Fredrik Blom
Fredrik Blom was architect to the navy and the leading name of the Karl Johan style. He designed Rosendal Palace on Djurgården and developed prefabricated wooden houses that could be moved, long before prefabrication became a concept.
Fredrik Blom was born in 1781 in Karlskrona and grew up at the naval dockyard, where his father worked. He trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm and in the navy, where he learned construction and shipbuilding. He was appointed architect to the navy and worked on buildings on Skeppsholmen and in Karlskrona. He later became a professor at the Academy and one of the most sought-after architects in Stockholm in the reign of Karl XIV Johan.
Blom designed Rosendal Palace for Karl XIV Johan, built in 1823–1827, and the Skeppsholmen Church, a centrally planned church with a dome consecrated in 1842. He also worked on buildings for the navy. With his background at the dockyard he developed a system of prefabricated wooden houses, in which walls and floors were made in a workshop and could be put up and moved. The houses were sold to customers in Sweden and abroad.
Blom died in 1853. He is regarded as the foremost architect of the Karl Johan style, a Swedish version of French Empire with light colours, simple volumes and classical details. His prefabricated houses are often cited as early examples of prefabricated building in Sweden. Rosendal Palace and the Skeppsholmen Church show how he combined royal ambition with simplicity and an almost engineering sense of construction.