Arkitekttävlingen som föreställning : Den svenska arkitekttävlingens ideologiska, institutionella och professionella villkor under 1900-talets första hälft

Sammanfattning: The dissertation explores the Swedish architectural competition as defined in the professional discourse of the architectural corps from the first half of the twentieth century. The purpose is to analyze what norms that defined, regulated and supported the use of the competition and the competition practice from ideological, institutional and professional point of view.In using Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, the competition is positioned in the interface between organizer and the architectural corps. This illuminates the competition as both object and instrument of the negotiations of a field of architecture. The competition’s position makes clear the need of a common ideological foundation and the necessity of legitimizing not only the competition instrument but also the architectural corps’ definition of how to implement it.In departing from the concept of discourse, defined by Michel Foucault, I identify principal characteristics of the architectural competition and relate it to notions of freedom and vitality that was thought to be present in the competition. By analyzing the corps’s competition discourse the dissertation makes clear both short-term functions of the competition, such as accumulating esteem, and long lasting effects of the corps’ control of the competition activities by means of guidance, the system of sanctioned competitions and control of the architectural press. This competition system regulated the quality of the competition results and utilized the rivalry between architects by channelling it to the formal legitimate competition. The rivalry between architects, formalised in the competition situation, was thought to bring the competition spirit to the fore and was defined both as the necessary prerequisite of architectural progress and as a constituent property of the normative position of the free practitioner, which was reproduced as architects while competing entered the autonomous time space of the competition.