St Paul’s church, a neo-gothic Methodist church built in 1876, reopened in 2022 after a transformation of the interior to house a community centre for a Christian NGO organisation. The transformation project establishes two new squares: an exterior square serving as a public meeting place, and an interior square where the church hall becomes a central hub around which new galleries and rooms are arranged.
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The transformation allows for the addition of flexible rooms, workspaces, and professional food service, offering great versatility to the various parts of the church’s activities. The original church design featured a clear separation between the church hall and smaller supporting rooms. The redesign utilizes the spaciousness and spiritual qualities of the church hall to create a central gathering space, transforming the nave from an isolated room into a central hub within the building. New building elements are carefully integrated with the exist- ing architecture, with the newly constructed mirrored gallery levels reflecting the symmetric window arrangement of the church hall. The result is a new symmetrical unity, replacing the original nave with a directionless square space.
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Ground Floor
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First Floor
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Second Floor
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Central design choices aim to avoid dramatic encounters be- tween existing and new building parts, rooms and surfaces. Instead, the desire has been to establish a new unity, where new and old are intertwined. While the interior is dramatically transformed, externally, the original design is restored as far as possible. Much of the qualities that were gradually lost in the heavy-handed renovations of the 1900s have been corrected after careful investigation.
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North elevation
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East
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South
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West
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From a technical point of view, the building is reconstructed with the aim to stand for 100 years with high demands as to energy and climate performance with an FTX ventilation system. Integrated acoustic as well as sound and light systems are dimensioned to house a new culture scene.
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Section A-A
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B-B
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C-C
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Release: Spridd AB, Stockholm
