Sunday, December 17, 2006

30 000

Brief: A competition to produce architecture for 30 000 Swedish crowns in the suburb Tensta outside Stockholm.

How much stuff can we do for 30 000 Swedish crowns (approximately 3000 Euro.)? In architecture 30 000 SEK is a small amount of money. For that money you can get a sauna, a decent garden shed or maybe a new kitchen.



But architecture is perhaps not the most suitable for Tensta. For 30 000 you can for example get 600 hours of pony riding, two hours of Zlatan, 2000 “coffee and cake” on 7 Eleven or maybe 30 swings for the kids in Tensta.



Can we use these notes for more than just buying? A 20 note is in circulation for 1.5 years in average, and should pass around 500 hundred people during its life time. For 30 000 SEK you will get 1500 20-krona notes so the message on the bills will pass 1500notes x 500 hundred people= 750 000 people which is almost 7% of the Swedish population!



One architect working on one project in Sweden for five weeks costs in real life about 40 hours x 5 weeks x 700 SEK per hour = 140 000 SEK. That means that the twenty people working on this competition would cost 2, 8 million SEK if they would receive an architect’s salary. By only picking one proposal you could say that you lose 2 800 000 - 140 000 = 2 660 000 = almost 2.7 million SEK. So, by giving every competitor 1 500 SEK each and make 20 projects instead of one, Tensta would have gained about 2,5 million SEK in creative thinking if our work was paid.



Instructions The 30 000 SEK are exchanged in to 20-krona notes, every participant in the competition receives 20-krona notes, to a value of 1500 SEK. The first step is to write a message on each bill with a text promoting al the proposals produced during the competition.



The result: a festival of cheap projects! an enormous increase of money and publicity!