Visitor Centre
Vietasjåkk, Sweden

In Vietasjåkk, the climate is a mighty force. The snow comes early and leaves late. The arctic wind drives it into drifts that make the winter terrain completely different from the summer. The landscape is recreated anew each year. Even in summer, nature remembers the winter. And this building remembers the snowstorm—even on the days when the ground is carpeted in the pale purple flowers of the moss campion.

The forces of nature that sculpted the Stuor Muorkke, or Great Lake Falls region, have brought forth a simple, rounded form. The snow’s ability to fill every pocket in the lee of the wind is exploited here to create a building with a memory. In winter, the central courtyard quickly fills to the brim with snow. This snow trap becomes the primary attraction of the interior in early spring; the glass walls reveal a cross-section of sedimentary layers of snowfall.

Visitor Centre
Lake Tåkern, Sweden

The competition entry for a visitor centre at the bird sanctuary Tåkern in Östergötland, Sweden, aimed at a building that could be both invisible and astonishing.

This winning entry stands carefully on poles on the edge between the forest and the lake.

The entire building is covered with straw, a traditional cladding that will link the building to the wetlands where it stands. The roof ridge, the most sensitive part of a thatched roof, will be covered with glass and thereby illuminating the exhibitions. The visitor centre is connected with a watchtower overlooking the wetlands by a meandering path. The building is under construction and due to completion in 2012.

Sustainable office building
Gothenburg, Sweden

Creating meeting places is a major task in the development of Chalmers University of Technology. Kuggen at Lindholmen is a hub for formal as well as informal meetings between community and society.

The building is named Kuggen (The Cog). It is designed to connect to its environment.

Kuggen is constituted by repetitions of optimal office units. From the northward backbone, the building extends with two room units per floor. This makes the building expand by 1500 mm for each floor southwards, thereby shading the windows below. A moving screen moving around the building adds shade. On the roof, sun collectors for tap water completes the solar energy system. State-of-the-art solutions for adapted ventilation, lighting, heating and cooling minimize the environmental impact of the building. The triangular windows maximises daylight to the core of the building and minimises the climatic deficiencies. The size functions for office cells as well as for open landscapes. These solutions will limit energy consumption to 60 kWh/m² a year.

A regional centre for the performing arts
Jönköping, Sweden
1st prize

"Spira", Småland's Music and Theatre, holds a 850 seat concert hall/ musical theatre, a 420 seat theatre, a children's stage, a ”sinfonietta”, and a café stage.

All the stages are on the same level and they are all interconnected backstage to the loading bay.

The public spaces will be clad in wood. The exterior is of opaque white, coloured, translucent and transparent glass. On the glass walls are screened films of different sizes applied to tell about changing events. The building will open on November 11, 2011.

Retail
Malmö, Sweden

Within a box, following the urban pattern of the area, two glazed inlets open the block of the large retail park. These apertures invite the within.

The retail area in three floors is completed with offices in the corner facing the train station. Towards the streets, housing blocks with shops in the ground floor provides the site with the qualities of a mixed-use area.

The complex, located in Hyllie, Malmö, will open in 2011. A large arena next to the centre, partly designed by Wingårdhs, was inaugurated in November 2008. A hotel of Wingårdhs design is to be built next to the railway station.

Office
Stockholm, Sweden

Building 10 demonstrates people's need for an environment that both reaffirms who we are (the smooth, striped facades of printed glass) and challenges our preconceptions (the red fissures). Basically, it is a generic office block of almost 29000 square meters and a little less than 1500 workspaces. But the fissures open the building for other readings. They do not have any programmatic meaning. To see them as cracks in the facade raises new questions.

What is really a facade?

The sculptural volume of space inside the building recreates the form of the entrance fissure, as though it had been plucked from the facade and set up in the atrium. A kind of dual use, like as the bold stripes that give the facade its character and also mask its joints.

Office and head quarter
Borås, Sweden

An invisible transparency

White as snow from the outside but see-through from the inside. It's a trick, of course. A screen printed pattern, white from the outside and black from the inside with thirty-eight percent perforation, keeps inquisitive by-passers of Gina Tricots headquarters from getting too much insight into the world of fashion creation, while simultaneously reducing the solar heat gain on the building, and of course providing extra protection for its actual climate envelope. Two black slits gives the ethereal glass prism a mass and materiality at the same time it provides natural points of entry and orientation toward the elevator and stair lobbies. The floor plan is a simple triangle in which two acute angles hold exit stairs. When backlit, these portions of the building become completely transparent.

Housing
Sweden

A one tonne future

One Tonne Life is a prototype home that will make life as we know it possible for future generations. Over a year, the building will create more energy than it uses. Solar panels and photovoltaric cells cover the surfaces to the south and the compact form keeps the heat like a thermos. The solid box is spiced up with panels around the windows that creates character and limit the impact of the summer sun. The theme is followed up by the conservatory and the carport. Strict and playful at the same time. If we want to remove our impact on the climate, we need to reduce our production of carbon dioxide from today’s seven tonnes per year and person (a global average, in the developed world its twice as much) to one tonne in the future. Today this would lead to almost no activity. One tonne is equivalent to a car ride of 10-20 km OR to purchase one piece of clothing OR two meals that include beef per day. Lots of good technology, good architecture and good spirit will make this possible.

spa and hotel
Helsingborg, Sweden
1st prize

Almost naked, with the waves breaking on the sea shore in front and the warm wood of the interior behind, the bather stands gazing out through the big "Kallis" windows.

The old bathhouse was lost in the 1969 hurricane. The new one is meant to be diaphanous as a blouse on Catherine Deneuve but at the same time as firm as a storm shelter. Thus it is a very transparent building, with walls and canopy roof of candy-striped glass, alluding to towels and old-fashioned bathing suits. The bathhouse builds on the old piers and the beach between them creating a transverse axis to the popular sea front promenade. Apart from giving shelter to swimmers, the building contains a restaurant and rental space for companies connected with health and fitness. Closer to the city is a glazed hotel with an inner skin of white glass, providing a contrast to the baths next door. A project in progress.

housing block
Stockholm, Sweden

The strong façade of black glazed brick stands shield-like, with deep-cut niches facing the comings and goings of the street. Opening up behind it is a bright and sensitive inside of pale yellow, unglazed brick where the trees filter the prospect of the park below. Intertwined layouts enliven the simple structure and make sound economics of the rental flats.

Pure lines, solid materials and timeless detailing harmonise with the wider context of urban development.

shopping centre
Vällingby, Sweden
1st prize

The Stockholm suburb of Vällingby is a canonical project in the history of urban planning. 50 years after its inauguration the centre is now being renovated and new buildings added in order to keep it commercially attractive. We are responsible for the main new feature, a department store for fashion only.

A dramatic backlit ceiling with white logotypes on red will create an emblematic sign of the building.

The façades are similarly executed, with a printed glass shifting from transparent to white in front of a red backdrop. A large hole dominates the open interior, a reverence to the circular motif that became a Vällingby icon in 1954. A smaller triangular unit in black enamelled glass, dedicated to one single shop, completes the structure. A narrow lane with glazed bridges connects the two buildings with each other and with the existing grid. A project in progress.

hotel and conference centre
Stockholm, Sweden

For all the world like two pointed scissor blades it jabs the air between Norra Bantorget and the Central Station shunting yard in Stockholm. One blade leans slightly outwards towards the piazza, honing the edge of the corner. Hazardous transport operations in the shunting yard have interdicted fenestration for the other blade, and here instead free play is given to the horizontal striation which encircles the building.

Black granite – either polished, hammered or cracked – endows the façade with a rustic massiveness on the ground and an ethereal buoyancy skywards.

Glazing and polished stone mirror the verdure on the street side. With its double-headroom bottom storey and with an entrance reaching out towards the piazza, the hotel completes the public character of the place, at the same time as its architecture adds an independent element, with the recessed fore-parts nonetheless echoing the scale and proportions of the surroundings. In an earlier scheme the hotel was dominated by two bottle-green towers.

masterplanning
Mölndal, Sweden
1st prize, Kasper Salin Award 1993

The expansion of the AstraZeneca R&D site in Mölndal represents an implosion, the number of buildings having been doubled without increasing the internal distances. The spinal cord is a 200-metre walkway, which links all the different units together and provides abundant opportunities for spontaneous meetings. The walkway starts in the KC entrance and office block (see separate page) and ends in a combined dining hall and conference centre.

The entire complex is fashioned according to a sociological appreciation of people’s need for meetings and seclusion.

The comprehensive laboratory installations were gathered into the gable ends and the extensive fan spaces placed beneath the arched roofs, providing flexible, well-lit rooms. The requirement of climatic stability but still very transparent buildings was met by means of specially designed solar control and by varying the translucence of the glazed façades. The precision and clear-cut shapes indicate hi-tech activity, already perceptible from the nearby motorway.

science and visitors centre
Waren, Mecklenburg, Germany
1st prize

Müritz is the biggest lake in Germany. In the spring the cranes stops here. The medieval city of Waren lies as a springboard to a great natural preservation area. The "Müritzeum" is a science- and visitors centre, holding exhibitions, experiments and aquariums.

Two cones, slightly shifted in plan, shape the building.

The circular form opens up, by sharp cuts, with the entrance cutting as the most prominent. The load carrying inner layer is varnished yellow (as on a yacht) while the exterior cladding is charcoaled to a maintenance free black surface, (where the ribs of the wood grain are easily touched and read). The “floating” character of the building corresponds to the setting on the lake. The project was given the first prize in an invited competition.

apartment buildings
Helsinki, Finland

Three buildings play with the scale of things.

The glazed balconies form large, continuous expanses of glass uninterruptedly traversing walls and floor structure edges. At the other end is a smallness of scale in the patterned brickwork of the façades, with different surfaces creating relief on a small scale, like a more intimate parallel to the high relief of the large volumes. The positioning of the entrances between the buildings has made possible a system of retaining walls and terraces. The integrity of the different volumes is heightened by the stairwell glazing and by the brick walls accompanying the visitor entering the building. A project in progress.

global interior concept
global

Volvo Next Face is a retail programme that brings Volvos brand promise to life in the retail environment.

VNF defines Volvo against the competition. It projects a premium positioning in a way that is consistent across all their communications and is uniquely Volvo. It builds on the design language presented at motor shows to give a fresh and modern approach the emphasises on scandinavian heritage and style. VNF is more than a visual experience. It has been created to enhance the buying and service experience at an emotional level. In short it has been created to facilitate sales and customer loyalty. A great emphasis has been placed on creating a flexible programme that can be tailored to the real and specific demands of the individual dealership.

chancellery for the Swedish embassy
Washington DC, USA
1st prize

The Rock Creek meets the Potomac in a thin peninsula. It’s the site of a lifetime. The needle with water on three sides commands a spectacular view of such landmarks as Georgetown, Watergate and the Kennedy Center. The protruding setting called for an emblematic building, illuminating the idea of the open society. The materials are white stone for the podium, blond maple for the interior, which penetrates the thin glass shield and becomes exterior wall treatment only to be covered by a second glass layer containing a mist of white printed dots. The balconies carries the third layer visible sides being clad with laminated glass where the Swedish tradition of wood painting is revived by a computer-generated print. In the night it is all back-lit.

A Nordic light in the dark southern night.

Kasper Salin Award 2007!

Senior high school
Kungsbacka, Sweden
1st prize

Black and white concrete, geometrical shapes and pictorial signs on the façade give the building a graphic identity.

In what is partly a remodelling of an old building and partly a new construction, the 1,500 students have been divided into three teams of 500 each. Two large triangular rooms form nuclei for two of them, while the third has moved into the old, partly converted building. The teams have then been divided into smaller groups of about a hundred each. Size matters: this gives appropriately sized study groups, the conditioning governing the measurements of the triangles. The inner courtyards also serve as lobbies for the school and for the theatre. Measurements and standards are attuned to the neighbouring city centre. Dividing the big school in several smaller houses has created a large volume in a compact body, a necessity in order not to overshoot the limited budget. Together with the use of prefab concrete elements in structure and in the façade, this has made the building a low-cost project.

bath plant
Landskrona, Sweden

People meet in Architecture!

We participate in the Nordic Pavillion at la Biennale di Venezia with our project Citadellbadet.

The aim of the exhibition is to show public spaces in the Nordic countries.

interior
Stocholm, Sweden

Broad planks of white-stained Oregon pine without joins unite floor, walls and interior into a coherent milieu.

Gently and supply, just like the garments in Filippa K’s collection, the interior must leave the visitor with a sense of wellbeing. A large end wall of living plants gives the room a suggestive character in which the vision of the Garden of Paradise has been bodily transplanted into downtown Stockholm. This “supernaturalism” is followed up by the more abstract naturalness of the interior design. Broad planks of white-stained Oregon pine without joins unite floor, walls and interior into a coherent milieu. The unit is divided into three rooms. The entrance room serves as a gallery with temporary installations, the shop itself as an icon for the timeless character of the brand and the inner part as a well-lit private zone in which the ceiling-high doors of the fitting rooms contribute space and dignity.

private residence
Gothenburg, Sweden

This house has taken its cue from the dramatic West Swedish landscape in which it stands.

The difficulties of the site, the oblique angle of the steep cliff to the view, were challenges which, coupled with the area development plan’s stipulation of a roof pitch of between 14 and 30 degrees and an eaves height of three metres, informed the building. The rock with which it is united is exposed indoors and forms a wall of the deep courtyard admitting daylight to the reception rooms on the ground floor. At the same time the social and working rooms on the upper floor focus on the view, imparting a twist to the building – a contrapposto like a human figure with the hips and shoulders in slightly different directions. The glazed sections resemble holes cut out of solid copper armour plating. The structure is very robust. Concrete roof beams insulated with foam glass repose on the walls of lightweight concrete, giving a totally impervious structure beneath the skin of patinated copper. Copper ions are neutralised by crushed limestone round the foundation.

private residence
Gothenburg, Sweden

A straight house on an oblique plot cause the architecture and the unobtrusive landscaping to twist the axis. The parterres of the garden have also helped to allay the impression of the public highway traversing the lower part of the plot. This house, designed for a builder and his wife, reflects the self-consciousness of a couple who do not balk at letting their personality be expressed in their building.

Like the two individuals for whom the house is built, the two volumes look out to sea, one of them a little more prudently over the other one’s shoulder.

The pale concrete frame is followed through in a pale-stained, room-length solid Oregon pine for the flooring and fittings. The glass wall crossing the edge of the roof beams creates a seamless contact between building and terrace. This ends in a black concrete pool, the water of which is constantly flowing over the edge, becoming part of the building’s façade.

cultural centre and upper secondary school
Kungälv, Sweden
1st prize

This is a low-budget building.

It called for a very plain scheme for the general layout with façades generally made of prefabricated concrete elements, but designed with great attention to the most visible parts. It houses a senior high school with technical education as well as a library and an auditorium serving the entire community. It is located on the edge of the centre of the small town of Kungälv, north of Gothenburg. Vertical and horizontal lamellas work as sunscreens and give the building a graphic pattern, endowing it with a distinct character towards the city, while birch panelling gives the interior a warm and sensitive atmosphere. Accessibility for the disabled has been another prime concern, especially in the theatre.

University College of Arts, Crafts and Design
Stockholm, Sweden

A vast 1930s hall, whilom used for assembling L M Ericsson telephones, stood vacant, ready and waiting to receive the Stockholm University College of Arts, Crafts and Design. At 16,000 sq. m. it was the biggest one-room apartment in Stockholm, day lit through nineteen rows of roof lanterns. The generality of the building invited general additions, with the most public parts grouped next to the entrance. Further in there is space for workshops and studios. All text is painted on the spot, low down but provocatively large. Directions are written on the sanded floor, leaving the walls free for students’ presentations. The materials and colours are kept to an industrial simplicity.

This is a place where creativity comes from within.

commuter station
Mölndal, Sweden
1st prize

"This is a dignity-building project"

The everyday comings and goings of trains and buses have been given shape in this municipality close to the city of Gothenburg. The existing bridge links the two parts of the community together. The new structure emphasizes this character, and gives shelter from the wind. The big canopy allows buses to pass under it. By defining the paths between the bus stops and leaving the areas in between open, the large structure is less massive and open to the sun. The edge of the roof is designed as a W, giving the rather thick construction a slim and vigorous character. The leaning façade announces the station to the centre of the city. The materials have been chosen for their permanence and beauty over time. Facades and floors are covered with slates and the tinted glass covers the ground with colours. The ceilings are covered with ribs of untreated larch.

redevelopment, offices
Stockholm, Sweden
1st prize

The Konsum building in Stockholm, dating back to the early thirties, was hailed at the time of its construction as a model factory in the functionalist style. Our design for the transformation of the disused production halls into office space favoured both taking away from and adding to the building structure: 6 and 12 meter-wide slices opened the structure to bring light into the inner reaches and permit efficient use of floor space. This improved the quality of the perimeter, thereby multiplying the commercial value of the complex, enhanced by a large semicircular addition.

The revitalisation project has restored Fatburen to its modernist aspect.

It is an elongated plaster building punctuated by air wells and characterized by a horizontal alignment created by rows of windows running around the entire volume of the building. While featuring uniform floor plans designed for office use, the longitudinal section reveals a high level of complexity in the form if terrace-like projections and set-backs.

23 apartment units at Bo01
Malmö, Sweden
1st prize, SAR´s Housing Award 2001

Everything that goes on in this building relates to the sea.

Living 20 metres from a sea with dramatic mood swings makes for a full life – one of give and take for both people and buildings. Big windows open up the rooms to the elements outside, the stairs move towards the horizon and the very structure, with its solid walls, stands fast as a breakwater. No balconies punctuate the wall, but courtyard and rooftop have sheltered spots for sun worship. The building conforms to the precinct plan created for the 2001 housing expo, while the section with transverse two-storey flats breaches the conventions of apartment blocks. The design is based on a limited – but clear – number of approaches. Mirroring the plan brings out a variation on the elevations. The deep relief of the low wing building, whose window recesses are cut like perspective lines from the wall mass, stands out against the tall block’s smooth elevation. A play between the formal and the informal has been striven for at all levels, from the town plan to details.

science centre and aquarium
Gothenburg, Sweden
1st prize, Best Contemporary Building 2001, The Swedish Wooden Award 2004

Universeum turns towards the light as a tree turns to the sun.

The natural surroundings of the science centre climb down the mountainside, while the technology displays are accommodated in the wooden box which is the face of the complex towards the city. The structure is the simplest conceivable, with nothing to obstruct the screws and drills when the exhibitions come to be changed. The ecological message is in-built. The building can be renewed on a shoe string, it is naturally ventilated, its energy requirement is minimal, the water is recycled within the building, and the roof can be equipped with solar collectors when this is financially feasible. A composite building, with each part a viable structure in its own right. Like nature itself.

flight control tower
Sigtuna, Sweden
1st prize, European Award for Excellence in Concrete 2002

The dual functions of the building are expressed in a bifurcated tower.

It handles two kinds of traffic control: one for take-offs and landings, the other for directing traffic on the ground. There is also a division here into technical and human activity. The duality is expressed in a dichotomy of colour and form, with the two lookout points perched like reconnoitring birds atop the coupled shaft. The stripes allude to the navigation marks of earlier times, with a superimposed layer of further meaning in the quotations added by the Finnish artist Silja Rantanen from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s "Southern Mail". The central position of the tower at Stockholm’s principal airport has made it a landmark for the whole area. The graphic clarity of the campanile with touches of Swedish 1950s design seeks to impart stability to the wide-open, far-flung international airport.

private residence
Gothenburg, Sweden

The steep gradient of the plot makes the entrance almost invisible.

The driveway speaks of a big house, but the discreet door in the wall gives no hint of what is on the inside. The view is also concealed by the wall and the rocks. Indoors not only the house but also the sea view is opened up. Looking straight ahead, the room plunges down into a deep, narrow staircase commanding a view of the bay through a glazed section seven metres high. An hourglass which has its counterpart in the residential floor symmetrically opening up round the axis of the staircase. The rooms are tied together by the terrace outside, which in turn is linked to the water beneath by the pool on the central axis.

Auditorium and Student Union
Gothenburg, Sweden
1st prize, Kasper Salin Award 2001

"This is the new face of Chalmers University of Technology"

The auditorium and student union building maintains an intimate dialogue with its surroundings and is the emblematic face of the campus towards the city, but largely oriented inward toward the university and its entrance plaza. From the plaza visitors approach the building from the side, entering directly into the central volume. A huge slate wall glittering in the light from the sky provides a backdrop for a space. The building is well crafted, with trimmings of glass and larch wood that enhance without distracting attention from the building’s primary element, the volume of the main space. The construction comprises two ships with three floors, with sections of the upper floor having been removed to create a piano nobile floor with a number of larger assembly halls. Here there is a spacious foyer, a lecture hall with seating for 450, a smaller assembly hall and a sports hall as well as a number of seminar and group rooms.

guest house and sauna
Västra Karup, Sweden
notetest

This house is a manifestation of the Swedish ritual of sauna and bathing. It is an annex to a large old farm in the countryside of southern Sweden, converted into a vacation house for a family from the nearby city of Malmö. Apart from the sauna and attendant spaces for undressing, washing and relaxing, the Mill House is also a small dwelling. The traditional rite of sauna involves baking together and dashing out for an invigorating dip in a cold stream.The meagre creek on the property was insufficient for the purpose, however, so a small pool was built adjacent to the sauna. The exposed construction demanded carpentry of unusual excellence.

In combination with the intimate size, it promotes the atmosphere of a Zen master’s tea house.

masterplanning, first phase
Massachusetts, USA
1st prize, Laboratory of the Year Award 2001

Waltham, near Boston, is no ordinary Edge City.

The place where Astra Zeneca has built its American research centre is pent up between a protected wetland and an exclusive residential area, which meant special demands on the architecture. Ordinary lab façades were ruled out. Instead the buildings borrowed their shape from traditional American barns, with Minnesota limestone cladding. Variations in the working of the stone add to the refinement of the buildings and give to the complex a character commensurate with the high demands of their surroundings. The layout is an American variant of the Swedish workplaces designed to maximise opportunities for informal meetings, such as a terraced dining hall and visual contact between desks and laboratories. The Waltham site received R&D´s Magazine’s Laboratory of the Year Award for 2001.

Chancellery of the Royal Swedish Embassy
Berlin, Germany
1st prize, Kasper Salin Award nominee 1999

Through a hole in the copper skin the great room of the embassy opens out towards Klingerhöferstrasse and Tiergarten. Behind the big window, diplomats and their visitors pass to and fro on shelves and staircases. This is Sweden’s showcase on Berlin and the embassy’s most public façade. The other two sides of the building overlook the common courtyard of the Nordic embassy precinct. These are contrasting façades, one light and thin, white limestone, and the other heavy, rough, black basalt. A materialism and precision taken from the Mies van der Rohe of the 1920s. The interior’s abundance of motion for its part pays tribute to both Borromini and Richard Serra.

The piece de résistance is the spiral staircase, the precise execution of which comes close to the musical instruments of the Baroque.

unrealized project for private villa
Åsa, Sweden

This villa is designed for a plot near the sea where only gnarled pine trees are capable of defying the wind. Like the pine trees, the house hugs the ground, but with a firm and definite layout. The configuration is not without its points of reference in local traditional building, but here the square has been opened out towards the sea and the view. All social spaces open westwards, while the other sides of the house are enclosed behind a palisade of whitewood slats. The shape of the building conforms to that of the site.

A raster of poles anchors the structure of the building in the landscape at large, which can be filled with trellises.

From the car park one progresses alongside a water channel and under the glazed roof of the terrace to the main entrance. The dining space is in the centre of the extremely narrow layout, based on the same principles as other contemporary house with similar programmes: seclusion between different family needs, and maximum openness to the view, the light and the sea, communicated through two pools immediately adjoining the terrace.

competition entry for the Swedish pavilion
Hanover, Germany

The idea was to create a building to play music on.

Sweden’s pavilion at the Hanover Expo 2000 was to reflect our country, both in its building and in its exhibition. We proposed a box clad in cyanite, a bluish mineral which in Sweden occurs at Hålsjöberget, Värmland. When extracted the hard material presents very beautiful veining. The structure was rectangular, but dramatised by fissures and contrasts. The secretive body of the building was pulled apart, exposing an open inside. In the great hall visitors would be able to create music with their own bodies by obscuring laser beams.

olympic stadium
Stockholm, Sweden
1st prize

An Olympic arena, half dug into an old rubbish dump, designed for Stockholm’s Olympic candidature in 2004.

Sketches for what was to be the principal arena on the southern edge of the inner city were prepared in association with Bergs, who among other things had previously designed the big Stockholm Globe indoor arena. Excavation of one-third of the enormous hill would give this arena a local presence unique among sporting arenas, like a classical amphitheatre. The complex was designed to serve as an outdoor arena during the summer games, with the possibility of covering it over completely at a later stage.

private residence
Varberg, Sweden

The combination in the canopy roof of chance and fretwork exuberance, with sawn slots interacting with the natural fissures in the wood, epitomises the principle of the house, with nature and nurture everywhere rubbing shoulders. The long line of the floor plan from entrance to winter garden is enriched by the arc of the section and by the gradation of materials from rough to fine.

This cradle is the core of the architecture.

Here are summarised the sequences between intimacy and space which are then followed up in materials and detailing. The bowl shape of the section turns all rooms and spaces outside the sunken core into niches, the intimacy of which varies according to the ceiling height, or rather the floor height. The antithesis of the main room is in the deep niches of the more private rooms, with their predominance of warm cherry wood, the antithesis of the cool, grey, bush-hammered granite. The sea provides the monumental element. This makes the terrace the most radical room in the house, unequivocally pointed at the water through the slope of the roof in towards the house. With the large glazed sections pulled aside, only a faint marking distinguishes interior from exterior. A contact between architecture and nature which also characterises the interior where the rocks of the terrain burst through the floor.

golf clubhouse
Lerum, Sweden
Kasper Salin Award 1988

The clubhouse hides under a turf, at the central point of four golf courses. This makes the building a hill, using the roof for a tee. The exterior of the house is dominated by the 36-sided glass façade, which in multiples of 15 degrees rotates the public room towards the south and west and rises from 0.7 to 7 metres. The bris-soleil follows a related 30 degrees grid, which also works as expressive roof eaves, reducing the risk of people falling off the accessible roof.

Synthesized nature: regular and yet irregular, like a tree.

The large inner room is planned with six different floor levels and with a ceiling that is seen to undulate between 7 and 2 metres. The room gains its character from the view of the golf courses through the glass façade and from the red Öland limestone being treated with increasing refinement. The architecture illustrates an ecological awareness, with no penetrations through the roof and remarkably low energy consumption.