Growing like an outcrop amongst the hills of Gothenburg, the Kulturkorgen by Swedish firm Sweco Architects offers the public an opportunity to watch, engage, and perform. The scheme is a result of an architectural competition for a new Culture House in the city, run in collaboration with Architects Sweden. The winning proposal, who’s name translates to ‘Basket of Culture’, acts as both a building and a square – a social arena where flexible interior spaces act in tandem with a generous public green landscape for recreation and gathering.
Folding out from the Bergsjön landscape in Gothenburg, the open, inviting façade of the Kulturkorgen embodies Sweco’s vision of a welcoming environment – a rich blend of timber, color and pattern evoking warmth, purity, and curiosity. The landscaped square is rich in amenities, with green areas, seating, recreational spaces, and stages, with the architects emphasizing the importance of an open arena to host a multitude of activities.
Inside, the building is organized around a central atrium reaching skywards - a gesture dominating the aesthetic inside and out. The Kulturkorgen contains a library, café, exhibition space, meeting rooms, studio, small theater, greenhouse, as well as adaptable, less programmed spaces for informal talks, meetings, and social events. Together with its public square, the building represents a flexible social arena, fostering a sense of curiosity, play, and tolerance.
The New Culture House in Bergsjön increases the presence of culture in everyday life and offers a thousand of opportunities to witness, to engage with, to do, and to show. The Culture House is like a basket full of possibilities that encourages the weaving of threads of dreams and influences into new beautiful wholes. What is created here is what forms public culture and develops societies into the future; processes that are based on sharing stories, expressions, knowledge and experiences – Sweco Architects.
News via: Sweco Architects.
