Kokillen

01/04

Kokillen is a black iron imprint formed by the site and program molded into a volume that relates to the situation and public space surrounding it.

Ekomuseum Bergslagen is an assemblage of more than 60 heritage sites in Bergslagen, Sweden, with a focus on the historical iron Industry in the area. The sites include a manor, parks, smelting houses, blast furnace, forges, hammers, waterwheels, rapids, pig iron and bar iron production. Several of the sites are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The visitor center was planned to be built at Västanfors heritage and folklore centre in Fagersta. The new building would serve as an entrance to the centre and the larger collection of heritage locations.

Set in the middle of the folklore center, surrounded by traditionally red-pigmented wooden log houses, the architectural challenge was to create a design that on one hand would blend in and relate to the situation and existing program and on the other hand would hold its own autonomy and character that represent a public building constructed to demonstrate the heritage of one of Sweden’s most prominent former industries.

In the search for a form that would deal with the question of the center, Villa Rotonda became a spatial reference. The extreme centrality of the space, which is at the same time cylindrical and cruciform with connections in four cardinal directions as well as to the sky, puts the building in an intense relationship with the surrounding buildings, while making a minimal impact on movement and views on the site. In introducing a new typology into the heart of the folklore centre the architects want to reclaim a language of diversity that once constituted the architectural toolbox of the former industrial landscape. Buildings were pragmatic imprints sculptured in volumes that told the story of the activity inside. The building is clad in blackened iron, while the open rounded space of the interior is covered in local pine.

The project was never realized, but in 2016, Kokillen was one of the shortlisted projects in the WAN Awards category “Future projects”.