Sigurd Lewerentz, objectified

Stockholm Creative Edition 2026 In the Context of Lewerentz Jack Dalla Santa, Cristian Lind, and Ingrid Unsöld February 3–7, FAB Grönlandet, Stockholm

Installation by Ingrid Unsöld at FAB Grönlandet in Stockholm, 2026. Photo: Zachary Whittenburg

Stockholm Creative Edition 2026 included the débuts of two new works, created for permanent display in a now-private masterwork by Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz. Completed in 1932 as Riksförsäkringsanstalten (the National Insurance Institute), FAB Grönlandet sits adjacent to Adolf Fredrik’s Church and is only slightly smaller in plan. While it appears from the street to be a strict box, with six rows of deeply set, unframed windows on three sides, it contains a full-height, oval courtyard with two clocks and a monumental if minimal entrance up a flight of thirteen stairs. The building’s interior features a second staircase which spirals upward through a core lined with flat windows set in thin, metal mullions akin to those found throughout Stockholm’s subway system — also largely designed by Lewerentz, in the years immediately following the construction of Riksförsäkringsanstalten.

While the building’s surfaces are mostly plain — flat-plastered walls and ceilings, parquet wood floors — cores taken from its foundation reveal a more dynamic palette, as the aggregate includes rather large stones, some grey or blue, some warmly hued like skin tones and the rich reds of blood and wine.

This raw material inspired the participating artists in different ways. The design duo called Contem (Jack Dalla Santa and Cristian Lind) fashioned chunks of this concrete into shapes that look like small pillows, and placed them atop a wood-frame construction like cushions on a bench. Their work sits below a window directly on the courtyard’s long axis and, at a glance, may even be mistaken for furniture. It includes two unadorned pillars and, on an opposite wall, a small assembly of concrete and wood installed between doors like a sconce.

Ingrid Unsöld’s five cylindrical stacks provoke more thought and engage with Lewerentz much more deeply. Each is like a scaled-down, potential positive of the negative space of the spiral staircase behind it. The glazes used on the ceramic elements refract the concrete’s embedded colors into a full spectrum of expression and are expertly fired. One of the highest items in the assembly is like an urn ringed with pale blue and pink like a winter’s dawn. Leaflike shapes applied to another crown nod to the acanthus leaves in a Corinthian capital, in an oppositional yet corresponding way to the fluency with which Lewerentz distilled Classical proportions into his distinctly Scandinavian entries to Modernism. The circular top of a third column has a thin, almost transparent layer like the surface of still water in a font; below it is a disc whose color and edges reference the brickwork of another Lewerentz masterpiece, Markuskyrkan in Björkhagen.

Documentation of both projects in the building’s lower level shows that Unsöld looked back to before Riksförsäkringsanstalten even existed. An archival photograph of the site prior to construction shows a totem pole, its figures stacked just like the mix of Unsöld’s elements and those extracted from the building’s base. (In this way, Unsöld’s Sometimes I can see the horizon echoes the work of artist-architect Germane Barnes, whose Columnar Disorder interrogated Classical orders through an African diasporic lens.)

Ingrid Unsöld shares documentation of her process at FAB Grönlandet in Stockholm, 2026. Photo: Zachary Whittenburg

Design interventions are a great way to expand our understanding of architecture and place. Thanks to a successful initiative of FAB Grönlandet, those fortunate enough to walk its halls have new views to consider.

Zachary Whittenburg 

Zachary Whittenburg has been a journalist, administrator, photographer, and grantmaker in arts and culture since 2008. A regular contributor to Dance Magazine and former dance editor at Time Out Chicago magazine, he has written for numerous additional publications including Critical Correspondence, Critical Read, Dance International, Flavorwire, Pointe, and Total Theatre UK.