Meulensteen

Erik Gunnar Asplund (1885 – 1940) led the development of Swedish architecture from the Nordic Classicism of the 1920s to the Functionalism of the 1930s. Nordic Classicism, a blend of Neoclassical and vernacular styles exemplified by the Stockholm Public Library, was influential throughout the Scandinavian region, but Asplund’s international reputation rests mostly on his Modernist work for the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930, as well as his collaboration with Sigurd Lewerentz on Skogskyrkogården Cemetery (1914 – 1940), now recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site. Asplund taught architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, where he first delivered his famous lecture, “Our architectonic concept of space” in 1931.