Henrik Ranby
Senior Lecturer
Department of ConservationAbout Henrik Ranby
Research overview With a Bachelor of Arts in Integrated Conservation of Buildt Environment from University of Gothenburg (1988) and a Ph.D. in History of Art from Lund University (2002) my research took its point of departure both in my profession as a city antiquarian and as an architectural historian. My doctoral thesis raised questions on regionalism, cosmopolitanism and national romanticism in the architecture of southern Sweden (province of Scania) between 1890 and 1930. I followed the architect Harald Boklund (1868-1924), born in Stockholm, educated in Berlin but active in Malmoe not only as an architect but also as a writer, critic and society member. One of my key results was that the German influences, mostly from Berlin, dominated the architecture in Malmoe during this period and that the city´s architecture shall not, as often have been done, be measured or judged from a Stockholm point of view. Other research projects have dealt with the small coalmining and pottery town of Hoeganaes, and the clash of British pioneer industrialism and local vernacular building traditions. I have also written books and articles on town planning and architecture, mainly from the 19th and 20th centuries, in Helsingborg and Malmoe. Another research topic is a critical examination of the process that led to the demolition of the Maglarp parish church 2007, once designed by architect Harald Boklund. I here focused on questions of values, cultural heritage and prejudice and how the National Board of Antiquities and the Church of Sweden acted in the process. In 2014 I published my book on preservation of buildings and build environment, a critical review of the preservation profession in Sweden between social democracy and new liberalism (ca 1989-2014). My aim here was, illuminated by my own 25 years of experience as a city antiquarian, to raise essential questions of organization, ideology, class and gender and to discuss the position of the preservation processes between planning, politics, art, architecture, interior design and technical practice. My current project, financed by Gyllenstiernska Krapperupsstiftelsen, is called Vehicle, gaze and landscape and deals with questions how the use of new vehicles in the 19th century changed the way we experience landscapes. My case-study is the mountain Kullaberg on the Kullen peninsula in the northwest of Scania, once the “Holy mountain of Denmark” but later more of a “Northern Capri”, especially for authors, artists and German tourists. Trains, tourist carriages, bicycles, buses and later motorcars changed the perspective on this landscape. A place where sheep once grazed became a place for the consumption of pittoresque views and for international resort life. Special interests: halftimbered houses, landscapes, planning, railway architecture, vehiculogy, watermills, quadriga monuments.