Rahel Belatchew

It has been a century since Carl Eldh inaugurated his studio in Bellevue Park. The building was designed by his friend Ragnar Östberg, the architect behind Stockholm City Hall. For its Jubilee Year 2019, architecture will be in focus at Carl Eldh’s Studio Museum and we are very pleased to present a show with the architect Rahel Belatchew. Belatchew, and her firm Belatchew Architects, design bold, sculptural buildings with innovative fundamentals and features that take seriously the concerns of the present and those rapidly approaching on the horizon. Her experimental studio, Belatchew Labs, seeks inventive and sustainable solutions to the challenges presented by the city of the future. The exhibition includes BuzzBuilding, a building that aims to make Stockholm self-sufficient in generating protein for its inhabitants’ consumption through urban insect production and farming.

History and future have always intermingled in Carl Eldh’s studio. Ragnar Östberg drafted the plans for the building considering two different perspectives of time. He gave the studio a historic dignity, fashioning it with a tympanum, rotunda, and columns, but at the same time, designed a modern workplace for a sculptor with his future ahead of him. The architect also emphasized sustainability, using natural building materials and recycled roof tiles.

Belatchew Architects is behind some of expanding Stockholm’s most excited building projects. Carl Eldh’s Studio Museum shows several of these in the form of models, drawings, visualizations, and photographs. One such project is the high-rise Discus over Nacka’s new metro station, the highest section rising to thirty stories. The facade of Discus is a prime example of the resurgence of wood as an increasingly common component in contemporary building. Two of the firm’s buildings currently under construction, the apartment building Flora in Midsommarkransen and the collective house Rudbeckia in Uppsala, are other examples of pioneering wooden buildings. It is exciting that a historic building like Eldh’s studio can point towards the future.

We welcome visitors to sit in Bris in the studio’s garden, a unique outdoor space formed in wood that Rahel Belatchew has created in dialogue with Ragnar Östberg’s loggia. Follow the light through the ribs in the pavilion’s undulating roof and see the shifting shadow play. Consider Östberg’s century-old building from and through this contemporary structure, go into the museum, and see how the future is shaped in wood.

Rahel Belatchew(born 1969 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) was trained at the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris. Since 1996 she has worked as an architect in Paris, Luxembourg, Tokyo, and Stockholm. In 2006 she established the Stockholm-based architectural firm Belatchew Architects. Residential architecture is a large part of Belatchew’s practice, but she has also designed offices and institutional buildings. Projects both already built and in the planning stage include the Villa RBDVD and apartment building Flora in Midsommarkransen, Björk and Plaza in Stockholm Royal Seaport, and the skyscraper Tensta Torn, as well as the office building Damen in Norrköping and the high-rise Discus in Nacka.

Sustainability and innovation drive Rahel Belatchew’s practice. Her experimental studio Belatchew Labs has received international acclaim for its visionary projects, which have been shown at venues like ArkDes in Stockholm, Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen, and Roca Gallery in London. Belatchew lectures in architecture and has sat on the jury for the Swedish Wood Award, Swedish Architects’ Residential Award, Årets Rum (Room of the Year), Elle Decoration Swedish Design Award, and the World Architecture Festival.  She has also represented Sweden at Iceland’s DesignMarch, Hong Kong Design Week, and participated in the Housing Design Exchange: London/Stockholm.

Rahel Belatchew was named Architect of the Year by Residence Magazine in 2007 and has received several awards, including the Architectural Review MIPIM Future Project Award 2015 and 2019, Smart Living Challenge 2014, Design S 2014, the Architecture MasterPrize, and World Architecture News Award 2018.

For more information about Rahel Belatchew, please see Belatchew Architects.

In connection to the exhibition a bilingual catalog is produced with an essay by architectural historian Martin Rörby. An artist talk (in Swedish) between Rahel Belatchew and Martin Rörby will take place in the museum on June 13 at 6 pm. Two guided tours of the exhibition with Martin Rörby will also be arranged on June 6 at 11 am and September 12 at 5 pm. Read more...

The centenary celebration and the exhibition is made possible through the support of the Swedish Arts Council, Pontus Bonnier, the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, Arwidsro, Einar Mattsson AB, the Royal Patriotic Society, CEOS AB, Tyréns and Stockholm City.