Who builds the city and for whom? How do we organize our lives together? Modellarkivet portrays the archive of architecture models at Stockholm’s Urban Planning Department, as a departure point for a tentative reflection on what it means to build a city. Through slow takes along the shelves of the archive we are confronted with stacked models and cast miniature buildings, fabricated and named according to a system envisioned in the 1960s, but never completed. The camera closeups reveal the room bit by bit, contributing to a confusion of scale and offering a possibility to imagine the city anew. A constantly moving camera forms the backdrop of a narrative, where questions, fragments and references are woven together. It touches upon diverse themes such as the city as a political space, the idea of utopia, archives and collecting, artifacts, language and words.

The Model Archive is also available as a three-channel video installation.