Today construction began on the addition to Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm. The project began with an international architectural competition in 2013, and the building will be completed in 2020. It has been designed by the architect Gert Wingårdh in collaboration with artist Ingegerd Råman.

The addition is designed to be a discreet support for the restrained art gallery. It recedes into the background, but without cowering. Like the main building, the new “annex” is a building with integrity. The old art gallery retains control over the situation along Djurgårdsvägen, while the annex faces the smaller Falkenbergsgatan. The division of responsibilities between them is more than just visual. The original entrance, a well-established emblem for Liljevalchs and a fundamental part of the experience of its architecture, retains its status. The addition presents itself primarily as an exhibition hall with a shop and a café, but of course it has space enough to receive visitors from the entire Liljevalchs complex.

The new wing has the same roofline as the original 1916 building. Above it rises a landscape of 160 roof lanterns that give the galleries below structure and rhythm. Within the two-by-two-meter grid these lanterns create, the space can be divided into any number of different configurations. Together with the bottle ends that decorate the façades, the building’s silhouette gives it a character all its own—shimmering, almost delicate in contrast to the precisely cast concrete walls next door.

6860 glass bottle ends are set into the façade to form a relief that has the feeling of a textile, with associations to the original building’s elegant architecture of pillars and infill walls. The web of glass works like a modern version of the diamond rustication of Renaissance architecture, or like rivets reinforcing the treasure chest that hides the precious art within.