TRIO

Trio is our com­pe­ti­tion entry to the Swedish Steel Build­ing Insti­tute and Archi­tects Sweden’s com­pe­ti­tion “72h Steel Race”, a three-day com­pe­ti­tion ask­ing archi­tects to design an entrance pavil­ion for the Arkitek­tur­galan 2020.

Trio joins two of Stock­holm’s most well-known meet­ing places, Kon­serthus­trap­pan and Karl Milles’ foun­tain sculp­ture Orfeusgrup­pen. The stairs, wide, invit­ing, extro­vert­ed, a piece of large-scale urban fur­ni­ture and mon­u­men­tal entrance in one. The foun­tain stat­ue, fac­ing the sky, gath­ered with four dis­tinct sides. To com­plete the trio, these two icon­ic objects are joined by an embrac­ing sculp­tur­al struc­ture in pol­ished stain­less steel sheet. A line, a point, a circle.

The pavil­ion shows the steel from its most seduc­tive side: thin, shiny, curved. Trios four entrances cre­ate a dynam­ic meet­ing place that enables pas­sage and spon­ta­neous unforced meet­ings. Trio sub­mits to the Con­cert Hal­l’s strong sym­me­try and is placed along its cen­ter line.

Four thin arched walls in sheet met­al inscribed in a four-meter large cir­cle form four open­ings in two axes, one up towards the main entrance and one along the facade of the Con­cert Hall. In this way, Trio func­tions both as a nat­ur­al and wel­com­ing meet­ing place and an entrance motif.

On top of the walls, a thin, flat slop­ing cir­cu­lar roof is thread­ed, which sta­bi­lizes the con­struc­tion. A round hole with the same diam­e­ter as the Con­cert Hal­l’s pil­lars lets in light in the mid­dle of the pavil­ion and opens up unex­pect­ed views towards the Con­cert Hal­l’s colon­nade. The enclos­ing wall ele­ments are illu­mi­nat­ed from the inside cre­at­ing an inti­mate and invit­ing envi­ron­ment. In order to bet­ter land on the uneven sur­face the low­er part of the wall ele­ments are arched echo­ing Hötor­get’s wavy pavement.

The quar­tet’s sym­met­ri­cal design with­out clear front and back sides and its basic func­tion means that, when the par­ty is over, it can eas­i­ly be reused in many dif­fer­ent kinds of envi­ron­ments, such as rain pro­tec­tion, infor­ma­tion pavil­ion, par­ty place, eco-tem­ple. The parts are assem­bled togeth­er with­out screw­ing or bolt­ing but are thread­ed togeth­er in sawn-off grooves and are eas­i­ly dis­as­sem­bled when moving.