Out of the Real

Bolle Tham (b. 1970) and Martin Videgård (b. 1968) founded their architecture firm in Stockholm in 1999. Their House K and Double House (both completed in 2005) received widespread attention; they finally won international recognition with the Kalmar Museum of Art (which opened in 2008). They are among the young architects invited by Herzog & de Meuron to participate in the Ordos 100 project in China and are currently planning the new School of Architecture on the campus of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm; their Moderna Museet Malmö has just opened its doors. In their designs, Tham and Videgård take as their starting points the Nordic tradition – closeness to nature and economy of means – as well as the concrete parameters of the project on which they are working; the result, however, is buildings with surprising and fascinating forms.