Location: Sundbyberg, Stockholm, Sweden
Developer: Humlegården Fastigheter
Designer: 3XN
Overall size: 377,000 square feet (35,000 sq m)
After four decades in Stockholm’s city center, Swedbank had outgrown its headquarters. The banking group wanted a new building that embraced the working methods and technology associated with banking in the 21st century and that reinforced its brand as an innovative financial institution. Saving resources and increasing communication and collaboration, Swedbank brought together more than 2,500 staff members from multiple locations that totaled 538,000 square feet (50,000 sq m) into an efficient, new 377,000-square-foot (35,000 sq m) headquarters on a site that—while somewhat more suburban—is easily accessible by transit. Located in the Sundbyberg municipality in northern Stockholm, the building is designed to express the bank’s core values: openness, simplicity, and care.
The design reinforces the bank’s new ethos of “one office space, one company” and is intended to make many different departments feel like a cohesive whole. The design features a folded “triple V” structure that breaks up volumes and creates an inviting, democratic environment. Employees are located closer to each other than in a traditional office, which contributes to internal communication, visual contact, and knowledge sharing among departments. Another core principle integrated into the new headquarters is “sustainability drives design and business.” The triple-V shape allows for the placement of five atriums that bring in daylight and enable views from the offices, and permits the bank to meet a 50-kilowatt-hour-per-square-meter, half-current standard environmental requirement. In addition, the efficient use of space allows the bank to bring an additional 500 employees to the building, generating greater return on investment.
