Every year, Sveriges Arkitekter awards the Kasper Salin Prize to a Swedish building or group of buildings that are considered to be of high architectural quality.
When Kulturhuset in Stockholm was built, designed by the architect Peter Celsing, it was awarded the Kasper Salin Prize in 1972. It is now clear that the house's renovation, designed by Per Ahrbom and the agency Ahrbom & Partner, will receive the 2020 Kasper Salin Prize.
- It is not so much visible, but it is a very extensive project.
They have worked with the facades, all technical systems, interior design, art and an open ground floor with better accessibility, says jury member Torun Hammar to Kulturnyheterna.
This is the first time a redevelopment has been awarded the prize, and also the first time the same building has received the prize twice.
Sustainability in focus
Part of the winning motivation reads: "The winner represents the importance of a qualified architect's presence over time, where the redevelopment is a crescendo in an ongoing process."
The architect Per Ahrbom was born in 1938 and was a close collaborator of Kulturhuset's original chief architect Peter Celsing.
- Time changes.
Today, sustainability is the architects' challenge.
We will take care of what has already been built, and highlighting that process in the fine rooms is important for the architecture, says Torun Hammar.
Per Ahrbom is behind the today active architectural firm Ahrbom & Partner, which in recent years has led a number of new construction projects, renovations and extensions of, among others, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm City Library, Skatteskrapan and the Stockholm School of Economics.
The Kasper Salin Prize was established in 1962 on the basis of a dormant donation by Stockholm's city architect Kasper Salin (1856-1919).