Professional interpretations of the requirement of caution and the prohibition to distort according to the Swedish Planning and Building Act – with examples from Forsåker, Mölndal

This study is an attempt to investigate how professionals, with different backgrounds and education, within the field of urban planning, cultural heritage and architecture interprets the Swedish legalisation on alteration of buildings. The purposes of the study are: (1) to describe the requirements for building operations according to the Swedish Planning and Building Act (2010:900), (2) to investigate how these requirements are interpreted and applied in practice by different professionals with the purpose of comparing the result to get knowledge if there is dissension or consensus between the answers within the group of professionals. The first part of the study is based primarily on the Swedish Planning and Building Act (2010:900) and literature studies on the legislation. Together they form a basic understanding of the legalisation and the different aspects that need to be addressed before a building operation gets carried out. For the second part of the study I chose to use interview as a method. Six interviews were conducted with professionals within the field of urban planning, cultural heritage and architecture in order to answer the questions about how legislation is interpreted and applied in practice. The results from the interviews give an understanding of the interpretation from both theoretical and practical point of view, with the later one including two examples from the current urban development project of former industrial area Forsåker, situated in Mölndal, Västra Götalands län. The results of the second part of the study show that the questioned professionals have a very similar interpretation of the legislation seen from a theoretical point of view. The results from the practical part of the interviews, where the professionals were asked to apply their interpretations of the requirements for building operations on real objects, are more varied and disunited. The survey show that the legislation has room for individual interpretations which means that different professionals, with different backgrounds, education and approaches to cultural heritage, interpret differently and therefor make decisions that will change the built environment in a way that’s not always in line with an antiquarian approach. Since the study is only based on six interviews it is not possible to make any general conclusions on the subject and there for more research is necessary. On the other hand, the survey gives a valuable resource in the current project of the formal industrial area Forsåker, Mölndal.Uppsats för avläggande av filosofie kandidatexamen med huvudområdet kulturvård med inriktning mot bebyggelseantikvarisk verksamhet 2019, 180 hp Grundnivå 2019: