In 1983 Sweden’s Environment Protection Agency initiated an architectural programme for the ‘Naturum’ network of national nature reserve centres, to be built across the whole country. Design quality was a key requirement in the programme, with each new centre starting life through a competition. Wingårdhs have brought completely new eyes to envisioning the aesthetics of the Naturum’s. Aware that the centre would stand at the south-easterly edge of Southern Sweden’s large Lake Tåkern, and that the surrounding region of Östergötland has had a long history of traditional reed thatching as a rural industry, Gert Wingårdh has used reedbed thatch as a signature cladding for the entire external face of the building. If this is stylistically exotic, the architects have used the visitor centre itself, a low lying and single storey glulam timber structure, to subvert any preconceptions expected of thatch. The 20-million Swedish Krone building is an elegant, sharply angled mix of twenty-first century form with, what many might perceive, as a medieval materials palette. (Oliver Lowenstein)