Stacken, the living co-operative

Stacken ("the ant-hill") is an apartement building on (the street) Teleskopgatan in Bergsjön, which is a surburb of Göteborg, Sweden. The house consists of 35 apartements of different sizes.

Apart from the apartments, the house has communal laundry, sauna, dining-room, kitchen, woodshop, photo darkroom, storage rooms, café, ”play room” and garden. All of these are commonly owned and used, by the tenants.

Stacken is situated next to a beautiful forested area. Bergsjön means ”mountainlake”. At Teleskopgatan there is a kindergarden and foodstores. and within walking distance a shopping-center, library and post/bank service.

The houses at Teleskopgatan were built in 1969. In the middle of the 1970s many flats were empty. Göran Ohlin, property manager at the Göteborgshem company, made a proposal to rearrange one of the houses into a collective. Lars Ågren, at the Chalmers Institute of Technology, planned how the house would change while Göteborgshem took care of rebuilding and financing the project, which was ready in 1980. Two books have been written about Stacken. Today the house is owned by the organisation ”Kollektivhuset Stacken - kooperativ hyresrättsförening”, in which all of the tenants can become members. When the company who owned the house was planning to sell it, the tenants themselves bought it in September, 2002, and formed the co-operative organisation ”Kollektivhusföreningen Stacken - kooperativ hyresrättsförening”.

The organization of Stacken

The purpose of the organization is that the members should live and work together in solidarity and take responsibility for the maintenance of the house. At the mounthly membermeeting most decisions concerning the house are made. Once a year there is an assembly when members choose the board of the organisation.

Every tenant should be member of one of the following working teams:

• The leisure group arranges communal activities like parties, sports and other social events, and runs the café.
• The gardening group takes care of the garden and garbage room.
• The maintanance group makes repairs in the house and takes care of the workshop.
• The cleaning group cleans the common areas.
• The meeting group plans the monthly meetings to run more effectively.
• The interior decorating group plans the function and design of the common areas.
• The contact group decides who are going to be future tenants for empty apartements
• The inspection group looks over apartments which have been empty when a tenant has left the house.
• The council is responsible for carrying out the decisions that have been made at the mounthly meetings.

The council consists of a president, treasurer, secretary and two members.

From every working team there is one member who takes part in the co-ordination group, whose purpose is to co-ordinate the work of the other groups.

text: Jonas Green and Karin Jonsson

illustration and webdesign: Björn Jensen