Place: Fjölebro, Kalmar
Type: Housing
Year: Winning land allocation competition, 2021

Client: Kalmar municipality
Project leader: Kvarnstaden
Architect team Spridd: Ola Broms-Wessel, lead architect, Eva Strocholcova and Arvid Forsberg, project architect, Klas Ruin, senior architect. Kim Bjarke, Dajana Hercigonja Pudak & Tanima Sonar, contributors.

As architect-developer, Spridd has won the land allocation competition together with Kvarnstaden.

At Little Tokyo, we are building 6 multi-family houses with 70 rental apartments of varying sizes on the property Hembiträdet 5 in Fjölebro. Little Tokyo is part of the new garden city that resembles the small-scale buildings with green courtyards found in many places in Japan. These are simple, well-proportioned buildings that together form a rich, diverse environment where the green courtyard with playful forms and great variety becomes a hub for a rich community.

The construction is well thought out from a life cycle perspective and focuses on good accessibility, socially sustainable living and simple yet technically innovative solutions. Here one can live a good life with functions and designs adapted to many different lifestyles and needs. This is a small-scale urban environment with shared inner green courtyards and a more public character facing the street.

In order to achieve the municipality's goal of mixed urban development in the Lindsdal urban area, particularly the micro-location Fjölebro, we are building rental apartments on Hembiträdet 5. These are space-efficient, well-planned apartments with affordable rents, based on the levels of investment support, which also suit less resourceful households. The project entails a housing type that complements other buildings and contributes to the fact that those who sell their villa have the opportunity to stay in the district. Rental apartments also make it possible for those who want to live in a newly developed area but do not have the opportunity to pay substantial down payments.

The building rights are efficiently utilized, with the main entrances of the buildings facing the street and the green courtyard in the middle, clearly reflect the garden city's characteristic small-town qualities. With the placement of buildings close to the street, a large and open courtyard space is freed up between the houses while the street space becomes an activated social space at the entrances of the houses. Here, there are well-planned dual aspect apartments with good indoor climate and abundant daylight and acoustic conditions. The active courtyard, bicycle and stroller rooms and ground floor apartments with nice outdoor terraces contribute to socially sustainable living. Many apartments are reached through balcony access, thus for a large part of the apartments, they become a completely private or semi-private entrance balcony. Movement, gardening and vegetation on these balconies are located in favorable directions which contribute to the garden's rich social life.