Stockholm rises from the ashes of fuctionalism

There are few more shocking stories of the carnage wrought on cities during the 1960s than the sorry tale of how Stockholm cleared away the so-called Klara "slum" for the brave new world of Sergels Torg and Hotorgscity. And yet, almost everyone at the time thought this was the right thing to do.

The story is told well in an exhibition at the city's Arkitekturmuseet, Rafael Moneo's asymmetrical white building on the island of Skeppsholmen, and what's remarkable about it is unshakeable certainty of the architects and planners involved that they were creating something really worthwhile.

There's a photograph of them in 1956, posing with a scale-model of how the Klara quarter - an area of at least one square kilometre - would look when it was comprehensively redeveloped in line with the pernicious doctrines of Le Corbusier, and they all seem intensely proud of this vision of modernity.

The fact that Sweden was neutral in the second World War meant that Stockholm escaped bombing, except by accident, so its historic fabric was still largely intact. But, as if to symbolise the "strong society" envisaged by the country's Social Democrat government, the city had decided to bomb itself.

Whole streets lined with historic buildings were obliterated, and virtually the entire area was then rebuilt on "modern" lines, with tunnels and overpasses, multi-storey car-parks, tall office blocks, groundscraper department stores, and a main "plaza" with traffic on the surface and pedestrians underneath.

Yet, although the central station of Stockholm's extensive metro system is located beneath Sergels Torg, it is today a soul-less place. Its location is marked on the city's skyline by the five slab blocks of offices, each 18 storeys high and running in parallel, that make up Hotorgscity. Raised on a two-storey podium, they were built between 1956 and 1968 and seen by admirers as "five clarion calls" or by critics, more accurately, as "five upturned shoeboxes".

The last piece of Sergels Torg to be slotted into place was the Kulturhuset, a concrete municipal cultural centre in the Brutalist style by Peter Celsinc, with a fullyglazed front flagging its "art for all" policy. Its rear elevation, which has to be seen to be believed, is a blank wall of concrete panels, relieved by three air vents. Stella Fare, Stockholm's full-time environment commissioner, still finds it incredible that some 20,000 people who lived or worked in the old Klara quarter were displaced by its destruction. And since few of the buildings in this shiny central business district are inhabited, even the heart of it seems dead after dark.

Ms Fare leads the small Stockholm Party, which ended up holding the balance of power after last year's local elections, with just three seats out of 101. It did a deal with the Conservatives, based on the implementation of a detailed environmental agenda - including a commitment to recreate Sergels Torg.

This month, six finalists were selected in an international competition for this urban design project. They include Ralph Erksine, the veteran English-born architect who has lived in Sweden for many years, in partnership with Lord (Richard) Rogers and others, as well as the London minimalists, Pawson and Williams.

Even the idea of holding this competition has been controversial. Lots of people on the left have what Ms Fare calls a "strange kind of loyalty" to the ideology that demolished Klara to produce Sergels Torg and they would like to see it retained as a monument to Sweden's progressive thinking in the 1950s and 1960s.

It is clear, however, that the high-point of 20th century architecture in Sweden was reached much earlier, in the 1920s. This was the decade that saw the completion of two of this century's great buildings - Stockholm City Hall, by Ragnar Ostberg, and the City Library, by Gunnar Asplund. Both are truly works of art.

The City Hall, with its characteristic tall brick tower, soon became the symbol of the city, as much of an icon in its own way as Copenhagen's Mermaid. Since the 1960s, however, it has been physically cut off from the rest of the city centre by a motorway.

One of the priorities on Stella Fare's agenda is to begin a programme of replacing eight city centre multi-storey car-parks with apartment buildings. "The decision has been made (to demolish them)", she said. "One is cleared to start anytime now. It's called The Elephant and it's a symbol of what's wrong".

But there are good things, too - notably the Modern Museet (Museum of Modern Art), which opened last year. Located on Skeppsholmen, next door to the Architecture Museum, it was also designed by Rafael Moneo, the leading Spanish architect. It is rare to find a building which contains such a huge volume of space - 25,000 sq metres (269,100 sq feet) - so inobtrusively set in the landscape. From the front, it is almost invisible; its only outward sign is a steel canopy projecting over an entry between two much older, neo-classical buildings. Having stepped through this entry, there is a stunning view of the museum's 200-metre front elevation, in glass and rust-red pigmented plaster, topped by a zinc roof on which square lanterns have been randomly placed. They vary in size and indicate the positions of the main exhibition spaces in the museum.

Finishes are lavish. The entrance concourse, which could be the foyer of a conference centre such is the lack of art on display, is panelled in birchwood. A processional route to the museum's permanent collection - one of the most important in the world - is beautifully floored in herringbone-pattern oak from Pennsylvania, with the white-walled spaces rationally laid out in a series of interlinked rooms. There is also a fine 400-seat auditorium.

The interiors were a collaborative exercise between Moneo, Thomas Sandell, Jeff Brock, Max Holst and others - including Feduchi Belen Moneo, who has followed her father into architecture. At the outset, its exterior was to be painted grey to blend with the rocky hillside, but Mr Moneo was forced by protest to use rust red instead.

According to him, "good architecture requires a keen ear for the secret murmur of a site". He certainly found that on Skepps holmen, creating astonishing spaces in the process. The room that houses temporary exhibitions is huge, at 1,000 sq m (10,764 sq ft) and amply demonstrates what the IMMA in Kilmainham will always lack.

A FULL-height window on the ground floor frames a view of the Vasa museum across the water, very close to where the royal Sewdish warship sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. Hauled up from the seabed in 1961, the Vasa is now housed in an extraordinary building, designed expressly for this purpose on the former naval dockyard site.

The Swedish firm of Mansson Dahlback won the prized commission following a Nordic architectural competition which attracted a record 384 entries. Their proposal was for an irregularly shaped structure of reinforced concrete clad as a "soft copper tent". And with three masts projecting from its roof, illuminated at night, it really works.

Sweden has for long been synonymous with cool, Nordic design though, curiously, it has produced no great "name" in the late 20th century to rival Denmark's Arne Jacobsen or Finland's Alvar Aalto. Like everyone else, the Swedes have made mistakes - much more comprehensively than us - but at least they recognise it.