Harald Boklund : kosmopolitiskt, regionalt och nationalromantiskt i Skånes arkitektur 1890-1930

Sammanfattning: The major part of this thesis is dedicated to a biography of the Swedish architect Harald Boklund (1868-1924), but also deals with the problematic concepts of cosmopolitism, regionalism and National romanticism i Scanian architecture 1890-1930. Harald Boklund was the son of Johan Boklund, a famous painter and director of the Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Harald Boklund got his education i Berlin, where he also worked for some years as a practising architect. Returning to Sweden in 1894, he settled in Malmö, where he entered a creative partnership with the architect August Lindvall. During 1895-1899 Lindvall & Boklund designed a wide variety of buildings - residential-flats mansions, churches and various cometition projects - mostly in Gothic Revival or Nordic Neo-renaissance styles. During the first decades of the following century, Boklund designed buildings and builing project in the Art Nouveau (Jugend) manner and in what may be described as a personal interpretation of National romanticism. He founded an association of building technicians, was a member of the Scanian artists guild and a number of other societies. From 1908 until his death in 1924 he published a periodical rewiew of architecture, where he among other things propagated ideas for the general improvement of dwelling conditions, criticised the dominating. Stockholm-cntered, Swedish architecture, and argued the cause of regional styles. Boklund's works, written as well as designed, are all pervaded by his particular brand of cosmopolitism, regionalism and National romanticism, derived from German sources. Building on Swedish, Scanian and German traditions,past and present, Boklund sought for an architectural idiom relevant to his own time and region. During the whole post-war period, the architectural history of southern Sweden has been hampered by a general reluctance to deal with German influences. In addition, the history of Swedish architecture has almost exclusively been focused on Stockholm, and regional architects, devolopments and styles have habitually been treated as derivate and per definition of secondary importance. My ambition in this thesis, is to present an alternative - i. e. regional - perspective on Swedish architecture of the period 1890-1930.