Stockholm Public Library - Gunnar Asplund’s masterpiece

At the inauguration of the Stockholm Public Library on March 31, 1928, the exterior aroused mixed feelings, while the interior and the central rotunda were considered impressive. It was the unique appearance that some critics felt overshadowed the architect’s mission of creating a functional public library.

But the Stockholm Public Library as an institution was an immediate success, and the forecasts for visits and book loans were quickly exceeded. Thanks to the creation of the Public Library, Stockholm had gone from being the only capital in Europe without a municipal library to becoming a leading international player. In this newsletter, we will take a tour of this masterpiece among library buildings.

If you want to see more of the details, click on the pictures and they will open in a larger format.

Enjoy!
 

First self-service library in Sweden

Knut and Alice Wallenberg’s Foundation bequeathed a donation of SEK 1 million to the City of Stockholm in 1918 for the establishment of a public library. A public library committee had been appointed and the architect Gunnar Asplund was an early participant. Initially, the committee was involved in mapping the existing public libraries in Stockholm.

In the autumn of 1920, librarian Fredrik Hjelmqvist and Gunnar Asplund traveled to the United States to study how modern libraries worked. Here, on the other side of the Atlantic, the US was the first country in the world to introduce self-service for book loans, something that had previously been unthinkable.

 

They wished for a monument

Among Gunnar Asplund’s own photographs from the US trip, the Capitol in Washington DC stands out as one of the buildings he particularly appreciated. Here, as elsewhere, he noted the importance of placing public buildings within parks. By utilizing the park environment, even smaller buildings could appear monumental, which was also the committee’s wish in order to raise the status of the library.

 

Welcomed by Adam and Eve

The entrances are surrounded by portals reminiscent of ancient Egyptian architecture. They are tall and tapered to give the impression that they are even taller than they really are. The stairs are designed as a donkey path with long ledges and a slight slope. The straight axis that starts from Sveavägen and goes all the way into the Rotunda is recognizable from the Lister Hundred District Courthouse in Sölvesborg, which Gunnar Asplund completed a few years earlier.

The main entrance originally had thin glass sections and hinged doors like the entrance to the nearby park, Observatorielunden. When they were replaced with a revolving door, Nils Sjögren’s original door handles (below), depicting Adam and Eve, were moved to a glass case at the side entrance towards Odengatan.

 

The Library’s subject areas are displayed on the façade

The outer façade is lime plastered brick walls finished off with a figurative stucco list with hieroglyphical looking motifs. They were designed by Gunnar Asplund himself and represent the library’s entire 294 subject areas.

Proven solutions with hidden stairs

The walls inside the main entrance are adorned with a black, thin stucco relief by Ivar Johnsson. The motif is from Homer’s “The Iliad”, the oldest written literary work in Western civilization. It fits perfectly as a concept-bearing decoration at the entrance to a public library in the classic architectural style of the 1920s.

Both planning and construction took place under great time pressure. It therefore became natural for Gunnar Asplund to choose proven solutions that he was well acquainted with. These were taken primarily from projects like the cinema, Skandia in Stockholm and the schoolhouse, Karl Johansskolan, in Gothenburg. In the Lister Hundred District Courthouse in Sölvesborg, he had on a smaller scale, tested placing all the stairs in a hidden space around the central hall, and this was now implemented in full scale.

 

Stairway to heaven

Also indoors, Gunnar Asplund reinforces the illusion of height by allowing the stairs narrow upwards. The stairs are dark so that visitors have the feeling of coming to the temple of light and knowledge when they enter the rotunda.

The rotunda is 24 m tall with a diameter of 26 m. It is the library’s central hall and holds approximately 40,000 books. The library building consists of a square and a circle and these two geometric shapes are reflected in the floor pattern, inspired by the marble floor of the Pantheon in Rome. The stucco above the bookshelves associates with clouds, that along with the generous input of natural light, form a sky.

 

Galleries as an amphitheater

The Rotunda’s two galleries have been built as an amphitheater in a stair-like structure and their location in relation to each other allows the light from the windows to reach all the way down to the floor.

The stairs to Gallery 1 were designed by Hans Asplund, son of Gunnar Asplund. The gallery was opened to visitors in 1974, before that only librarians could handle books here. Gallery 1 contains fiction and was opened in 1997, it is accessed via curved stairs behind the bookshelf in Gallery 2.

Strindberg watches over the rotunda

A bust of author August Strindberg adorns the second gallery towards the main entrance. It was donated in 1997 to the Stockholm Public Library by the Iranian artist Rebin Haydari.

The library’s administration office is on the top level. The card-index with lists of the library’s books is original and was once the hub of the great Rotunda.

 

Hall 2 - a reading room with false windows

Gunnar Asplund drew inspiration for Hall 2 from his study trip to the US in 1920. It is created as a modern American reading room where the recessed bookshelves in the niches create a generous space.

The mural “Inga liten vallpiga” by artist Hilding Linnqvist, was inspired by a medieval ballad. Originally, it was intended to cover the entire wall, but when the budget was tightened, instead it was divided into four fields with intermediate windows. They consist of mirrored glass that creates a perfect illusion of an adjacent room.

The drinking fountain’s ancient warrior in brass was created by Nils Sjögren, who is also responsible for the door handles resembling Adam and Eva.

 

Hall 3 - a reading room with Swedish Grace

The construction of the Stockholm Public Library took place during a stylistic break in architecture in Sweden. Gunnar Asplund’s early sketches still show a more traditional classicism. When the library, after ten years of work, was completed in March 1928, it had developed into one of the foremost examples of Swedish 1920s classicism, a style that is known around the world as “Swedish Grace”.

Functionalism, also known as the International Style, had its great breakthrough in Sweden during the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930. Here it is noticeable above all in the wing where Hall 3 was completed two years later. Instead of mahogany and brass ornaments, the materials here are concrete and stainless steel.

Pioneering its own children & young people’s department

At the inauguration, open bookshelves and a dedicated department for children and young people were a radical idea for a library. Symbols of the zodiac and the planets can be seen on the ceiling. They surround a ceiling painting by artist Alf Munthe that shows the starry sky at 8 pm on September 22, Gunnar Asplund’s birthday.

The fairy tale room is adorned with the fresco “John Blund” (a k a the Sandman) by Nils Dardel. The sleeping boy is reminiscent of the artist’s masterpiece “The Dying Dandy” from 1918. The figures are taken from different fairy tales, but some are said to have been inspired by people in Stockholm society in the 1920s.

 

The head librarian’s room is original

On the administration floor at the top, the head librarian’s office has been preserved in its original condition. The head librarian’s work desk is complemented by a meeting table for ten people, a smaller meeting table with a workplace for the secretary, a sofa, and a chaise lounge to rest on - all in the same room! Even the hand-painted wallpaper is still in good condition. The room can be visited during a guided tour of the Stockholm Public Library.

 

The head librarian’s bridge to the daily operations

When you step in the main entrance and the first stair, you should stop, and look up.
Then you see, with vibes to the Lord of the Ring, the small bridge from the corridor next to the head librarian’s office. From here the head librarian could observe the daily operations in the rotunda below.

 

Perhaps a new library?

In the summer of 2006, an architectural competition was announced for an extension of the public library. Over a thousand proposals were received, of which six were nominated for a final round. The German architect Heike Hanada won with her proposal, Delphinium, a huge rectangular building body in glass and steel that penetrated the nearby hill, Observatorielunden.

However, many believed that the new extension would make too serious an intervention in Observatorielunden and obscure Gunnar Asplund’s public library. In addition, it turned out that the construction would be at least twice as expensive as planned. So, in 2009 it was decided that the extension would be put on hold and that the possibility of building a completely new public library in another location would instead be investigated.

Since then, the library space has shrunk considerably when this year the Annex, which housed the international library and the Public Library’s 140 daily newspapers and 1,400 magazines, was closed.

 

Erik Gunnar Asplund (1885–1940)

During his short life, Gunnar Asplund, like no other, managed to put Sweden on the architectural map. His style was Nordic classicism, sometimes also called 1920’s classicism or “Swedish Grace”. Internationally, Gunnar Asplund is often described as a humanist who never made architecture an end in itself. But it is clear that he worked on the basis of a strong interest in how people would use and perceive his architecture.

In addition to the Stockholm Public Library, the extension of Gothenburg City Hall, the cinema Skandia in Stockholm, the Lister Hundred District Courthouse in Sölvesborg and the exhibition pavilions at the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 are some of his most significant works.

From 1915 until his death in 1940, Gunnar Asplund worked with his colleague Sigurd Lewerentz in creating The Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm. The facility is one of the most important in modern architecture and has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1994.

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Lasse Olsson Photo photographing and filming architecture, interior design, and lighting. My newsletter is published 6–8 times a year and presents photographed projects as well as reports from furniture fairs in Stockholm and Milan.

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