Product Code Database
Peter Elof Herman Torsten Folke von Celsing (29 January 1920 – 16 March 1974) was a Swedish modernism architect.
He studied at the architectural school of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts.
He later became a professor of architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology. After working for some time in Beirut, he became head of the architectural office of AB Stockholms Spårvägar, the Stockholm tram and local railway authority, and designed a number of suburban metro stations. He also designed several churches: in Härlanda (Gothenburg), Almtuna (Uppsala), and Vällingby, a much-publicized modernist suburb of Stockholm.
Celsing often worked in a brutalist style with large exposed grey concrete surfaces, but occasionally combined this with large glass panes exposing the structure of the building from the outside, and interior details in wood. The best-known examples of this are the Kulturhuset (House of Culture) at Sergels torg in central Stockholm (1966–1971), the adjacent headquarters of the Bank of Sweden (1969–1973), and his addition to Carolina Rediviva, the main building of the Uppsala University Library (1953–1962). In Uppsala, Celsing also designed a new wing for the Stockholms nation building (begun in 1961), and the current Ekonomikum building at Uppsala University (completed 1976).
Another notable building was the Filmhuset, home of the Swedish Film Institute in Stockholm, built between 1968 and 1971. It was designed to resemble a camera, with an exposed concrete façade resembling . The building is listed as "code blue", the highest ranking in terms of cultural and historical value of buildings by the Stockholm City Museum (Stadsmuseet Stockholm).
It is located in a part of Stockholm where the old structure of the city, the old architecture and even the topography was almost entirely replaced in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s with modernist architecture and new functions, mainly finance and large-scale retail businesses. The reaction against this development has been very strong, and many planned building and traffic projects had to be stopped from the 1970s and later as a result of the public opinion against what largely was, and continues to be, regarded as a significant loss of irreplaceable cultural values. Kulturhuset was intended as a "cultural oasis" in this new city of commerce, with an open library in the bottom floor, a large theatre, and space for exhibitions in the rest of the building; the original intention was for the Stockholm Moderna Museet to occupy large parts of the building, but the museum dropped out of the project in 1969.
As the flagship building of the city centre redevelopment, it has, perhaps unfairly, become the target of much of the anger against the whole redevelopment project. Already in 1970, one critic, Claes Brunius, noted in Expressen that "Stockholm is building the largest vacuum in the country". The public opinion against the project may have been strengthened by the fact that the Kulturhuset and the interconnected Stockholm City Theatre were used as a temporary parliamentary building for several years, but as such the structure won the prestigious Kasper Salin Prize in 1972.
He died on 16 March 1974.
Buildings
External links
|
|
