SJ:s planteringsväsende – en historisk studie av dess växtmaterial och stilideal 1930-1950

Abstract

This study mainly focuses on the garden architects Enoch Cederplam (1867-1938) and Gösta Reterswärd (1892-1980). They both served as garden directors for the State Railways (SJ) during different periods between 1930-1950. The garden directors had the main responsibility for the railway organization for gardening – an organization that maintained and designed different types of plantations and parks on and around the railway environments. The background section consists a review of the different garden directors who were responsible for the various designs of the railway parks before 1930. It presents the different motives and style ideals that seem to have affected and influenced them during the different eras. This is presented to enable a deeper understanding of the connections between the social development and the prevailing style ideals that characterized the development of park and garden culture in Sweden. The study is then focused to the period 1930-1950 and Enoch Cederpalm and Gösta Reuterswärd. Cederpalm and Reuterswärd's background, education and design principles are studied and analysed based on the park and garden environments they designed during the different periods as representatives of the Swedish State Railways. In conclusion, the study partially presents and discusses what plant material that was used, but first and foremost it shows similarities and differences between Cederpalm's and Reuterswärd's intentions and design principles. Cederpalm's design principles are, for example, inspired by nature in a wider sense than is apparent concerning Reuterswärd. Although both are influenced by functionalistic ideals, these appear very subtly in railway parks designed by Cederpalm in relation to the later designed by Reuterswärd. Reuterswärd's design principles can be described as more multifaceted than Cederpalm's, and was in a deeper sense characterized by functionalistic principles.