The Stockholm Exhibition and Svea Rike

A critical examination of The Stockholm Exhibition 1930.

The Stockholm Exhibition 1930 marked a pivotal moment in the international presentation of Swedish modernity, particularly through art, architecture, and the ideals of functionalism.

Despite its public acclaim—especially the pavilion Svea Rike—the exhibition’s connections to eugenics and the political project of modern nation-building have largely been omitted from architectural history. As a guest researcher at ArkDes, Marie-Louise Richards conducted a critical analysis of the exhibition by examining materials related to Svea Rike in the ArkDes collection.

Richards is an architect, educator, and researcher at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. Her work explores the relationship between race and architecture through citation, as well as queer, feminist, and decolonial methods. She traces critical counter-narratives to the architecture of the Swedish welfare state, often beginning with its most canonical representations.

During her time at ArkDes, Richards examined how the Stockholm Exhibition can be understood in relation to broader developments in Swedish society at the time, such as the founding of the State Institute for Racial Biology in 1922 and the sterilisation laws enacted in the 1930s and 1940s.

While the exhibition is often celebrated for its departure from traditional styles, it also reflected deeper ideological structures: eugenics, hygiene, and the construction of a new national identity. The Svea Rike pavilion—the most visited and critically acclaimed part of the exhibition—served as a symbolic space that promoted the vision of a modern, industrious, and morally upright Swedish citizen.