The conceptualisation of the sun in Swedish building legislation

Other conference contribution, 2025

Overheating in residential buildings has become a growing concern, even in a traditionally cool-climate country like Sweden, where high indoor temperatures are historically uncommon. This rise in residential overheating challenges Swedish housing policy's principles, which have been built on the importance of well-designed, energy-efficient, and comfortable homes for all since the mid-20th century. To fulfil these principles, the conceptualisation of the sun in housing legislation has played a central role in shaping how residential design should mediate heliogenic factors, including daylight, sunlight, and thermal energy, within indoor spaces. Over the last century, the importance of each factor and translation thereof from legislation into built form has shifted; the Swedish Building Statute of 1931, for instance, stipulated the distance between buildings to maximise access to daylight; in turn, 1970s legislation restricted window size and promoted passive solar heating.

While the heliogenic recommendations have changed throughout building codes and housing regulations, the translation thereof is still embedded in apartments inhabited today. To understand the relationship between these spaces and current overheating challenges, this study unpacks how these conditions came to be by asking how the sun has been conceptualised in Swedish building legislation. Through analysing the discursive construction of the sun in building legislation by examining the factors included across legislation, the relation between the perceived outcomes of the factors and architectural paradigms of each era, and the housing ideals in which these concepts were situated, this research sheds light on how the sun has been instrumentalised in building form.