Läkarhuset

Läkarhuset is a high-rise from the 1960s at Odenplan in Stockholm. The building faces demolition and the city is planning to replace the building with another high-rise, with the same structure.

Planned as an office building, Läkarhuset was renamed before opening, when the request to integrate group doctors (Läkare) practices could be quickly integrated, based on the high flexibility of the open plan.

Now that the city wants to change the purpose back to offices, combined with a hotel on top, the project preserves Läkarhuset and proves that the existing building can integrate the »new« functions to avoid demolition. To increase the floor area, the project extends the building and uses massive stone as a material. The extension is wrapped around the existing building, extends it but also creates a new facade, that can come up with the surrounding Odenplan and solves the problem of the damaged existing facade panels.

The project investigates the lifespan of todays buildings, referring to Mies van der Rohe as he claims that buildings have to be a permanent solution that allow change within its floor. The lifespan of buildings exceeds its functions so we have to find solutions to avoid demolition for any change of program.

Therefore the floorplans are acting more as a prove that the planned functions are possible in the existing structure and with the extension even better. To prove the most difficult of the functions, a housing scheme supports the statement.

With the input of modern structures as successful typology, the project combines the permanent structure with the permanent material stone, to address the misconception of concrete and steel as the materials to solve this problem.
The use of the bracket that was invented for this project, allows the rather rough material to be a loose component. By simply stacking stone columns and beams, both untreated after quarried in blocks in the local environment, the bracket holds them together in place, making it the detail that allows spolia. When the building has to be taken down, the material still can be used in another place and is not glued together.
This answers the question of what traces the building will leave in the future.
As shown in the facade comparison, tiled, glued aluminium sandwich panels, containing asbestos are waste after 50 years, while stone, from the local environment is never an end product.

Next to the preservation of the existing building and the sustainable extension, the use of the material stone aims towards an aesthetic integration of the modern typologies into their surroundings. Thy identity the building is able to connect with the environment, as Stockholm is built on the granite archipelago, making the extension and the facade architecture that comes from the locality of Stockholm. By transforming the geology into a building that has the ability to be a permanent solution that allows change within its floor. Physically but also metaphorically by using the permanent.

Text von Maximilian Musiol.