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How can we create a safe and welcoming place, a home for the people of the city? This cultural house in Falun is a symbol of the meeting between the city’s history and its present, a place that honors tradition while looking toward the future. The building combines texture and inspiration from the city’s old Kårebocken statue, through traditional overlapping wooden cladding, with a modern copper-clad structure inspired by mineral formations and the nearby mine Falu Gruva. Traditional local building techniques, such as “portlider” (gateways), are used to create familiarity, a sense of belonging, and the feeling of home.

Shaped like a hollow rock formation, the building contains a variety of environments: quiet reading corners in Falu red-painted wood, a lookout tower, playful open areas, and a light-filled atelier that ties the different parts of the building together, much like the Falu River divides the city. It is open to everyone, children, youth, and the elderly and offers space for focus, community, and rest, without any need to consume.

The cultural house is more than just a building, it is an inclusive force in an often exclusive city.

A home for the city.