Designing an Apartment Building for Bike Commuters

As the car-free lifestyle grows increasingly popular, a team of architects is developing an apartment building to match it.

When Cykelhuset, or “bike house,” opens in Malmö, Sweden, this December, it will be the country’s first residential complex with no parking spaces attached to it, says Anders Gustafsson, part of the team from architecture firm Hauschild + Siegel, which designed the building. Malmö, Gustafsson adds, “is becoming more and more bike-friendly while building codes are stuck in a car-centered ideology.” The city generally mandates that around one parking spot be attached to each apartment unit; with Cykelhuset, the Hauschild + Siegel team decided “to challenge the status quo by presenting an alternative,” Gustafsson says.