David Chipperfield’s Nobel Center finally set to be built

A building overlooking the Baltic Sea, articulated in staggered volumes that pander to the morphology of the site, will be the new headquarters of the Nobel Foundation. The project is signed by the Berlin office of David Chipperfield Architects, led by the British architect Guest Editor of Domus in 2020 and winner of the Pritzker Prize in 2023.

The work will begin in 2027 and, in 2031, Stockholm will welcome a building designed as "an open and public institution dedicated to the values of the Nobel Prize," according to the firm's website. The Nobel Center will host cultural events, exhibitions and workshops, positioning itself as a new cultural landmark for the city.

Situated on a lot not far from the Old Town, the building is designed to dialogue with the landscape and historical complexity of the celebrated Slussen area, that has been shaped over the centuries by the movement of people, industrial activities, and infrastructure over time. Into a context now affected by a broad process of urban transformation, the Nobel Center joins the new continuous public pathway among locations such as Fotografiska, the Stadsmuseet, and the waterfront promenade.

The composition by overlapping volumes dialogues with the characteristic skyline of 17th-century merchant houses in the old town, on the other side of the water. On the ground floor, which is open, transparent, and devoid of height differences, the building is configured as an extension of public space, housing a bookshop and restaurant and thus anchoring the Nobel Center to everyday urban life. The predominantly wooden structure is clad with a facade of salvaged red brick, a direct reference to Stockholm's historical identity, visible in major public buildings such as City Hall. Large glazed openings introduce natural light into the interior and frame characteristic views of the city and archipelago.

The project finally seems to be taking shape, but its story began more than a decade ago. In 2014, David Chipperfield Architects won the competition to design the Nobel Center with a proposal clad in brass, a choice that generated widespread debate at the time and that was reworked the following year into a building articulated in three stacked volumes clad in slats, also made of brass. However, even this version does not make it to fruition: in 2018, the Swedish Land and Environment Court blocks the construction of the project, believing that the Nobel Center's appearance would disfigure the city's historic waterfront. It was only in 2020 that the studio then developed a new concept, corresponding to the building envisioned today, finally approved in 2022 and now ready to become a reality.