“We are incredibly honoured to win amid such strong competition. Skellefteå Cultural Centre uniquely celebrates the craft behind the creative process, so it feels fantastic that our close collaboration with structural engineering firm Florian Kosche and the client, Skellefteå Municipality, gets recognition,” say Robert Schmitz and Oskar Norelius, lead architects.
Skellefteå Cultural Centre wins Architectural Review/MIPIM Future Project Awards 2018
White Arkitekter’s all-timber design for Skellefteå’s new cultural centre has won the Civic & Community category in the 2018 Architectural Review/MIPIM Future Project Awards. The Awards celebrate excellence in unbuilt or incomplete projects around the world.
Located in Skellefteå, Sweden, just below the Arctic Circle, the cultural centre will house a theatre, museum, art gallery and city library. It will also feature a 200-room hotel which, together with the numerous venues, will allow for large congresses and conferences as well as accommodating the city’s increasing number of tourists.
The cultural centre is an elegant project, which exploits timber as a structural and sustainable material with good visual effect. Its details are well resolved, and lighting captures the softness of the wood. The interiors are as convincing as the exteriors.
The judges
“The design and construction of Skellefteå Cultural Centre shows that through innovation, age-old materials and methods can be used in new ways to create sustainable architecture,” say Robert and Oskar.
The Awards were presented at a gala dinner on Wednesday 14th March in Cannes, France, during the MIPIM real estate event.