Stone-Ideas.com 
Building with natural stone does not have to mean plastering everything over with marble or granite. At least that is the case in Sweden. Because there, at the Natural Stone Prize 2024, the stone used only represents an accent for the architecture, albeit a strong one: It is a new building on a formerly unsightly corner plot with today’s hefty square meter prices. The address in Stockholm is Birger Jarlsgatan and Kungstensgatan.
The architect Mattias Litström, from the now-dissolved Utopia office, wanted to integrate the “Caprea“ residential building into the surroundings and yet give it its own brand. He spent his youth in an area with quarries and was fascinated to see how the raw rocks became a decorative building material.
So, what could be more natural than to add crust plates to the ground floor of the new building, which show traces of the quarry in the holes?
Their structure and their grey colour give the whole house, with its plastered façade in red on top, an air of strength and durability, perhaps even wildness. The whole building “seems to rise directly from the ground,“ writes the Swedisch Natural Stone Association (Sveriges Stenindustriförbund), which awards the architecture prize.
In the entrance area and in the elevator cabins, however, you are dealing with the noble side of the stones, namely the honed granites Tossene Grey Bohus and Skarstad Red Bohus. The house has a shared wine cellar for the residents, which the connoisseur and TV star Carl Jan Granqvist designed with a limestone floor from Alböke on Öland.
Below we briefly present the nominations for the prize.
With the redesign of the Stora Torget square, the city of Uppsala has completed the redesign of its center: The landscape architects from the Karavan Architecture office gave the paving an unobtrusive path orientation for passers-by. A band of colorful stones runs around the square, separating inside and outside and inviting citizens to linger.
A water feature can also serve as a place to sit or a stage. New lighting creates a new division of the square into zones.
Old stone slabs were refurbished and reused – this reduced the costs by half.
Hagaplan is a square in Stockholm that has been given back to the citizens. Rem Koolhaas and Reinier de Graaf: These renowned architects designed the Northern Towers, which are landmark buildings near Hagaplan at Torsplan and now has a greatly enlarged fingerprint as a pavement. The pattern is made of dark Moheda diabase and light Skarstad Red Bohus granite. Both types of stone are flamed.The square is access to the Karolinska University Hospital, the elite Hotel Carolina Tower and the Forskaren district. The New Karolinska Solna hospital, was designed by Tengbom and the new town square. They form the focal point of Hagaplan.
We reported on the reconstruction of the Vildmannen 7 property in Stockholm after a devastating fire. Our focus was on securing the façade with Roslagssandsten, which was practically the only thing that survived from the formerly representative building. In the meantime, the interior of the building has been completely redesigned. Ekeberg marble from Sweden was used. It is white in color and has veins in gold and green.
Sveriges Stenindustriförbund (Swedish)
Photos: Sveriges Stenindustriförbund
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