flexiblefullpage
billboard
interstitial1
catfish1
Currently Reading

Chipperfield's sparkling brass-clad scheme selected to be new home of Nobel Prize

Chipperfield's sparkling brass-clad scheme selected to be new home of Nobel Prize

The distinctive building, with its shimmering vertical brass elements and glass façade design, beat out two other finalists in the Nobel Center architectural competition.


By Nobel Center | April 15, 2014
David Chipperfield Architects has won the Nobel Center architectural competition
David Chipperfield Architects has won the Nobel Center architectural competition. Renderings: courtesy Nobel Center, David Chipp
A unanimous competition jury has selected David Chipperfield’s and Christoph Felger’s slender brass-clad building as the winner in the Nobel Center architectural competition. 
 
“We are extremely excited and honoured to have been selected to be the architects for the Nobel Center. We look forward to working together to develop a building that reflects both the values of the Nobel Prize and the high expectations of the citizens of Stockholm,” says architect David Chipperfield.
 
According to the statement of the jury, the proposed building has an elegant, timeless and attractive external appearance with a clear identity of its own. The revised façade design, with its shimmering vertical brass elements and glass, has a lofty elegance and quality that can be associated with the Nobel Prize.
 
“The jury finds the lightness and openness of the building very appealing and consistent with the Nobel Foundation’s explicit ambition to create an open and welcoming Center for the general public,” says Lars Heikensten, chairman of the competition jury and Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation.
 
The transparent ground floor helps create a pleasant setting in the immediate vicinity of the building, thereby also enriching the urban public space. Meanwhile the building’s moderate footprint creates good opportunities for a public city park in a sunny south-east position.
 
The jury is of the opinion that after additional refinement in collaboration with the client and with public authorities, the proposal can lead to a dignified, exciting and inviting Nobel Center building while helping create a better, more engaging and beautiful urban setting on the Blasieholmen peninsula in central Stockholm.
 
Per Wästberg, writer, member of the Swedish Academy, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Literature and one of the members of the competition jury says, “We view the winning proposal as a concrete interpretation of the Nobel Prize as Sweden’s most important symbol in the world. Stockholm will gain a building – magnificent but without pomp, powerful yet graceful – with qualities like those the City Hall gave the capital a century ago.”
 
In the now-completed second stage of the competition, the jury assessed proposals from three finalists: David Chipperfield and Christoph Felger från David Chipperfield Architects Berlin (Germany), Johan Celsing from Johan Celsing Arkitektkontor (Sweden) and Gert Wingårdh from Wingårdh Arkitektkontor (Sweden).
 
The Nobel Center will build up its activities around the Nobel Prize’s unique combination of disciplines – sciences, literature and peace. The ambition is to make the Nobel Center one of Stockholm’s most attractive destinations, including public spaces for exhibitions, programme and school activities, events and interdisciplinary meetings of various kinds.
 
Take a look at the renderings that won the competition:
 
©David Chipperfield Architects
 
 
 
©David Chipperfield Architects
 
 
 
©David Chipperfield Architects
 
 
 
©David Chipperfield Architects
 
 
 
©David Chipperfield Architects
 
 
 
©David Chipperfield Architects
 
 
 
©David Chipperfield Architects

Related Stories

| Oct 13, 2010

Community center under way in NYC seeks LEED Platinum

A curving, 550-foot-long glass arcade dubbed the “Wall of Light” is the standout architectural and sustainable feature of the Battery Park City Community Center, a 60,000-sf complex located in a two-tower residential Lower Manhattan complex. Hanrahan Meyers Architects designed the glass arcade to act as a passive energy system, bringing natural light into all interior spaces.

| Oct 13, 2010

Community college plans new campus building

Construction is moving along on Hudson County Community College’s North Hudson Campus Center in Union City, N.J. The seven-story, 92,000-sf building will be the first higher education facility in the city.

| Oct 13, 2010

Bookworms in Silver Spring getting new library

The residents of Silver Spring, Md., will soon have a new 112,000-sf library. The project is aiming for LEED Silver certification.

| Oct 13, 2010

County building aims for the sun, shade

The 187,032-sf East County Hall of Justice in Dublin, Calif., will be oriented to take advantage of daylighting, with exterior sunshades preventing unwanted heat gain and glare. The building is targeting LEED Silver. Strong horizontal massing helps both buildings better match their low-rise and residential neighbors.

| Oct 12, 2010

Holton Career and Resource Center, Durham, N.C.

27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. Early in the current decade, violence within the community of Northeast Central Durham, N.C., escalated to the point where school safety officers at Holton Junior High School feared for their own safety. The school eventually closed and the property sat vacant for five years.

| Oct 12, 2010

Guardian Building, Detroit, Mich.

27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Special Recognition. The relocation and consolidation of hundreds of employees from seven departments of Wayne County, Mich., into the historic Guardian Building in downtown Detroit is a refreshing tale of smart government planning and clever financial management that will benefit taxpayers in the economically distressed region for years to come.

| Oct 12, 2010

Richmond CenterStage, Richmond, Va.

27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Bronze Award. The Richmond CenterStage opened in 1928 in the Virginia capital as a grand movie palace named Loew’s Theatre. It was reinvented in 1983 as a performing arts center known as Carpenter Theatre and hobbled along until 2004, when the crumbling venue was mercifully shuttered.

| Oct 12, 2010

University of Toledo, Memorial Field House

27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Memorial Field House, once the lovely Collegiate Gothic (ca. 1933) centerpiece (along with neighboring University Hall) of the University of Toledo campus, took its share of abuse after a new athletic arena made it redundant, in 1976. The ultimate insult occurred when the ROTC used it as a paintball venue.

| Oct 12, 2010

Owen Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.

27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Officials at Michigan State University’s East Lansing Campus were concerned that Owen Hall, a mid-20th-century residence facility, was no longer attracting much interest from its target audience, graduate and international students.

| Oct 12, 2010

Gartner Auditorium, Cleveland Museum of Art

27th Annual Reconstruction Awards—Silver Award. Gartner Auditorium was originally designed by Marcel Breuer and completed, in 1971, as part of his Education Wing at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Despite that lofty provenance, the Gartner was never a perfect music venue.

boombox1
boombox2
native1

More In Category


Urban Planning

The magic of L.A.’s Melrose Mile

Great streets are generally not initially curated or willed into being. Rather, they emerge organically from unintentional synergies of commercial, business, cultural and economic drivers. L.A.’s Melrose Avenue is a prime example. 


Curtain Wall

7 steps to investigating curtain wall leaks

It is common for significant curtain wall leakage to involve multiple variables. Therefore, a comprehensive multi-faceted investigation is required to determine the origin of leakage, according to building enclosure consultants Richard Aeck and John A. Rudisill with Rimkus. 


halfpage1

Most Popular Content

  1. 2021 Giants 400 Report
  2. Top 150 Architecture Firms for 2019
  3. 13 projects that represent the future of affordable housing
  4. Sagrada Familia completion date pushed back due to coronavirus
  5. Top 160 Architecture Firms 2021