Urban furniture in Stockholm made from construction waste

In Frihamnen, a historic Stockholm harbor now awaiting a large-scale urban transformation, a small unused lot has been converted into a new public space thanks to the X-Trakojan project. The intervention – signed by architect and designer Nicholas Niemen and completed in June 2025 in collaboration with the municipality – stems from the idea of giving back to the community a temporary but meaningful meeting place, using only waste materials from local construction sites and landfills.

The name chosen recalls the memory of the site: in fact, “Extrakojan” was the nickname by which dockworkers referred to the building that once housed a small tavern and an informal meeting hall. That volume no longer exists, but the new installation takes up its spirit as a collective space, adapting it to the contemporary conditions of Frihamnen, an area suspended between industrial past and residential future. The raw material of the project is the materials that circulate daily in the port: metal fences, wooden beams, concrete elements and stones from city excavations. Barriers that normally demarcate and separate then become seating and communal surfaces; beams used for concrete castings, repainted with colors salvaged from local stores, are transformed into flooring; concrete plinths and poles from old road signs instead support a large table, complemented by salvaged metal profiles that create a generous top on both sides. The seating, made from scrap plywood and concrete tiles, also reflects the same principle of reuse.

The result is a heterogeneous ensemble that reflects the neighborhood's material flows and proposes a form of contemporary vernacular architecture capable of enhancing what would otherwise be destined for the landfill. For Niemen, the goal was not only to build a temporary social device, but to affect the debate regarding the future of Frihamnen.