Stockholm’s Miljonprogrammet

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With the Butner Family Award, Antonio Rinaldi traveled to Stockholm, Sweden to compile a photo essay on public housing projects in the city. The brief book, entitled Miljonprogrammet: A Visual Compendium of Stockholm’s Public Housing, offers a view into the innovative affordable homes constructed during the mid-twentieth century. The project emerged from past and current research endeavors which had led Rinaldi to study the shortcomings of housing projects in the United States. Rinaldi was interested in comparing the American model with a notoriously more successful Scandinavian system. Initially, these well-designed apartment buildings provided suitable housing for a variety of Swedish citizens, making them vibrant heterogeneous communities. Today, the ambitious Miljonprogrammet seems but a memory of its former self, having become the only affordable refuge for Stockholm’s ethnic and racial minorities. One can hypothesize that the current inhabitants, lacking the political agency and economic capital necessary to sustain such expansive housing schemes, will continue to experience further deterioration of their physical environment, endangering both their welfare and social stability.