Swedish Grace

In the 1920s a light, graceful classicism dominates Nordic architecture. It takes its ideals from the late 18th century but interprets them freely – slender proportions, smooth surfaces and small, precise details. The English critic Morton Shand names the style "Swedish Grace" in the Architectural Review in 1931.

The great works stand in Stockholm. Ivar Tengbom's Concert Hall is completed in 1926 and Gunnar Asplund's Public Library – a cylinder on a cube – in 1928. At the Woodland Cemetery, Sigurd Lewerentz designs the Resurrection Chapel, completed in 1925 and one of the purest buildings of the style. Tengbom's Match Palace from 1928 and Götaplatsen in Gothenburg belong here too.

It is also the first decade of the "people's home". Per Albin Hansson launches the term, the HSB housing co-operative is founded in 1923, and a good home is to be within everyone's reach. One room and a kitchen with the new kitchenette – but with central heating, hot water, a bathroom and a laundry room.

Buildings become simpler. In Stockholm the permitted ceiling height drops in 1919 from three to 2.7 metres, façades turn straight and smooth and the windows identical, one per room. The danger is monotony – the answer is colour. Façades are smoothly rendered in saturated yellow, red, grey or muted green, and the ornaments are placed sparingly in pale grey-white: a dentil frieze here, a festoon or rosette there. At the top, a recessed "king's floor", built by special royal dispensation. At the corners of the blocks, powerful gables rise – pediments, curving Baroque gables, stepped gables. Röda Bergen, Atlasområdet and Rörstrandsområdet are built in this spirit. The ideal? The small Swedish town.

In Gothenburg the style also shows in the late landshövdingehus. Symmetry returns, the dark colours of National Romanticism give way to light ones, and whole blocks are built in a uniform dress with six-paned windows. Swedish Grace is also a furniture, glass and crafts style. At the end of the 1920s Functionalism takes over – and several of its architects, Asplund above all, make the leap themselves.

Functionalism. Swedish Grace still has columns, symmetry and ornament, however little. Functionalism strips all of it away.