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Events

Architecture in Character – the Unintentional Portrait of a Lost Building

Thu, Feb 20, 2020 6:30pm

New York, Preservation Lecture Series

Architecture in Character – the Unintentional Portrait of a Lost Building - a lecture by Björn Ehrlemark and Carin Kallenberg.

This talk will tell the story of how a lost architecture was pieced back together from the fragments of Swedish crime fiction.

St Görans girls’ vocational high school in Stockholm by the architect Léonie Geisendorf is perhaps little known beyond the local Brutalism connoisseurs. Yet, it is strangely familiar to the ”Nordic Noir” movie audience. The reason is that in the early 2000s the high-rise was left abandoned, with much of its original 1960s interiors intact. Then a film crew arrived, and then another, and another. St Görans was called up time and again to play the part, whatever the desired post-war Scandinavian welfare state setting might be. You could argue that St Görans was typecast.

A few years later, the building’s movie career ended as abruptly as it had begun. Suddenly, the scenes from the thriller days tell a different story. This time St Görans plays itself.

Neighbors of Architecture produces architectural culture in the form of exhibitions, events and publications. It is co-directed by Björn Ehrlemark, an architect and journalist regularly contributing to international magazines and journals, and Carin Kallenberg, a curator and Lecturer in Architecture and Critical Studies at the Royal Institute of Art. They live in Stockholm, Sweden.

Historic Preservation Podcast #20: Björn Ehrlemark and Carin Kallenberg

Columbia GSAPP · Historic Preservation Podcast #20: Björn Ehrlemark and Carin Kallenberg

Jorge Otero-Pailos, director of GSAPP’s Historic Preservation Program, speaks with Björn Ehrlemark and Carin Kallenberg, co-directors of Neighbors of Architecture, in advance of their Spring 2020 lecture at the school. Based in Stockholm, Neighbors of Architecture produces architectural culture in the form of exhibitions, events, and publications.

The duo discusses their project, Architecture in Character, which tells the story of how a lost architecture was pieced back together from the fragments of Swedish crime film fiction. St Görans girls’ vocational high school in Stockholm by the architect Léonie Geisendorf is perhaps little known beyond the local Brutalism connoisseurs. However, in the early 2000s, the high-rise was left abandoned, with much of its original 1960s interiors intact. In the years following, the building was used as a set for a number of ”Nordic Noir” films. However, the building’s movie career ended as abruptly as it had begun. In Architecture in Character, Ehrlemark and Kallenberg use scenes from the building’s thriller days to tell a different story. This time St Görans plays itself.

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Architecture in Character – the Unintentional Portrait of a Lost Building

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