page_title: Sergels torg
section_title: Final proposal
hierarchical_section_title: Sergels torg / History / Final proposal
caption_attribution_description: English: Sergels torg, Stockholm
context_page_description: Sergels torg is the most central public square in Stockholm, Sweden, named after 18th-century sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel, whose workshop was once located north of the square. The construction of the square was completed in 1967.
context_section_description: In 1957, a first official proposal presented a square virtually similar to the present; except that instead of the fountain there was an opening with tall trees and on the western side, where the flight of stairs is today, was a building standing on pillars.  The Chamber of Commerce was critical of the concept, concluding pedestrians on a lower level would produce poor business sites, an analysis which would eventually prove correct.  Their own proposal the following year, developed together with various authorities, reserved street-level to pedestrians while cars were confined below ground.  This counter-proposal was however produced in only two months, which made it easy for opponents to pin-down its weaknesses (mostly a failure to leave enough space for the metro which was being constructed at this time).  Nevertheless, Helldén's proposal failed to impress the city as well, and Helldén together with other hand-picked experts was therefore sent on a tour around Europe, including Coventry and London, to find a better solution.  In Stuttgart they could conclude that having pedestrians on a lower level required escalators, and in Vienna the pedestrians hall Opernpassage gave them the inspiration to replace the central open space at Sveaplatsen with a round restaurant with glass walls, an aesthetic device intended to give the square an architectonic dignity.
  This newly introduced centre-piece resulted in a proposal for a fountain with a monument above it.  For the shape of this fountain, Helldén consulted his friend, the mathematician and artist Piet Hein, who in less than in minute found a curve with a "continuously varying bending" and immediately named it the superellipse.  Before presenting his final proposal in 1960, Helldén added the triangular pattern to the pedestrian plaza and the wide stairs on its western side.
  A contest for the central monument in 1962 was won by Edvin Öhrström, with the 37 metre tall glass obelisk which was named Kristall - vertikal accent i glas och stål ("Crystal - vertical accent in glass and steel").  The sculpture, finally completed in 1974 and since haunted by technical problems, never was able to deliver the intended visual output and - quoting Hall - "thus adds itself to the many projects within the [reconstruction of central Stockholm] that didn't endure confrontation with reality."  The artist favoured by Helldén, Olle Baertling, started to work on a sculpture for the square in 1960 but never was invited to participate in the contest.
caption: The superellipse-shaped fountain.
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