There are around 850 kilometres between the urban architecture firm Kjellander & Sjöberg in Stockholm and the Setesdal Valley in Norway, a popular holiday destination and also the birthplace of the legendary Norwegian sweater in the 19th century. That is quite a long way, but sometimes such a distance becomes a mere stone‘s throw: this could have been the case when the aforementioned architects designed a retirement home in Växjö, Sweden. Its impressively clinkered facade is certainly reminiscent of the traditional pattern of the popular knitted sweater – and clinker brick slips from Ströher played a key role in its creation: The lively shell of the L-shaped building was cleverly designed using four different clinker patterns, and the textile design was achieved using prefabricated facade elements set in wide gaps.

This sophisticated look recalls Alvar Aalto‘s experimental house in Muuratsalo in Finland, where the Danish architect established the essence of his unparalleled residential architecture. Nature was always the model for his designs, and human well-being was the aim of his architecture. This is also the case for the designers at Kjellander & Sjöberg: the design of the retirement home is their statement on intelligent architecture, which thinks sustainably about its influence on people and their environment. The building‘s surroundings were a big factor in its design, as it is located in the heart of Astrid Lindgren‘s beautiful Småland region.

As the „greenest city in Europe“, environmental sustainability is very important in Växjö. Accordingly, the new retirement home, with 72 residential units, is LEED Platinum-certified as an „extremely high-performance environmentally-friendly building“. In addition, a further award beckons: the eye-catching project has been nominated for the „European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture/Mies van der Rohe Award“, the most prestigious European architecture prize worth 60,000 euros. And clinker brick slips from Ströher play a part in this contemporary architectural discourse.