Sara Cultural Centre
A cultural centre with a library, theatre and art gallery and a twenty-storey hotel, all with a structural frame of timber from the forests around the town. The hotel section is built of prefabricated modules of cross-laminated timber. The building shows how timber has returned as a material for large buildings.
Skellefteå Municipality wanted to bring the town’s library, theatre and art together in a new cultural centre and chose to build it in timber, with reference to the forests and the sawmill tradition of Västerbotten. An architectural competition was held in 2016, and White Arkitekter won with a design by the architects Oskar Norelius and Robert Schmitz. The building was erected over the following years and opened in 2021. It was named after the author Sara Lidman, who came from the area. The timber came from a nearby sawmill, and the building was constructed with load-bearing columns and beams of glulam and floors and walls of cross-laminated timber. The choice of timber was also justified on climate grounds: wood stores carbon and requires less energy to produce than concrete and steel.
The cultural centre consists of a lower section with a library, stages for the Västerbotten Theatre, an art gallery and a museum, and a twenty-storey hotel tower. The lower section has large open spaces where the glulam frame is exposed, and the floors are linked by open stairs and atria. The hotel tower is built of prefabricated modules of cross-laminated timber, made in a factory and stacked on site. Even the lift shafts are built of timber, which was unusual when the building was constructed. The façade is clad in glass and timber, and the lower section opens onto the square. The building has been designed to show its timber both outside and in, so that visitors can see how it is built.
Sara Cultural Centre attracted great attention when it opened and was then counted among the tallest timber buildings in the world. It has received several prizes and awards and has become a symbol of Skellefteå. The building shows how timber has returned as a material for large buildings, after long being restricted to small houses because of fire regulations. In Sweden and Norway several tall timber buildings were built in the 2010s and 2020s, and Sara Cultural Centre is one of the clearest examples of that development. The building connects with a long Swedish tradition of timber construction, from stave churches and log houses to the wooden towns, but uses modern technology to build tall, fast and with less climate impact.