Kiruna City Hall, designed by Artur Von Schmalensee, and built in 1962, is an important building both functionally and symbolically to the people of Kiruna. It was designed to be open and to facilitate the transparency of democracy.

This relocation of the City Hall retains its character and functions whilst adding to them and enhancing them. By elevating the City Hall, it conveys that the building has been moved and reinforces that it has not always been in place, but in fact has been relocated. Furthermore this serves to facilitate the addition of other functions below the City hall.

The City has a historic and continuing relationship with art, which we have extended to add functionality and enhance the existing City Hall, the city having a large art collection of over 2000 pieces, which includes works by Anders Zorn, John Bauer and Edvard Munch.

The City Hall as existing contained space for only a small amount of this work to be exhibited, and as the collection is continually growing due to City commissioning an artist to work there and produce works for the city every year, it was appropriate to allow the provision of spaces to both exhibit this collection and also to allow those who enter the new City Hall and gallery to be able to view the process of art being created.

The repositioned and extended City Hall, takes a prominent position within the new masterplan for Kiruna’s City Centre, once again being the termination of the high street as it was in the Old City, whilst no longer being disconnected.