Gert Wingardh interview

Gert Wingardh designs new EF Education First North American headquarters

post by EF Hello World

Gert Wingårdh (born 1951) is a Swedish architect whose company, Wingårdh arkitektkontor, maintains an international practice.Gert Wingårdh started as an interior decorator in the 1970s.After graduating he joined an architectural firm for a short while before setting up his own office in 1977. He had his big breakthrough as a regular architect with the Öijared Executive Country Club outside Gothenburg in 1988. The building rendered him a Kasper Salin Prize.

He has had a number of assignments in the United States and Germany in recent years. Wingårdh is also the creator of the Swedish embassies in Washington and Berlin. Most of his realized buildings, however, can be found in Sweden and in particular in the area of metropolitan Gothenburg. In 2007 Wingårdh won a major international competition for a large new shopping centre in Malmö, and in the same year seven of the twelve hottest architecture projects in the capital Stockholm – listed by a Swedish national daily – was designed by Wingårdh.

Several spectacular projects have created considerable attention but remained unexecuted, such as a conference centre in Östersund, Jämtland, on the top of a mountain, called Breath of Life. Features developed in these experimental projects do occasionally return in built projects later, such as the curved glass facade that is realized in the shopping mall Emporia in Malmö 2011.

Because of his skills, his way of constantly attract the media attention and the many prizes he has received, he is generally considered the most renowned living Swedish architect.[13] His role as a public figure is not without controversy, though. He has for example been known to be an advocate of skyscrapers which has made him a subject of critique from some (Swedish) colleagues.

He became PhD (HC) at Chalmers University of Technology in 1999 and reveived the Prince Eugene Medal in 2005. In 2007 Gert Wingårdh was appointed adjunct professor in building design at the architecture faculty at Chalmers.