Telefonplan

Creativity.

Originally shaped by its high-tech beginnings, Telefonplan is now characterised by its role as home to Stockholm’s University of Arts, Crafts and Design and other arts education institutions. The development of this new district helped make room for more creative institutions which, together with new shops, give life to a reborn and vibrant urban environment. The re-envisaged heart of Telefonplan now features a public pavilion brimming with restaurants and cafés, shops, works of art and pop- up stalls.

Mobility.

By linking public transportation nodes with illuminated bike paths and pedestrian walkways that service all of the area’s buildings, we succeeded in creating a district that breaks free from dependence on car ownership. Telefonplan is now a hub where attractive bike parking stations, car sharing facilities and delivery services create meeting places within the district as well as mobility threads that interweave with the broader fabric of Stockholm.

Urbanness.

This old industrial district has now been transformed into a new urban centre. Its buildings’ inner courtyards now feature greenery, garden beds for cultivating plants and sheltered areas for barbecuing. The district’s residences, businesses, preschools, shops and hotels are interspersed to create a rich and vital urban tapestry and encourage urban flows that bring vibrancy and a feeling of security at all hours of the day.

Flexibility.

Variability was a key concept applied in planning the area. Its main street is lined with a large assortment of venues of varying sizes that give diverse tenants the space and responsibility to change and to move with the times and people’s needs.

Sätra Centrum

Security.

This 1960s shopping mall used to be considered an unsafe place and a difficult venue to navigate. We revamped the space by creating a central square inside the mall that serves as an open urban meeting place. We also made the connections to transportation services obvious and enlivened the thoroughfares by adding multi-purpose open levels that act as venues for libraries and arts studios.

Entrepreneurship.

We wanted to create a rich and diverse offering of sushi restaurants, ice cream stalls, bars, cafés and shops inside the complex. We wanted both to attract a variety of visitors of different ages and to create better opportunities for local entrepreneurship and, thereby, also a sense of community and responsibility.

Mobility.

Using the existing subway station as our foundation, we also developed the mall into a mobility hub. Bike parking and maintenance facilities now make it easy to switch modes of transportation and to travel either in towards the city centre, or out towards nearby parklands and recreation areas. What’s more, the hub also acts as a venue for social interaction.

Sustainability.

In honouring the tenets of sustainable travel, we also created green rooftop spaces that are accessible and can be used. The varying heights of Sätra’s buildings provide an opportunity for activity and movement at different levels and our rooftop solution also ensures that storm water is effectively managed.

Ystad Trädgårdsstad

Community Gardens.

Our neighbourhood will serve as a gateway to the entire district. We plan to put the area’s rich soil to good use by preparing allotment garden plots for both adults and children to use and enjoy. This enclosed garden will enjoy its very own microclimate and will support both greenhouses and the sale of locally-grown vegetables. A compost pile will also be created for use by the preschool, nursing home and other residential tenants.

Social.

It’s here that local residents will meet and socialise. The nursing home and preschool share common spaces where children, the elderly and visitors will meet on a daily basis. These communal spaces will also house a dining hall, café and versatile all-purpose room as well as a package collection point for residents and a waste sorting facility that services the entire area.

Mobility.

Ystad Trädgårdsstad is just a few minutes by bike from the city centre and seaside. The development includes the option to offer residents access to a bike pool, bike repair garage and car sharing facilities. Local residents who are interested in caring for the area’s allotment gardens will also be able to borrow rakes, wheelbarrows and spades.

Nyköping Nöthagen

Watch the film about Lilla Tellus

Mobility & the Sharing Economy

One of Lilla Tellus’ key purposes is to create hubs that promote the mobility of people and goods. For today’s densely-populated cities staring down the barrel of climate change, the old ideas of one person per car and one foodstuff per lorry no longer make sense. In this age of new challenges, it is the sharing economy that offers solutions. With this in mind, communal car and bike pools play a key role in our hubs, synchronising seamlessly with public transport systems that carry people all over the region. On top of that, expanding the role of e-commerce means that food can become part of a hub’s programming too. For example, building common cold storage rooms allows people to pick up bags of groceries bought online close to their homes. Local recycling stations can also save time, money and transportation. A shared office venue inside a hub provides the same benefits, while also providing a forum for the exchange of ideas and a breeding ground for new collaborations and enterprises. In urban life, mental mobility is just as important as physical mobility. Shared solutions are the key to achieving both.

Urbanness & Flows

The positive social values we aspire to also spring from movement. A location characterised by light, activity and dynamism most hours of the day attracts not only residents and businesspeople, but also visitors. A place where people live and work, travel and meet, shop and enjoy themselves is a place where the very best of urbanness comes to the fore and, thereby, also the opposite of desolateness: a sense of security. Still, a feeling of security is about more than just a location’s vibrancy. When vehicle traffic is restricted, cyclists and children feel safe. When young people see the human faces behind local businesses and not just their logos, their sense of belonging and responsibility grows. As might their desire to start their own businesses one day. That’s why Lilla Tellus actively makes room for small and independent businesses, not just multinational chain stores. For temporary markets and not just brick and mortar shops. We want to be cultivators of a living space, not merely bricklayers.

Future & Flexibility

We’re currently in the midst of Homo sapiens’ third major paradigm shift, digitalisation. No one knows for sure what tomorrow’s housing, work, or commerce will look like, only that their reinvention is constant. There is one thing we can be sure of, though: those who manage tomorrow’s social centres must be flexible. That’s why the Lilla Tellus concept involves owning the places we develop. The freedom that ownership brings lets us give our tenants both the space and the responsibility to change and adapt, so that their offerings are always up-to- date and they can keep their fingers on the pulse when it comes to meeting people’s needs. This kind of flexibility helps people build faith in the future of a location. For the time being, the focus of our future-proofing efforts is largely on mobility and the sharing economy. On charging stations and innovative electric vehicle and bike pools. On shared solutions for travel, cooking and other activities that were viewed as private until now.

The Spark that Ignited Lilla Tellus

The Ahnström & Pyk real estate company was born out of the project to repurpose Tellus – a gigantic office complex in Stockholm vacated by Ericsson in 2013. The project’s mission was two-fold: to transform Ericsson’s former corporate headquarters into 1,000 apartments and to create a social centre for mobility and human interaction. The latter aim developed into what is now known as Lilla Tellus. Our collaboration didn’t only lead to a solution we’re proud of, though. We also discovered a mutual passion and, to put it in somewhat old-fashioned terms, also a “duty” to reprogram and manage social centres that many people consider to be difficult or even impossible to breathe new life into. Our efforts to honour this obligation grew into a new company that we later named after our first “baby”, Lilla Tellus.

Curt Ahnström

curt@ahnstrom-pyk.com

Pontus Pyk

pontus@ahnstrom-pyk.com

Sandra Marffy

sandra@ahnstrom-pyk.com

Johanna Larsson Kallis

johanna@ahnstrom-pyk.com

Christine Ahnström

christine@ahnstrom-pyk.com