Swedish architect Gert Wingårdh (born 1951) and his family live in an old cottage in a picturesque setting near Marstrand in Kungsälv Municipality, in sharp contrast with the modernist style and skyscrapers with squares and sharp edges that he designs in his professional life in his company Wingårdh arkitektkontor. Here’s a portrait of the Swedish star architect.
Gert Wingårdh is one of Sweden’s most esteemed living architects. He has brought Sdwedish architecture out of the tradition of the international style and into contemporary times with his playful design spirit and love of eye-catching materials. With his use of bright colors and geometric motifs, his recent buildings have been described as “Maximalist” or “Modern Baroque.”
Related: A Swedish Home of Tenderness and Contrast
The beginning
Wingårdh studied economics, art history and architecture in the 1970s at Gothenburg University and Chalmers University of Technology and has in interviews stated that it was a visit to the Pantheon, Rome, that made him decide to become an architect. Originally, his dream was to be an art-gallery owner.
He started as an interior decorator in the 1970s. He received his degree in architecture from Chalmers in 1975. After graduating he joined an architectural firm for a short while before setting up his own office in 1977.
The next 10 years saw Wingårdh take on small commissions before his critical breakthrough in 1988 with his design for the Öijared Executive Country Club outside Gothenburg. The building rendered him the first of his record 5 Kasper Salin Prizes, the highest award in Sweden for excellence in architecture.
Related: Sweden’s ‘One-Minute’ City Design
International breakthrough
In recent years, he has had a number of assignments in the United States and Germany. Wingårdh is also the creator of the Swedish embassy in Washington D.C. (2006), known as the House of Sweden and the Swedish embassy in Berlin. Most of his realized buildings, however, can be found in Sweden and in particular in the area of metropolitan Gothenburg.
In 2007 Wingårdh won a major international competition for a large new shopping center in Malmö, and in the same year seven of the twelve hottest architecture projects in the capital Stockholm – listed by a Swedish national daily – were designed by Wingårdh.
He has attracted some controversy in his home country for his embrace of skyscrapers. His Victoria Tower (2011) is one of the tallest buildings in Stockholm, and a recent design for a 237-meter, 75-story tower in south Stockholm has been put on hold due to outcry that it may not meet zoning requirements.
Related: The Louisiana of Sweden
Book on architecture
In 2015, Wingårdh released “What is Architecture? And 100 Other Questions,” a popular book that provides both long and short answers for what he believes are the most pressing questions in architecture today. Wingårdh answers the titular question by responding that architecture is “the built image of ourselves.” Looking at his work through this lens, it is clear that Wingårdh now believes the greatest human attribute is our capacity for playfulness.
His ambition to “give the client what they did not know that they wanted” reveals his will to provoke as well as to adapt.
Portrait of a Swedish Star Architect, written by Tor Kjolberg.
Feature image (on top): © Photo: Mattias Ankrah/SVT. Architect Gert Wingårdh, from the popular 2022 television series “Husdrömmar” (House Dreams).