© Tord-Rikard Söderström
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)