Kalmar Stortoget
In Collaboration with Eva Löfdahl Kalmar, Sweden 1999–2003
Client: Municipality of Kalmar Competition, first prize
Caruso St John Architects worked with the artist Eva Löfdahl in this project for the renewal of the town square around the baroque cathedral at the centre of Kalmar, a small and historically important city on the south coast of Sweden. The commission was initiated by the Swedish Arts Council and began with an international competition. The project was intended to be a model of imaginative renovation in a situation of national historic significance.
During its three-hundred-year history, Stortorget has been a location for political, military, and religious representation, for commercial transactions, but most frequently for individual passage, reverie and coincidental meetings. The renewal of Stortorget was not brought about by the pressure from new functions, but to contribute to a contemporary definition of public space in the city. Concentrating on the physical condition of the square's surface, the design aims to lend dignity to the existing space by increasing one's awareness of its physical characteristics. The project involved the removal of roads and pavements, and the reestablishment of a unitary surface of field stones, the primitive granite stones that were first used in the square. Pedestrian routes and sites for public events were accommodated within smoother surfaces of precast concrete slabs and cut granite sets.
Artistic interventions of lighting masts and wells emphasize the presence of the sea and the space above the square.







Drawings

Plan of the square

Ground plan, west

Ground plan, central

Fountain detail
Credits
Location
Kalmar, Sweden
Date
1999–2003
Client
Kalmar Kommun, Statens Konstråd
Area
6,000m²
Caruso St John Architects
Adam Caruso, Peter St John
Project team
Lorenzo De Chiffre, Adam Khan, Alberto Sanchez, Julian Schulenberg, Silvia Ullmayer
Collaborating artist
Eva Löfdahl
Main contractor
Kalmar Kommun, Gatu-och parkkontoret
Photography
Hélène Binet
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