Ivar Tengbom
Tengbom designed the Concert Hall, the Stockholm School of Economics and the Match Palace in Stockholm, moving from National Romanticism through Nordic Classicism to modernism. He founded one of Sweden’s largest architectural practices.
Ivar Tengbom was born in 1878 in Vireda in Småland. He began his studies at Chalmers in Gothenburg and continued at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, graduating around 1901. With a travel scholarship he went to Italy and elsewhere in Europe and studied classical architecture. Early on he set up a practice with Ernst Torulf, and they won several competitions, including for churches and stations. In the 1910s he was one of the teachers at the independent school of architecture known as the Klara School, and in 1916 he became a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He had a great talent for working with clients and artists and soon became one of Sweden’s most sought-after architects.
Tengbom moved through several styles. The Högalid Church on Södermalm, 1916–1923, with its two brick towers, is National Romantic. The Concert Hall on Hötorget, inaugurated in 1926, with its blue façade and tall Corinthian columns, is regarded as a major work of Nordic Classicism, as is the Stockholm School of Economics on Sveavägen. The Match Palace, 1926–1928, built for Ivar Kreuger’s Swedish Match Company, combines austere façades with a lavish interior and art by the leading artists of the day. He then turned to functionalism, for example in the Esselte Building on Vasagatan. His architecture is characterised by fine proportions, care for materials and an interplay between architecture and art.
Tengbom was head of the National Board of Public Building, the state authority for public buildings, from 1924 to 1936, and thus had great influence over Swedish building in the interwar years. He died in 1968. His office grew into one of Sweden’s largest architectural practices, which still exists under the name Tengbom. Since 1926 the Concert Hall has been the home of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the venue for the Nobel Prize award ceremony. Tengbom is usually seen as an architect who united tradition and renewal and who could follow and lead stylistic shifts without any loss of quality. His son Anders Tengbom also became an architect and led the practice after him, including on commissions abroad.