Sven-Harry's Art Museum
Sven-Harry's Art Museum is a mixed-use cultural building in Vasastan, Stockholm, developed for art collector and construction entrepreneur Sven-Harry Karlsson. The project combines a public art museum, galleries, apartments and commercial premises within a compact urban block facing Vasaparken. Its most distinctive feature is the shimmering facade clad in a gold-coloured copper alloy, a contemporary interpretation of the gilded architecture found throughout Stockholm's historic city centre. Completed in 2011, the building houses both Karlsson's private art collection and a full-scale replica of his former eighteenth-century manor house on the top floor.
Sven-Harry's dream
In 1998, Stockholm was the European Capital of Culture. The builder Sven-Harry Karlsson had built a townhouse in the city’s exhibition area. We were the architects, and took a liking to each other.
Sven-Harry moved into the exhibition house and became, with himself, his home and his art, a very popular visitor destination. The line between private and public became slightly blurred.
As was the border between what was a building, architecture, art and the art of living. The kitchen cupboard doors were all painted in individual colours with a slight nod to Clay Ketter.
Sven-Harry otherwise lived in Ekholmsnäs on the island of Lidingö. There he lived with an exquisite collection of paintings, sculptures, furniture and an unbeatable view. When key works of Strindberg and Hill were on loan to some important exhibition, they never left gaps on the walls. There was always something else in the vaults.
A new plan was drawn up for the demolished boiler room at the Sabbatsberg Hospital. The plan required the two lower floors be public, while the following three floors could be let as private residences. The illustration of the plan could have been carried out by the architect at the Getty Centre in Los Angeles, white and pompously curvaceous.
Sven-Harry thought about letting his entire home become a museum.
He probed the council for several properties. The boiler room by Vasaparken was likely the right one. Could the architect get sketching on this, he muttered.
I immediately saw Ekholmsnäs on the roof. The little house on top of the big one. Framed by a roof terrace amidst Vasaparken’s tall tree crowns, all the rooms would benefit from natural daylight.
The plan stipulated that the two lower floors be public space. We had that changed. We had to rework the surrounding landscape, give the building a slightly raised plinth. More museum-like in that way.
We sketched much of it in sections so as to nail the layout. The museum would climb up the house. Most is still intact since the first pencil strokes. Added were the entrance slit and the golden copper alloy.
Gone are the balconies on the building’s short sides. Stockholm City has given their nod of approval to the open-planned ground floor with two private galleries, a restaurant and the museum’s foyer.
Sven-Harry spent a year in one of the flats in the building. Ekholmsnäs was sold, but the interior was recreated to the slightest detail on the roof of the museum.
The 18 residential flats finance the operation of the foundation that is Sven-Harry’s museum.
"I think of all design in our daily lives, like clothing. We want to feel comfortable, but we also want a twist."
— Gert Wingårdh
