Pagoda Square

The southern façade of the old tobacco warehouse was dismantled brick by brick. Then, using the original bricks, it was rebuilt in a new design. What appeared was an expressive, chiseled concrete façade that lets in lots of daylight and gives the building its distinctive look.

The Pagoda building, originally designed by Cyrillus Johansson, is a shining example of the construction technologies used back in the 1920s. It’s a monumental structure, with massive amounts of brick and small windows under a copper compass roof with Chinese motifs. Within these historical and protected confines, Semrén & Månsson was tasked with creating an open, bright and modern office building. Thanks to some delicate intrusion into the building’s structure, an elongated bright inner courtyard was created to the east, which solved the problem of the building’s dimensions and volumes, which otherwise would have resulted in an overly dark central courtyard.

In 2012, the rebuilt Pagoda was named one of Göteborg’s best buildings.

The three-story building that once housed the Vin & Sprit company office was built with west-facing windows on one side and a thick east-facing firewall on the other. Everything but the optimal conditions for today’s light-worshipping renters. The fact that the building’s depth only amounts to a modest six meters wasn’t helpful either. But by opening the vertical “glass apertures” once completely covered by the firewall, we were able to update the building with office spaces meeting today’s light and type specifications. We’re also freeing up space for a new restaurant at the site previously used as the first-floor garage.

At Kämpegatan 6, the building’s small square windows were restored to their original appearance and augmented with vertical apertures allowing for improved light penetration. It’s a respectful meeting of old and new, which is also evident inside, where the surviving unfinished surfaces, wrought iron and concrete columns intermingle with the new staircase, polished-concrete floor, steel molding and door casings.

Along with these carefully restored buildings, which have been recognized as cultural heritage sites, the neighborhood has also been supplemented with a new five-story development. Of course, the building is clearly based on an older, more industrial look. The large lancet windows, richly detailed brick façade and rough limestone plinth are examples of how the building plays off the surrounding structures. At the same time, the new building stands apart from the old one with its light-gray brick façades contrasting against the classical red-brown color of the surrounding environment.

Kämpegatan 10

At Kämpegatan 4-8, the original dimensions, as ungenerous as they are, have been preserved. At 10 years, the intrusion is becoming more radical. In order to meet the demand for additional office space, we decided to tear down the façade of the inner courtyard and increase the building’s overall depth by a whole six meters. The attic space was also dismantled and built up with two new floors – the addition so closely matches the existing floors that it’s hard to tell the new from the old. And the finishing touch: a new central staircase from a staircase made of unfinished wrought iron, just like in the neighboring building 6.