In 2006, a Swedish municipality, part of the expansive building market that the Greater- Stockholm region constitutes, opened an architectural competition that focused on a renewal of local residential architecture for the ageing citizens. The competition also included the task to design the very initial part of a new development that today is the buzzling area of new futuristic housing for modern Sweden. With this dual objective, the municipality hoped for innovative housing for both able and not so able seniors at the same time as the controversies around dismantling a former military airfield were settled. Some 33 proposals were submitted.

In 2012, after a five-year programming and construction process the new residential care home was finally inaugurated. Or, more accurately, this was the end of a building contract that was obtained in a public tendering process, but severely affected by building contractors wish to enter the then overheated building market at the Swedish capital. Put crudely, this was the beginning of a 10-year municipal building project of constant maintenance work to make the building functional for its frail residents and ultimately as a residential care home. 

The present study is based on a follow-up research project that for 16 years followed the idea of the municipality to renew architecture for ageing by an open architectural competition with an extended competition brief on future-oriented architecture for seniors. The study describes the tumultuous conversion of the winning proposal for a new residential care home through a building, refurbishment, and renovation process in which the first frail residents and staff become the hostage. What was intended to be a swift and easy building project turned into an exploit of public tenders to conquer a new building market.