Democratising Architecture
White Arkitekter was founded in 1951 in Gothenburg, Sweden. We are Scandinavia’s leading architectural practice with 16 offices across Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the UK. We are proud of being an entirely employee owned company, and amongst our more than 900 employees, about 600 are shareholders.
Our vision is to create architecture with people in focus, inspiring sustainable ways of life.
Creating truly engaging architecture, challenging ourselves to improve the way in which we practice, exploring the field of architecture with dedicated, applied research – these are the ways to reach our goal of becoming the leading sustainable and innovative Scandinavian architectural practice on the international market.
We measure our success by the quality of our projects and ultimately the difference we make for people. Our market is currently mainly Scandinavia and UK and we work across all sectors, private as well as public. Our projects range from residential, offices, hospitals, schools to urban planning, landscape architecture, interior design, project management and sustainability expertise.
White has three fundamental policies: Employee Policy, Quality Policy and Sustainability Policy. Our business management system, WhiteQ*, is certified to ISO 9001 and 14001 and supports our projects as well as our administration. Sustainability and responsibility is described in our Code of conduct, which is based on the ten principles of the UN Global Compact.
* WhiteQ does not apply to Denmark.
Our team
Promoting diversity
Promoting diversity with a broader perspective is our aim. This is why we have built our collective out of multiple disciplines: architects side by side with anthropologists, planners next to designers, sustainability experts along with researchers.
We have a balanced representation of women and men in different professions, as well as in various positions and levels of management.
It is important for us to attract – and hold on to – talents with different cultural backgrounds. Currently, about a quarter of our employees are from outside of Scandinavia. In 2016 we have cooperated with the Swedish Department of Employment to help newly arrived individuals into available positions at White.
Quality of life, not just quality of work
Quality of life, not just quality of work is a motto at White. Striving for a good balance between work and private life is an essential part of our culture. Available to everyone are stipends for healthy activities, such as gym, dance classes, mindfulness or yoga.
Employees treated equally
In our plan for equal rights, we state that every employee will have the same rights, obligations and opportunities and we do not accept any form of harassment or discrimination. During 2016 we have set up new guidelines in our policy against alcohol and drugs, as well as guidelines for anti-discriminations.
Never stop learning
In addition to White’s well-established leadership programmes, the introduction of White Academy and e-learning systems brought a high investment into internal skill development in 2016. There is a clear parallel between the opportunity to diversify and retaining our staff. In 2017, White will see the implementation of the new Mentor Programme to facilitate knowledge sharing between generations.
