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Gustaf Letterström’s museum building
An architectural competition was announced and the winning proposal was submitted by two young architects, Gustaf Letterström and Mats Linnman. However, for reasons of funding, it took some time before work could commence. The new museum was not opened until 1956 and by then, Gustaf Letterström had revised his original drawings to suit the present location.

Letterström’s museum is built in an austere functional style with large glass walls on a mezzanine floor. The building has since undergone a number of interior renovations in order to free more space for the museum´s extended activities, most recently in the early 1990s when some of the exhibition halls were converted into storage, a conservation studio and various management offices. The architect Carl Nyrén, who grew up in Jönköping, was appointed to create the new building designed for the museum’s public activities.


Carl Nyrén’s museum building
The new exhibition halls were opened in October 1992. The two-storey building with welcoming architecture and large windows offers light and gives the impression of space. The building was cast on site in re-enforced concrete and has a total area of approximately 2300 m2. The exterior of Letterström’s building has been retained as an inner wall connecting the new building to a spacious and airy hall and stairwell whith access to the new exhibition halls.

The architect has chosen simple natural materials throughout the building, such as wood and concrete. The floors are of untreated spruce planks and the wooden ceiling is painted white in order to reflect incoming light in the best possible way. The raw concrete surfaces are painted with several layers of beeswax based on gloss tempera, the varying shades and colours creating rooms and spaces with different characteristics and atmospheres.

In 1994 Carl Nyren’s building was awarded the Casper Sahlin Prize by the Swedish Association of Architects. The jury wrote in their motivation that the building combines “poetic inspiration with straightforwardness and the utmost simplicity into rooms of vibrating space and light”.

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