Visualisation of Reality — Riksbyggen · BBDO Nordics · August 2026

The average 25-year-old in Stockholm can afford just 1.9 square metres of property. Rather than leaving that number in a report, Riksbyggen built it. The result is one of three homes too small to live in and a housing statistic too uncomfortable to ignore.

The Challenge

Young Swedes face high urban property prices and increasingly difficult mortgage conditions. But years of reports, graphs and political debate have made the housing crisis familiar without necessarily making its severity felt.

The Strategy

Housing developer Riksbyggen created the Square Metre Index, combining income, savings, mortgage conditions and local property prices to calculate how much space an average 25-year-old could afford.

BBDO Nordics then made one crucial decision: instead of illustrating the findings, it would obey them. Each number would become the actual size of a home, allowing people to experience what housing affordability now means.

The Execution

Three full-scale homes were built: 1.9 square metres in Stockholm, 3.1 in Gothenburg and 4.5 in Umeå. Each resembles a genuine Swedish home from a different architectural period, complete with beds, seating, cooking equipment, and almost no room to move.

The homes will tour Sweden, while a film shows young occupants attempting to live inside them. The campaign supports three political reforms proposed by Riksbyggen to help more young people buy their first homes.

Campaigns That Used Similar Tactics

Build the Statistic to Scale: Turn an abstract measurement into something people can see in the real world.

The Copenhagen Bench — TV 2 Denmark, 2022

TV 2 Denmark raised familiar Copenhagen benches by 85 centimetres—the projected rise in sea level used by the campaign for 2100. The altered bench turned a distant climate forecast into a physical disruption of everyday life. Riksbyggen applies the same logic to area rather than height.

The Floating Boat — E.ON, 2023

After Lake Garda’s water level had fallen by 75 centimetres over four years, E.ON and DLV BBDO suspended a boat exactly 75 centimetres above the lake. The gap beneath it made an otherwise difficult-to-see environmental change visible.

Make the Audience Enter the Evidence: Turn an invisible or distant problem into a physical environment people must encounter for themselves.

25m² Syria — IKEA Norway and Norwegian Red Cross, 2016

Inside IKEA’s Norwegian flagship store, POL recreated the 25-square-metre Damascus home shared by Rana and her family of nine. Its bare concrete walls and makeshift furnishings appeared among IKEA’s immaculate room sets, confronting shoppers with a reality normally encountered only through news reports. Familiar IKEA price tags told the family’s story and explained how visitors could donate.

Like Riksbyggen’s micro homes, the installation turns inadequate housing from something people know about into a space they can physically enter and experience.