During five days and four nights, the Swedish Museum of Architecture opens up for intense reflection on the museum and its future development, with extended opening hours and free admission. Together with invited artists and practitioners in architecture, design and craft, the audience is invited to take part in a 48 hour long experiment and workshop raising questions around architectural and design institutions and museums in general and the Swedish Museum of Architecture in particular.

During 48 hours, the exhibition room accommodates physical installations, criticism, ongoing production, seminars, talks, live interviews and secret guests. By generating and practicing “a museum about a museum in a museum”, the project 48 hours seeks to establish itself as a forum for spatial and content-driven experiments, on “the art of opening up”, as both professional practice and as an institution in design and architecture.

The invited collaborators of 48 hours implement a series of parallel projects in the exhibition hall of the museum, some move their regular practice and activities temporarily onto the museum premises, while others engage in projects that unfold as site-specific installations, performances, moderated discussions or unique spatial and curatorial experiments. The 48 hours are continuously documented, and a series of explanatory and in-depth video interviews are produced for publication on the project website — to provide the audience on site with a theoretical background to what is taking place.

48 hours is a part of the Swedish Museum of Architectures project Live — a seven week public program. 48 hours was initiated by Tor Lindstrand and Lars Fridén and later developed together with Magnus Ericson and Malin Zimm of the Swedish Museum of Architecture.

Collaborators: Apolonija Šušteršič & Meike Schalk, Byggstudio, Christina Zetterlund & Pontus Lindvall, Expeditionen för arkitektur och grafisk form, Konst & Teknik + Fredrik Paulsen, The New Beauty Council, Otto von Busch, Pär Fridén, Stad, Staffan Lundgren, Svensk standard, Testbedstudio, Tor Lindstrand (Economy), et al.