Comfort in a castle: adaptation due to long-term residency in a historic monument

Abstract

This article adds to a growing interest within architectural studies in which the indoor climate and comfort of heritage buildings used for residence is in focus. The purpose is to understand how Skokloster castle in Sweden, built in the seventeenth century, has been shaped in relationship to needs and expectations of its residents. Building on a combination of archival sources, visual observations on site, printed sources and literature, this article demonstrates how a mix of methods can be used to investigate how castles have been adapted throughout history to fit changing expectations. By investigating how the castle was adapted over time light is shed on a much broader architectural history that includes not just the design and construction of a monumental building, but also how later interventions have aimed at making it more comfortable. Estimates of fuel consumption are made in order to better understand how the castle may have been heated. It is argued that the castle was not only built with the surrounding climate in mind, but that later uses of it as a residence also took careful note of how to efficiently use the architecture in order to make limited spaces inside the castle comfortable for living.