Daniel Movilla Vega

I am an Associate Professor in Architecture at Umeå School of Architecture, Umeå University, Sweden, since 2018. At the department, I chair the research group for Swedish Housing Studies, and I am responsible for the design studio Radical Domesticities at the master's programme.
 
My research focuses on housing and the architecture of domestic space. It relates to the fields of architectural design, architectural history and theory, and critical studies. My research projects deal with housing standards, dwelling types, social and environmental sustainability, and housing research history. This includes, for example, studies on the quality of Swedish residential architecture within the framework of the current municipal housing supply programmes and its connection to housing standards. I have also been looking into the role that housing research has played in the development and transformation of dwelling types and residential rooms in Sweden, with a special focus on the interdependency between spatial configuration, tectonics, and material culture. Finally, I have been working with case studies, archival sources, and theoretical references to investigate various modes of conceptualization, construction, and representation of the architecture of the Swedish home. 
 
Before coming to Umeå, I was a postdoctoral research fellow in Architecture at LTU in Sweden (2017-2018), researcher at Madrid School of Architecture (2008-2012), and visiting researcher at TU Delft (2012-2013), Columbia University (2013-2014), MARKhI (2014), FAU-USP (2015), NTNU (2016), and ArkDes (2016-2017). I graduated as an architect at the Technical University of Madrid, where I also earned my PhD in Architecture. My dissertation Housing and Revolution, focused on constructivist’s research on experimental dwelling types, received the Award for Outstanding Doctorate 2015-2016. 
 
In 2017, I published the book 99 Years of the Housing Question in Sweden (Studentlitteratur), based on an ArkDes exhibition curated by Dan Hallemar. The theme issue “The Housing Question of Tomorrow”, edited together with Ola Nylander, was published in the journal Nordic Journal of Architectural Research in 2021. Peer-reviewed articles include “Handbook, Standard, Room: The Prescription of Residential Room Types in Sweden between 1942 and 2023” on Urban Planning (2024), “The Great Domestic Experiment: Housing research laboratories in Sweden between 1937 and 1957” on Delft Architectural Studies on Housing, DASH (2022), or “Housing and Revolution: From the Dom-Kommuna to the Transitional Type of Experimental House” on Architectural Histories (2020).