Helsingborg Library

This library is linked to a new station that will function as a centre for a new district that will be built in the coastal city of Helsingborg, Sweden.
Due to the strategic site, a blank space between two segregated areas, this building has to be something special.

The plan is quite simple; a big, shining craterlike excavation in the centre of the floor plan will be where most of the books are, stacked in transparent bookshelves.
From here you can also access to the visual media room where you can play video games, listen to lectures, look at exhibitions and so on.

Around the crater is also some bookshelves and such, but this area is mostly designated for listening to music, reading fast-food literature, comics, newspapers.

A mighty chunk of forest in the north of the building makes up a dramatic backdrop for the whole library. As you enter from the north, you have to pass this in a Hans and Gretel kind of way, a transformation to imagination.

Mesh pathways leaps out in this forest from the second floor and from the roof terrace.
Secluded spaces in the treetops where you can get lost in a book, maybe Moby Dick?
The pathways connect to the building on the other side of the road.
A gigantic botanic garden can be reached from here as well.
Cocoons of strengthen opaque rubber penetrates the roof to light up the interior, and to make interesting places on the roof to hang out.
When the weather and season permits, the whole roof functions as a outdoor cinema, or a concert scene.

If you enter the library from the south, the forest will be most present, but if you enter from the north, the cocoons and the white light will be the dominating factor.
A kind of high-tech vs. nature, tradition vs. exploration.

School of Rock

This school is a part of a building that will contain a station, a library, some shopping and restaurants.

From the underground station you reach an enormous foyer.
Some fixed functions as a ticket office, restaurant, café and such, is located close to the escalators down to the trains.
But the rest of the foyer is empty.
The floor is polished concrete, the roof is clad with mirrors, crystal chandeliers and Persian rugs is scattered throughout the space as well, but besides from that, its empty.
This will function as a gigantic living room for the entire city core.
Everything can take place here, circus, concerts, exhibitions, marketplaces, temporary food courts, flee markets.
What’s important is that this area isn’t fixed by commercial interests, but rather changing itself all the time.
This will contribute energy to a dynamic inner city and to connect the city’s different parts, the segregated North with the South, the existing city with the new extensions.
A quality building on a strategic site.

On the second and the third floor is a school located.
On the weekends can other functions take over due to the flexible plan.
Mess hall, nightclubs, exhibitions.
A lot of storage space handles the fast switches.

The school is equipped with a fantastic school yard on the roof, a botanic garden with some scattered play areas in concrete.
The garden is also accessible for public.

Propyard

Entry for EASA006, Budapest
The task was to transform a neglected courtyard, with an abandoned tennis court, into a playground for grown-ups.
One important thing is that the structure/play-thing is going to last and never become boring.
Our proposal is based on the human imagination, and when that is depleted, so is our solution. So it will probably last for a while.
We kept the tennis court structure and added some poles, painted it red, attached some PVC-sheeting and turned the whole courtyard into a Prop yard.
A prop yard is a new invention that functions as a creative place where you can create new environments with the help of props.
A prop is a thing that is used in movies or in the theatre to enhance the experience/feeling that the movie/play would like to pass on to you.
Fake palm trees, inflatable giant dinosaurs, fake snow, an old jukebox, and so on.
Lighting fixtures and the possibility to plug in electrical devices makes the prop yard more equipped for a greater variety of settings.
We predicted that this phenomenon will be spread to rest of the world, and in many areas, replace the function the park has today.
An interactive, always changing, dynamic park, where you can socialize and create things in contrast to your unsatisfying (?) job.

Plan of the yard and the structure

Collecting props

Axonometric view of the Propyard

Exterior view of the Propyard

Propyard

Villa Isbjörn

An early villa extension proposal that went out of control.
This could perhaps be a sign of a revolt against the boredomness that the architecture school fed us with and how they told us how Swedish architecture should be and look like.
Afterwards we realized that some of these sketches were quite amazing and that architecture could be fun, creative, intellectual and great for the clients at the same time.

Free Music

A competition entry for a temporary concert hall that rejects a physical building and proposes different concert settings that the crowd suggests in advance.

Silenzio

The competition was to create a concert house for two musicians and an audience of four listeners on the maximal area of 30 square meters.
The house should be transportable and insulated against external sound. The brief said also that the audience should leave the concert with a feeling
that the musicians performed for each and one of them only.

The concept was to create a movement from a loud festival environment to a silent, calm space where you can sit alone and focus on the music.
The material chosen for the concerthall was fabric, which handles the acoustical and climatical demands throughout different layers and treatments.
The layers of fabric work at the same time as a spatial divider between the different rooms.


From a distance


Exterior view


Compartment

Plan

Section

Section

Future use

Big Mama

A temporary concerthall for intimate concerts. The structure can be rotated and unfolded.
The structure is like german interlinked sausages on rows. The white interior takes one away from the busy festival area and enhances the experience and the intimacy with the musicians.
The musicians doesnt always perform, and on those occasions the structure can easily be rotated into a tunnel of musical experience with other aficionados thanks to the small speakers that is attached inside.
And at nighttime and perhaps some weeks after the festival is over, the whole structure can be unfolded and put into the river that lies just beside the festival area.

Plan

Section

Section - rotated

Unfolded structure

Bland Vallmo och Tallar

The task was to build 1000 housing units in the outskirt of Mölndal, a commuter town to Gothenburg.
The site is flat and rather undefined and is now the home to Åby horse race arena, the second biggest of its kind in Sweden.
Around the arena is a sprawl of horse stables and enclosed pastures, all this will be relocated to another area in a near future and this will liberate a great deal of land.

To create a notion of identity to the complete new residential area, a vast meadow will function as the visual core in the area.
The houses will cut through the meadow as long piers in a comb-like manner.
In between the apartment structures, there are terrace houses to create a healthy urban mix.

Main posters

The masterplan

The meadow

Housing units at the meadow

The forrest

Housing units at the forrest

Closer

Entry for a Tsunami Memorial in Thailand.
The task was to create an appropriate memorial and remembrance place for everyone that was affected by the tragedy of the tsunami disaster 2004 . The immense mirror will provide all the subjective reflections that one can wish for in the complexity of this mission.
The section shows the differentiated experiences for the visitors.
Under the museum hangs gangways that functions as exhibition areas and also becomes an outdoor theatre amidst the jungle. The final room is glowing with light and offers complentation and introspectiveness.
360 meter long with mirrorglasses that reflects the jungle and the sky.
The pillars also functions as lights to lead the visitors through the jungle down to the beach via a dirt path.
At the very end of the roof/reflecting pool the visitors sees a spectacular view of the ocean and the building seems to dissolve into the horizon.
The tip in the end of the museum becomes a crystal that reflects and enhances light like a beacon over the sea.

Reflecting pool on the roof

Section - from dense jungle to the ocean

Lights under the building guides the visitors to the shoreline

Sections

Shoreline with the end of the museum with the crystal tip

Overlooking the sea

Contact

The nearby cultural institutions at Götaplatsen, the most prominent square in Gothenburg, wanted a box office to reach more people and to vitalize the square.

Instead of the ordinary cube to be placed somewhere in the solemn square, a bunch of robots will do the job instead.
They work in ten hour shifts and then roam the streets of Gothenburg in their spare time to interact with the people.
This will activate the square, sell more tickets and be a lot more of fun.


The square at daytime


Square, plan


Box office


The square with the robots at night time

Plan, night

Interactions

Technicalities