Lewerentz's S:t Petri at 50

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S:t Petri at fifty: Celebrating the fifty-year anniversary of Sigurd Lewerentz’s master piece in Klippan: The Church of Saint Peter

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Lewerentz’s S:t Petri at 50: Context, Fragments, and Influence

During a career that spanned more than sixty years, the Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz challenged the very language of architecture—from his early sublime classism to the raw, honest, and archaic forms of his later works culminating in his masterpiece in Klippan, The Church of Saint Peter. This exhibition celebrates Lewerentz’s accomplishments at S:t Petri through archival drawings, images, and fragments of process placing it within the lineage of his greater body of work.

The exhibition also serves to introduce the work of architect Bernt Nyberg through his films of S:t Petri and interviews with Lewerentz—giving voice and image to an architect who never lectured and rarely spoke about his work. Initially meeting on the construction site of S:t Petri, the two architects developed a close relationship which resulted in multiple collaborative competition entries and exercised significant influence on the direction of Nyberg’s later work.

To accompany the exhibition, a new publication on the building and its architect investigates the structure’s continued validity in a current, contemporary context. Through invited essays from architects and scholars around the globe, this book serves as a manual for the exhibition, and provides numerous answers to the question: “Why is this building important?”

Made possible through generous support from:

The Swedish Church, Klippan Parish
The City of Klippan
ArkDes / The Architecture and Design Center, Stockholm