Approach
Architecture is an instrument in the production of culture.
A building is not a neutral container. It comes out of a social situation and a cultural circumstance, it tells the story of the people who use it, and it sets the frame for their rituals, daily, seasonal and ceremonial. The work moves across every scale, from the master plan to the door handle, because culture is made at each of them.
The supplement
Much of the work is an intervention in something that already exists: a landmarked building in New York, a shoreline on Gotland where a restaurant once stood. The rule is simple. The supplement is everything the original is lacking. No more than that, and legibly new.
The seasons
A site is a set of forces, not a plot. Wind, salt, snow load, a winter sun that barely clears the horizon at 57 degrees north. The building is drawn for all of them, and read through the year rather than on one afternoon.
The detail
The detail tells the tale. A stair nosing, a shadow gap, the weight of a lever in the hand: these are the passages where a building's story becomes legible.
Structure
Structure is not hidden and then decorated. The frame carries the expression: post and plank on Gotland, the beam and its plate in New York. The wall section, the plan and the ceiling are drawn as one thing, because that is how a room is experienced.
Four materials
Gotland limestone, frame-sawn pine, blackened steel and glass. Each is chosen for how it weathers and how it meets the hand. Four is enough, and the discipline is the point: with fewer materials every joint has to be right.
Well-being
A building should be good for the people in it: light, air, sound, the way a room holds a body at rest. Health and the spirit of a place are design intents here, taken seriously and never claimed beyond what can be shown.
A building is a frame that contains the occasionally formless narrative created by the people inside.Claes-Henric Appelquist