Bikes Rule: Life at Sweden's Oh Boy Cyclehaus

In Sweden's third-largest city, located on the south-western coast on the Øresund Strait across from Copenhagen, a vision of green brutalism rises from the street. Oh Boy Cyclehaus is a prototype of living and travelling that belongs to a future that is dynamic, mobile, shared and local.

Completed in 2017, it embeds cycle-first, car-free values into its design – and invites both residents and travellers to experience it. As a mixed-use development, Oh Boy contains 55 rental apartments over five floors, arranged above 31 'motel' rooms which occupy the street level. The defining feature of the project is its focus on bicycle-first living with no allowance for car parking. Instead, bicycle accessibility is prioritised. Every dwelling can be accessed directly on two wheels via oversized cork-wrapped lifts, wide external corridors with automatic button-operated doors, and custom secure bike parking nodes at each front door. Residents also have access to loan bicycles, a bicycle washstand and workshop.

The guest accommodation on the ground floor subverts the concept of the 'motor-hotel'. Instead of driving up to your door in a car, you cruise up on a two-wheeler. It also differs from traditional motels by embracing the street, inviting the building to be part of the streetscape, and guests to be part of the neighbourhood. "We call the other motels 'black box' hotels," says Siegel Founder Cord Siegel, "where you have a reception, bar and restaurant, and you can stay inside the whole time and never go out into the city". Instead, the bicycles included with Oh Boy rooms encourage guests to explore the city and surrounding parks, playgrounds and the nearby sea.

A project this bold must reflect a bold personality, and Cord Siegel has brought Oh Boy to life as architect, developer, construction manager, building owner and property manager. As you'd expect, he epitomises the energy, blue-sky thinking and can-do attitude of a visionary who sees opportunity where others balk. "The plot was not popular," he says about the project site, located across the road from a skate park. "Skating was connected to noise and wild youngsters. [But] we saw the openness, movement – a concrete sculpture. In plan we turned the rooms in the direction of the skatepark. In material we worked with naked prefabricated concrete to connect to the skatepark, with plants on the facade as a new, soft and ecological layer. We are in love with planting trees directly into the facade," he adds. "It is a drama of opposites – dynamic and stable, man-made and nature – in a close tango with each other."

Cord and his team act not just as architects, but also developer, construction manager and ongoing property manager of many projects they undertake. Like Oh Boy, Cord is also something of a prototype – an architect that takes on extended responsibilities to harness extended opportunities. "Owning our projects allows us to organise the construction process in a smarter way," he has said, "with the freedom to constantly evolve the project and the building so that we can address problems as they arise and be open to new solutions." With this autonomy, projects can then become physical and conceptual spaces in which to test solutions to environmental and social problems. In the case of Oh Boy, "both for our own health and for the climate, we need to switch to a daily life that is based on walking, cycling or taking public transport. I want to build so that it is easy for people to make those choices," Cord explains.

A cycle-first model like Oh Boy is inextricably tied to the qualities of its place. MalmÖ, one of the oldest industrial areas in Scandinavia, has undergone a regeneration boasting an extensive network (over 500 kilometres) of bike paths upon which 40 per cent of all commuting takes place. If there was a city where bicycle-first living and travelling was possible – MalmÖ is it. And projects like Oh Boy are both influenced by, and influencing, the process of city-wide transformation. "Before this was a car street, but now there are bicycle lanes," shares Cord. "The consequence was to make a place for a bike motel. Here, you go from your room, straight onto your bike into the city."

Created by a person that defies traditional boxes, it's little wonder Oh Boy also dissolves boundaries and encourages dialogue – between local and visitor, building and neighbourhood. Along with the concrete materiality, the houses also have round windows as a reference to the skate park and bicycle focus. And the motel joins the neighbourhood instead of closing itself – and its occupants – away, with doors opening directly onto the street lending it a rare (for the motel typology) outward-facing presence and a more permeable way to engage with its surroundings.

The building is brutal in its prefabricated raw concrete form, softened by the lush greenery that climbs and spreads across the facade, creating an ever-thickening jungle-like treetop experience along the external walkways enjoyed by residents of the upper floors. Interiors are compact, modest and imbued with more local flavour in the form of graphics by artist Sara Granér, custom furniture by local designers Mats Theselius and Lisa Hilland, and oak and ash sourced from nearby Skåne. The split-level motel rooms are carefully detailed, like a boat, complete with a stowable hammock.

As well as a focus on local, there is evidence of the sharing economy in Oh Boy. A window-wrapped room on the roof is available for residents to use for everything from yoga classes to parties, boasting views of the huge green roof filled with conifers, shrubs, herbs and succulents, and of Copenhagen beyond.

Unlike the rest of the building, it features a more weathered timber floor, “so that people will not be afraid to use it,” Cord says. It’s a small demonstration of his belief that architecture can influence behaviour.

Arguably, Oh Boy was able to come to life through Siegel's unique ability to steer the process from vision right through to construction and management. Not only did this ensure the vision maintained its integrity – it also ensured momentum by bypassing many of the usual concerns and disagreements between various stakeholders. Oh Boy's leafy outcome is likely a result of this unique arrangement. "As owner, we are not afraid to have trees close to the building. We think there's no problem with the roots," says Cord. He adds candidly, "Often developers are very afraid of the roots, but this is not right, it is ignorance."

As rental manager and operator of the motel, the team is also afforded ongoing opportunities to continue tweaking design details. This working lab approach characterises the business – the Siegel 'office' is literally situated in makeshift sheds wherever their current building site is, to facilitate the closest levels of collaboration with craftsmen and clients. "I find it exciting to push with details, concepts and breaking norms, what an apartment building is. I want to create sustainable architecture where people feel good in both body and soul," Cord says. This intention is more than architecture. It's a social mission that, by virtue of Siegel driving the whole vision and process, becomes – rarely, and critically – actualised. As one commentator put it, "Thinking outside the box is one thing, but it is rarely the new thinking that survives the production process."

Another outcome of the group's position as building owner and manager is a longer relationship with the project – being able to witness the inhabited building. "We stay in the process," says Cord. "We can see how architecture can change and impact behaviour, and we can analyse how it is really used". For example, Siegel has included a natural swimming pool in one of their more high-density residential developments – something only usually included at the higher end of the market. "We can see that people use it well, and prove that it works from a technical, economic and architectural perspective."

The ideas that are successfully 'tested' become integrated in future projects. Iggy, another residential rental project of 70 apartments, repeats Oh Boy's status as a cycle- and pedestrian-friendly (i.e. car-less) project. Here again, the sharing economy is enabled with equipment like walking poles, shopping trolleys, folding bicycles, hiking backpacks and strollers; as well as a sauna, music rehearsal space and guest apartment. Even with all this amenity, rent is on par with other new standard apartments. "We can afford it because we control the entire chain and eliminate all intermediaries. We can spend that money on developing concepts," Cord says.

Like other exemplar global residential developments, Siegel's integrate objectives of environmental and social sustainability. "We think a lot about people's movement patterns. How can we create more opportunities where neighbours look each other in the eye?" Cord poses. They are not only actively designing to cultivate relationships between inside and outside, home and streetscape, plants and building – but also between people, placing the behavioural influence of architecture on equal standing with its physical function. In MalmÖ, Siegel is helping to transform a former industrial heavyweight into a more dynamic, mobile and lightweight city of the future – and encouraging citizens and visitors to be more connected to place, and to each other.

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