Modern Swedish student housing: the institutionalisation of a building type 1870–1970

Abstract Student housing as a type of housing is regularly overlooked in architectural historiography and theory. Yet, student housing is a category of housing that an ever-larger portion of society inhabit, albeit for a limited time. Looking more closely at this category of housing reveals that it is a field of study that runs parallel to society’s more general questions of housing whilst also showing variation and experimentation; student housing is thus something more than a mirror of the history of housing architecture. In this article we map the institutionalisation process of Swedish student housing. This process is characterised by a transformation from less- to more formal, as the informal institutions of the nineteenth century developed into formalised and crystallised institutions by the middle of the following century. This institutionalisation is not as straightforward as one might think, however. Instead, it can be seen as developed through a series of parallel institutionalisation processes where older types of student housing may prevail and exist side by side with newer ones. We will provide a summary overview of the various twists and turns of the institutionalisation process of Swedish student housing. We will trace how student housing entered public discussion in Sweden in the 1800s and how various types of student housing were introduced by different actors with different agendas, and we will examine what happened to these types over time.