Looking Back on ArkDes in 2025

January

The year began with ArkDes defining the direction for its future work as four research and content directions were presented. Under the headings In the North (I norr), Imagine (Föreställ dig), Living Together (Bo tillsammans), and Transformation (Omvandling), the museum’s curators and ArkDes Think Tank would jointly drive the development of exhibitions for the coming years.

Green plants purifying an industrial site, abandoned houses brought back to life, and a public square made of snow and ice were among the visionary proposals presented when six teams in the innovation project Visions in the North step 2 submitted their research reports. The releases were followed by a seminar discussing the proposals and how long-term sustainable living environments can be created in Boden, Gällivare, Kiruna, Luleå, Skellefteå, and Umeå.

ArkDes also hosted School + Museum 2025, the annual event where educators, teachers, and school leaders meet Stockholm’s museums and cultural institutions. The aim is to offer schools a preview of the rich range of exhibitions, educational activities, and school programmes on offer, and to show that museums and museum visits can and should be a natural part of education.

February

Gunnar Asplund’s design and interiors took centre stage when ArkDes curators brought out rarely shown drawings, sketches, and photographs from the archives in connection with Stockholm Design Week. The focus was on design treasures from Gothenburg City Hall (1935) and the Skandia Cinema in Stockholm (1925), which were presented and discussed with visitors during Unboxing.

There are many reasons why our homes look the way they do. Building regulations are one of them. When the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning presented new building regulations, ArkDes responded by constructing an example apartment designed by architects Tove Dumon Wallsten, Love di Marco, and Gustav Stjärnström. Using the apartment as a starting point, ArkDes organised talks, debates, and Unboxing events where opinions on regulation shifted back and forth.

What tools do architects actually work with? Three workshops for children highlighted different tools used in architectural practice. The first workshop, starting in February, focused on drawings and their transformation from 2D to 3D. The second explored how architects use clay to create models. The third workshop, running during autumn 2025, focused on visualisation and collage, images used by architects to show what buildings will look like once completed.

March

AI is rapidly becoming part of both working life and everyday life, but what does this development mean for the design field? To explore the question, ArkDes organised its first Design Bar in March, themed AI-fun!.
Since March 2025, Design Bar has been a recurring event at ArkDes, highlighting the power of design in sustainable societal development in an informal setting.

In 2020, the exhibition Weird Sensation Feels Good was shown in Boxen at ArkDes. Since then, the groundbreaking exhibition on the design phenomenon ASMR has travelled to venues including the Design Museum in London. On 14 March, it opened in Hong Kong at Gate 33 Gallery.

Practice-based research, research conducted close to real-world practice and together with those working within it to address concrete challenges, continued across several projects at ArkDes. VERKET is a practice-based research project aimed at finding innovative ways for obsolete industrial infrastructure in Ulricehamn to become a resource for the entire city. On site in Ulricehamn, the VERK-SAM team presented its proposal.

Further practice-based research took shape when teams were selected and presented for the project Transformation. The aim of Transformation is to explore ways to promote transition within the building and real estate sector through speculative architecture. Three teams were selected to work with Umeå University’s campus, Alvik Strand in Stockholm, and Gamlestaden in Gothenburg.

April, May

During Stockholm Culture Night in late April, ArkDes remained open until 02, offering workshops, a childbirth preparation class, and Unboxing, with a programme inspired by the exhibition Designing Motherhood, which explores how design has influenced human reproduction over the past 150 years.

In a series of Unboxing events running throughout 2025, architects and designers were given the opportunity to engage more closely with the museum’s collection and the objects that inspire them. These discoveries were presented and discussed with ArkDes visitors when Fredrik Paulsen, Thomas Sandell, Gert Wingårdh, and Åsa Jungnelius took part in the collection exhibition and Unboxing programme.

Together with former guest researchers Elisa Maria López and Marisa Cortright, as well as invited architects and researchers, the museum organised a seminar addressing two pressing themes: Living Together (Bo tillsammans), and Transformation (Omvandling).

June, July, August

Troll Tivoli! At Utsikten, the design group Mycket created an unusual amusement park for children and young people. Swing rides swayed, carousels spun, and the tombola tumbled, but the tivoli was far from finished. Throughout the summer, visiting children helped to build and expand the trolls’ magical world.

The practice-based research project Commoning the Heritage: Norrahammar aimed to support Jönköping Municipality in developing tools and knowledge for managing and developing culturally significant environments. In June, the interdisciplinary team TEJA, consisting of architects and artists, was selected for its understanding of the specific challenges of the former industrial site and its experience working with site-specific prototypes and spatial staging.

At the same time, the exhibition Designing Motherhood entered its final phase. The exhibition explores how design has influenced human reproduction over the past 150 years and includes objects that have enabled, facilitated, and prevented our arrival into the world. At ArkDes, the originally American exhibition was expanded with Swedish content. After Stockholm, it travelled on to the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

In August, ArkDes opened applications for grants from the Einar Mattsson Foundation for Building and Real Estate Research, administered by ArkDes. Applicants could apply for funding of up to SEK 500,000 within three priority themes: circular management of existing buildings, adaptability for long-term use of properties and buildings, and efficient energy and media consumption in management. Of 58 applications, two grants were awarded, one examining how older school buildings can be viewed as a resource for modern pedagogy, and another exploring more flexible use of single-family housing from the 1970s onwards.

September

Two guest researchers began their residencies at ArkDes, each investigating specific questions related to the museum’s collections. Anna Livia Vörsel studied municipal buildings from the 1930s to the 1970s. Jelrik Hupkes researched Edvin Engström’s villas and how interwar small-scale housing architecture emerged from the ideals of the growing welfare state.

Taking the nightclubs Trocadero and Tunneln in Malmö as a starting point, architect Abelardo Gonzalez visited the museum for a conversation with event organiser Lars Hector and artist Tommie X about the venues that shaped the city’s nightlife in the 1980s.

During the autumn, opening hours for ArkDes Research Services were extended, and the digitisation of all objects previously shown in ArkDes’ new collection exhibition was completed.

October

A new temporary exhibition opened. Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities is an immersive experience where design meets live-action role play and gaming. The exhibition presents experimental works using game simulations, digital environments, sculpture, sound, and video to explore role-playing, gaming, and world-building as artistic and political acts. Visitors are invited to test identities, social structures, and future scenarios that challenge the boundaries of what design can be.

The exhibition on The Women’s Building Forum (Kvinnors Byggforum), the collective of female architects and planners who from the 1980s onwards challenged prevailing norms in housing design, opened. At ArkDes, the apartment shown by The Women’s Building Forum at the exhibition Boplats80 in Stockholm in 1980 was recreated. It presents a form of housing focused on encounters, activity, and colour, a vision that provoked the architectural establishment and sparked decades of activism to introduce women’s perspectives into housing design.

How future cities should be built to withstand future risks was the theme of the conference Living City 2025, organised by ArkDes on behalf of the Council for Living Cities in collaboration with Formas. Current research and inspiring examples were presented to 1,400 participants, both on site and digitally.

We live in an age of floods and cloudbursts. During October, ArkDes organised a series of talks and events on how society can be built to cope with climate change. On Torget, architect Ulf Mejergren created a temporary, site-specific installation: a house mounted on a scissor lift, able to be raised above the water level.

Swedish Television’s major architecture series How Sweden Was Built (Så byggdes Sverige) premiered. Across ten episodes, Gert Wingårdh, Mark Isitt, and Petra Mede explored how modern Sweden took shape. To offer deeper engagement, ArkDes organised thematic guided tours linked to the series, and Unboxing events during October, November, and December focused on its themes.

In connection with the series, ArkDes also invited upper secondary school classes from across Sweden to participate in a design competition on living streets. The task was to develop a prototype for a sustainable, healthy, and vibrant street without the car as a starting point. The jury included Gert Wingårdh and Mark Isitt. The winning proposal will be shown at ArkDes in May 2026.

November

During the autumn school holiday, ArkDes organised a family programme with workshops and guided tours of the museum’s collection. In the workshop Make an Animal Mask, children created face masks inspired by the themes of the exhibition Worldglimpsing.

ArkDes hosted the event Garden City (Trädgårdsstaden), attracting a large audience to Skeppsholmen. During the event, which included Sweden’s Minister for Housing Andreas Carlson, the history of the garden city was discussed alongside lessons for the future of suburban villa areas.

A new feature was launched on the ArkDes website, making the digitised collection searchable on arkdes.se, complete with images and information.

When the year’s most fragrant exhibition opens, it is a sure sign that Christmas is approaching. The theme of the year’s Gingerbread House Exhibition was Love, and 151 entries were submitted by bakers competing in the categories Up to 12 years, Architects, designers and bakers, and Everyone else who bakes. The jury consisted of designer Anton Alvarez, architect Rahel Belatchew, and pastry chef Hilma Strömberg.

December

Through a donation from SF Studios/Bonnier Group, the ArkDes collection was expanded with one of eight stools designed by Gunnar Asplund for the Skandia Cinema in Stockholm in the early 1920s. The museum’s collection already includes more than 26,000 drawings, sketches, watercolours, and documents by Gunnar Asplund.

A new name was added to the collection: Joar Nango, architect and artist with roots in Sápmi. His goahti, shown at ArkDes between 2024 and 2026, was acquired together with furniture, textiles, and six episodes of the TV series PCA-TV that formed part of the installation.

The ArkDes book was released, summarising the museum’s work during the period 2020–2025. It explores the soul of ArkDes and highlights the work behind the 2024 reopening, the new communicative identity, and the thinking behind the new spatial design and exhibition approach that made both the collection and public activities accessible to a broad audience.