Lilla Bommen Building and Smyrna Frihamns Kyrkan - Gothenburg
I have visited Gothenburg a number of times in the past few years but for a number of reasons had not been able to visit one of the most significant buildings in the city, the Lilla Bommen Building, commonly called the ‘Lappstiftet’ (the ‘Lipstick’), designed by Ralph Erskine, an English architect who had settled in Sweden.
The Lappstiftet is a 22 storey, 86-metre-high building accommodating offices, networking spaces and restaurants in central Gothenburg in the district called Lilla Bommen adjacent to the Gota River.
The development of the Lappstiftet was part of a city initiative in the 1980s which aimed at restoring the connection to the city’s central waterfront on the banks of the Gota River. The proposals sought to create a central square that would provide space for shops, offices and open public spaces and some cohesion along the waterfront. The project was a joint initiative between the Skanska Group who purchased the land and constructed the building and Ralph Erskine, who designed the building.
Erskine was born and educated as an architect in UK and after qualifying in the 1930s, he was part of the design team working on Welwyn Garden City which developed his interest in town planning and broadened his approach to architecture. Before the outbreak of World War II, he travelled to Sweden attracted by the work of the Swedish architects, Gunnar Asplund, Sven Markelius and Sigurd Lewerentz and the country’s social welfare model (he was a Quaker, a humanist and a socialist). He settled in Sweden and was responsible for a number of significant buildings in the country including housing developments, shopping centres and university buildings. He is best known in UK for the Byker redevelopment in Newcastle upon Tyne, Clare Hall in Cambridge, the London Ark in Hammersmith and at the end of his career, the Greenwich Millenium Village.
The design of the building broke away from the typical Swedish low-rise office design (the ground-scraper) with long, central corridors with office spaces on either side. Erskine’s design was a more cost-effective solution providing a functional, flexible design that increased usable floor space by over 20% compared to the ground-scraper model. Construction was however delayed by the need to provide 95-metre-deep piles for foundations and by the initial public response to the design.
Skanska has described the construction process as both unusual and challenging due to the need for piled foundations, the unique and distinctive design of the building and to the fact that design work was still continuing even after construction started. Construction of the building started in 1986 and it was completed in 1989.
The design of the building has been categorised as ‘post-modern’, a style that emerged in the late 1960s, originally in the USA, as a reaction against the austerity, formality and lack of variety of modern architecture and particularly that of the ‘international style’ with its rigid doctrines, uniformity, lack of ornament and lack of local context. While I am certainly not a fan of the post-modern style as exemplified by the work of Michael Graves, Charles Moore (and especially that of Frank Gehry) in the USA and elsewhere and that of James Stirling and Terry Farrel in the UK many of whose buildings have not aged well, I have to say that I really like the Lappstiftet odd though it is in many ways.
It dominates the skyline next to the Gota River and provides colour and interest and while the central section is 22 stories high, it steps down from this to a lower section of 5 stories which relates to the surrounding buildings and wraps around a small park on the side away from the river and around an irregular terrace facing on to the river on the other side. The quirky white towers, that look like ships’ funnels, the glazed viewing platform projecting out of the top of the building and what look like round ventilation shafts at ground level, all add interest to the design. Erskine apparently said that he wanted to design a low-maintenance building and given that the building is now approaching 40 years old, he seems to have succeeded as it is in remarkably good condition.
Unfortunately, the viewing platform was closed when we visited but we did get into the entrance and restaurant area on the ground floor which has a six or seven-storey atrium in the middle, criss-crossed by bridges at different levels. This area of the building is again very well maintained and provides a variety of levels and spaces around the atrium including some water features. The whole building internally and externally holds together very well as a beautifully detailed, unified design. It is however, still surrounded by various construction works that do not help the appreciation of the building.
See the photo gallery for photos of the building.
I think that it is instructive to compare the Lappstiftet to the Gothenburg Opera House, which has also been categorised as ‘Post-Modern’ and which is also in Lilla Bommen close to the Lappstiftet. The building was completed in 1994 and, to my mind, illustrates the worst aspects of post-modernism being a collection of disparate elements that do not hold together and which are aging very poorly.
The architect of the opera house, Jan Izikowitz, apparently said that ‘the building should be possessed by an airiness that sends your mind soaring across the meandering landscape like wings of seagulls.’ Well, I am afraid that it does not do that for me!
After visiting the Lappstiftet, we crossed the Gota River and made our way to the Smyrna Frihamns Kyrkan, a new church situated in a rather desolate, windswept area that was once dockland and still contains old, industrial buildings but is now in the early stages of redevelopment. The church was designed for a Pentecostal congregation that launched an architectural competition for a new church after outgrowing its former home. The competition was won by a Stockholm based architectural practice, Elding Oscarson against competition by the likes of BIG and Kengo Kuma.
The church is a mixed use-facility serving Gothenburg’s multicultural Pentecostal parish and it contains, as well as three sacred spaces, a café, educational facilities, music studios, a parish kitchen and a food bank. The building is quite unlike a traditional church being a simple, tall cube that is glazed all round on the ground floor, with horizontal, timber cladding above and diagonal aluminium bars over glazing on the upper floors, the diagonal bars apparently being an abstract interpretation of the church’s logo, a head of wheat.
The ground floor contains the entrance, a small sacred place, communal areas and a café. The main spaces of the building are above the ground floor: the first and second floors are taken up by a double-height, 1,100 seat, 40 metre by 40 metre column-free hall accessed by a curving staircase and above this are three further levels containing educational facilities and a multipurpose hall all planned around a triple-height, top-lit atrium. All of the interior spaces are finished in natural timber or white paint.
Unfortunately, we were unable to access the upper floors but the ground floor spaces are simply finished and brightly lit with views out to the surrounding area. The building has a strong presence among the remaining industrial buildings and should continue to hold its place as the area is further developed. A simple but well considered building that seems to answer the client’s brief very well.
See the photo gallery for photos of the church.
Architecture in Developing Countries: A Resource
The design and construction of appropriate, low-cost buildings for education and health in rural areas of the developing world.
Nigel Wakeham worked as an architect for 23 years in Southern and West Africa and the SW Pacific working on education, health and other projects. He has since worked for over 20 years as a consultant for national governments and agencies such as the World Bank, DFID, ADB and AfDB on the implementation of the construction components of education and health projects in many countries in the developing world.
The objective of this website will be to provide the benefit of more than 45 years of experience of working in developing countries to architects and other construction professionals involved in the design and construction of appropriate, low-cost buildings for education and health. It will provide reference material from the projects that Nigel has worked on and technical information on the design, construction and maintenance of educational and health facilities and other relevant topics and these will be added to from time to time.
I am happy to be contacted by anyone requiring further information on any of the projects or resources referred to in this website or by anyone wishing to discuss work possibilities.
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