The history of the building

If you visit ArkDes, you’ll arrive at the Drill Hall, a yellow building located on the Parade Ground in the heart of Skeppsholmen.

The building was constructed between 1851 and 1853, designed by the architect Fredrik Blom. The façade facing the open square features a central section resembling the pediment of an ancient temple,1 where you’ll find the ArkDes entrance today.

When the Drill Hall was built, all of Skeppsholmen served as a base for the Swedish Navy, which had moved there from Blasieholmen in 1634. This relocation occurred because Queen Christina didn’t want a shipyard obstructing her view from Tre Kronor Castle in the Old Town. The Navy remained on Skeppsholmen until the 1970s when the last operations moved to Muskö, south of Stockholm.

Skeppsholmen housed residences and barracks for sailors and officers, torpedo and mine workshops, a church, a detention facility, and even a now long-gone cold-water bathhouse. That bathhouse, once located where the Djurgården ferry docks today, is famously depicted in one of artist Eugène Jansson’s best-known paintings, Flottans badhus (The Navy Bathhouse, 1907).

At the top of the island stood the Drill Hall, which originally served two purposes. It was a gymnasium for sailors, providing opportunities for physical training like vaulting over pommel horses and using climbing bars. Additionally, the building accommodated military drills, such as loading ship cannons. Inside, there was even a training battery equipped with a set of cannons.

On weekends, Stockholmers crossed the cast-iron bridge to Skeppsholmen for sailor balls held in the Drill Hall. It was a popular pastime to dance with the sailors, and this lively aspect of island life is also captured in Eugène Jansson’s work. In Matrosbal2 (Sailor Ball, 1909), well-dressed Stockholm women dance with sailors in blue-and-white uniforms in a hall that appears both mysterious and festive.

The Drill Hall saw dramatic events, too, such as in April 1938 when the men’s national handball final was played there. Over 1,500 spectators crowded around the court, clinging to climbing bars for a glimpse of the action as Västerås IK narrowly defeated Djurgårdens IF. Two decades later, the newly opened Moderna Museet moved into the premises.

ArkDes was founded in 1962 under the name the Museum of Architecture. Its collection originated from the architectural drawings and photographs of the Swedish Architects’ Association (SAR). By 2024, the museum’s holdings has grown to include four million items. The museum moved to Skeppsholmen in 1966, initially occupying the ground floor of the Hydrographic Office – one of the Navy’s older buildings that also housed the School of Architecture. With only a single exhibition room, which doubled as a passage to the school’s lecture hall, ArkDes hosted its first exhibition, Hej stad (Hello City), at the neighboring Moderna Museet. That exhibition, which aimed to spark renewed debate on urban planning principles, featured projected slides accompanied by specially composed music.

When visitors came to the Drill Hall in the 1960s to see exhibitions by Moderna Museet and the Museum of Architecture, they encountered a wholly new kind of museum. It was nothing like the Nationalmuseum on the other side of the bridge, where visitors were greeted by grand staircases. At the Drill Hall, art was more accessible – just a step through the door and over the threshold.

Many exhibitions at the Drill Hall also offered something entirely new. They featured art that was not merely to be admired. Shows like Hej stad and Moderna Museet’s Hon – en katedral (She – A Cathedral, 1966) ↗ were immersive experiences designed to engage multiple senses. They included sculptures and installations that children and adults could enter, interact with, and experience in their own ways.

In the 1990s, the Swedish government, which oversees Skeppsholmen’s museums, decided that Moderna Museet needed a new building. An international competition was held to find the best design, and Spanish architect Rafael Moneo’s entry, Telemachos, won. When the new building3 was completed in 1998, Moderna Museet left the Drill Hall, allowing the Museum of Architecture to take over the space. Visitors to the exhibition halls were greeted by a new permanent exhibition, Architecture in Sweden. Alongside the larger and improved exhibition spaces, Moneo designed an entirely new building for the museum’s library, offices, research facilities, and the storage areas4 housing ArkDes’ extensive collection of Swedish architectural history. That same year, this part of the island’s new museum complex was awarded the Kasper Salin Prize, Sweden’s most prestigious architectural award. The jury praised its “beautiful interiors with abundant daylight,” particularly highlighting the library’s precision and elegance.

Unlike many museums, ArkDes offers a specialist library open to the public, where you can borrow books and browse international architecture and design journals. The original interior remains intact, with furniture designed by architect and designer Thomas Sandell and a large rug patterned by Josef Frank.

Unique design is present elsewhere in the museum, too. In ArkDes’ auditorium hangs a vibrant blue wool curtain created by Pia Wallén, while Café Blom’s walls are partially covered with rows of unglazed relief tiles designed by Pia Törnell.

Rafael Moneo didn’t believe Skeppsholmen needed a strikingly spectacular building. Instead, he sought to preserve the character of the island as part of the Stockholm archipelago. The city surrounding the island didn’t need a prominent new structure, so Moneo designed something understated. From a distance, what stands out is a forest of roof lanterns, particularly visible at night when they glow like beacons in the Stockholm darkness. These lanterns, situated atop the museum’s pyramid-shaped roof, direct daylight into the exhibition halls. Moneo’s care extended to preserving the Navy’s old detention building, which some competition entrants wanted to demolish. The detention facility now stands in front of the terracotta-red façade of Moneo’s new building, making the shared museum entrance harder to find.

But we’ve changed that. When ArkDes reopened in autumn 2024 after renovations, the entrance was moved back to the Parade Ground. The distance between the museum and the outside world is now minimal – ideally nonexistent. We’ve revived the best ideas from Moderna Museet and the Museum of Architecture’s formative years. Art and architecture should be accessible and easy to find, and exhibitions should be immersive experiences that everyone can help shape. ArkDes remains a place to encounter architecture and design, but also to meet other people.

What’s new is our approach to exhibitions. ArkDes has a unique collection of approximately four million items – drawings, sketches, models, photographs, and more – that tell the story of how modern Sweden took shape. For the first time in the museum’s history, we are showcasing the collection. About 500 items are part of the new permanent exhibition, and our curators are on-site daily to open folders and drawers with visitors, revealing treasures usually kept in storage. We call this Unboxing5. After a year, the displayed items will be replaced with others, offering new perspectives and stories.

The same approach is used at Torget6, where we explore the cities of the future, partly through practice-oriented research projects ArkDes conducts with municipalities nationwide.

To make all this possible, we collaborated with architects Arrhov Frick to create a unique and flexible furniture system7 using recycled materials8 from previous exhibitions and galleries. With sustainability in mind, we’ve crafted a new and welcoming visitor experience. The new ArkDes is a museum in constant transformation – a vibrant and open place that contributes to debates on how we shape the society of tomorrow.