comprehending them as a medium.”

So, let’s enjoy “House of Mother” by Björn Förstberg the same way we enjoy the countless renders of famous studios, with a small difference: the warmth and personal transportation that reaches out to you even through the computer-generated images.

(Christiane Bürklein)

Project: Björn Förstberg, FAF, http://www.f-a-f.se/
Location: Linköping, Sweden
Project start date: 2013 – Estimated completion 2017
Images: Courtesy of Björn Förstberg, FAF