Baseroom - Sheltered spaces as everyday rooms

Research Project, 2026 – 2027

Purpose and goal
The Baseroom project explores how shelters and sheltered spaces can be integrated into everyday life. Through practice-based design in two building types, apartment buildings with shelters and detached houses with root cellars, the project develops everyday strategies and prototypes. The aim is to shift shelters from technical facilities into self-evident rooms adjacent to the home, what we call baseroom, belonging in everyday life and to crisis, and reach broader audiences within civil defence.

Expected effects and result
The project delivers concrete everyday strategies and prototypes for the everyday-integrated baseroom, along with visual material that makes them accessible beyond the project. The material can be used by housing cooperatives, root cellar owners, authorities, municipalities and anyone who wants to think differently about sheltered spaces. In the long run, the project shifts crisis language into everyday grounding, where shelters no longer feel foreign or frightening but belong in everyday life.

Planned approach and implementation
The project works in two study contexts: the shelters from 1945 at Brf Norra Guldheden in Gothenburg and the modular root cellars from RPT Konstruktioner. The exploration maps everyday practices and needs through a norm-critical lens, in dialogue with residents, customers and preparedness experts. Through speculative design, future prototypes, models and mockups, we test how everyday practices and baseroom design shape each other, so that sheltered spaces can become places to feel at home in.