The SAS headquarters was conceived as a town structure, a micro-society for SAS colleagues with an informal main street connecting individual buildings: a site rather than an edifice.
An encounter with the “SAS society” is easy-going and unceremonious as the main street opens towards you and descends in stages down to the little lake at the other end. The buildings all have their own characteristics, carrying out a dialogue and addressing each other across the street from their terraces, galleries, balconies and pedestrian bridges. Stimulation is aroused transversely and longitudinally along the street. We have delegated all the functions and activities that generate traffic along the street – it becomes the social space of the denizens of this SAS society. The street space changes character and function several times in the course of the day. All staff members participate in the daily rhythm, wandering among workplaces and the many shared functions that entice a visit to the street space, where a swimming and a sports hall are centrally placed in the facilities, encompassed by meeting rooms, and auditorium, stores and a café. The street space is a robust volume with an outdoor ambience, marked by the changes in daylight from sunrise to sunset and evening. Bridges, stairs, lifts and detached buildings for meetings have been created in delicate steel structures and visually divide the long space into zones. Elements are floodlit and function as lighting fixtures in this great hall. From the combination office space of a work station, a gradually increasing interaction evolves via multi-rooms, internal meeting rooms, meeting room towers, footbridges and side streets to the main street. The interior is open, transparent and inviting. The lot is exposed and vulnerable. The building was constructed on a property that contained a hill of gravel, which was completely removed so that the buildings’ descending cornice heights are on the level of the former silhouette of the gravel source. To avoid an intrusion in the landscape around Brunnsviken, the water surface was carried into the building by means of an excavated pond that creates a backdrop motif together with the restaurant.