Henning Larsen’s redevelopment of Uppsala Town Hall started in 2016 as a collaboration with SLA and Tyréns, 57 years after the construction project first broke ground.

Key features 

The original post-modernist design of Uppsala Town Hall never fully came to fruition, with construction ending prematurely in 1964 due to financial difficulties. Just two out of four planned buildings were completed around a proposed central courtyard. For the modern-day redevelopment, Henning Larsen took the approach of visibly repairing the existing structures, inspired by the Japanese art of kintsugi. In extending the existing architecture by 14,000 sq-m, the town hall is finally able to house all the offices and departments it needs to, these having previously been dispersed throughout the city. The indoor courtyard covered in a dome-shaped glass roof offers a social hub at the heart of the complex, inviting Uppsala residents, municipality staff and public officials to gather in this central cluster of public services, cafés, restaurants, shops and exhibition facilities.

‘Transformation processes can produce exciting and unexpected results because you have the old architecture playing an active role, like another voice in the discussion,’ says Per Ebbe Hansson, lead design architect at Henning Larsen. Explaining the nod to kintsugi, he explains: ‘We wanted to add to the existing building in a way that highlights the existing and the new. We have simply used glass instead of gold.’

Frame’s take

The impressive architectural achievement of Henning Larsen in their transformation of the Uppsala Town Hall was acknowledged in the site being named Swedish Building of the Year 2022. The success of the redevelopment can be quantified not only in the seamless combination of old and new within the construction process, but also its focus on community and positive human interaction within the space to give it lasting value for at least another 60 years. It is a project that cements the need for higher public accessibility and porosity in the design of government buildings: recently we published the renovation of Antwerp’s city hall, which similarly does so to positive effect.