Oatly is Sweden’s gastronomic success story, which continues to ride on the  post-millennial wave of change in the West’s eating habits and culture, and has been spearheading this shift to plant-centric diets. But if both carton and contents were a building, what would the ingredients be? How might a non-dairy building look? Would it be plant-based? In early 2023, a new Oatly Headquarters opened, standing at the edge of one of Malmö’s industrial drydocks, right in the heart of a veritably Swedish hipster-tech district development called Varvsstaden, a shipyard town.

The answer is clear and circular.

Gjuteriet, an old brick foundry which once served Malmö’s shipbuilding industry, is Oatly’s new headquarters and home to roughly three hundred staff. It has been transformed into a circular showcase, embodied symbolically by an ambitious restoration of the building. Oatly’s new HQ rose from the collapsed, roofless husk of a less happy past, a time when only three walls still stood. But it wasn’t Oatly who drove the project’s circular focus: Gjuteriet is leased to rather than owned by Oatly, and however happily they signed up, it is Varvsstaden’s materials vision.

The industrial building was built in 1910, and is one of several designed by Malmö architect Axel Stenberg for the Kockums shipping yard, where warships, submarines and other naval vessels were launched, along with the manufacture of metal castings for ship machinery and bridge parts. After the shipyard’s closure in the 1990s, the Kockums building fell into disrepair. Unsurprisingly, it remained an A-grade industrial heritage and was classified under the Riksantikvarieämbetet’s, (the Swedish National Heritage Board) K-märkt designation for buildings of special cultural and historical value, leading to this eventual major heritage restoration effort. 

The Kockums shipyard in the mid 20^th Century and right the Gjureriet building before restoration began – photos: left Varvarsstaden and right KjellanderSjöberg Arkitekter

Structural strategies – walls and with timber structure interiors dropped in – renders KjellanderSjöberg Arkitekter

The five repertoire of industrial buildings by Stenberg on the site have been restored and remade anew. Re-use writ large is a centre piece of the story the Varvsstaden district wants to tell. After an early masterplan by Copenhagen’s Nord Arkitekten Varvsstaden committed to an ambitious material re-use agenda, syphoning off one of Stenberg’s buildings for medium and long-term materials storage, which was then named the Material Bank. Embarking on an exhaustive inventory, the Varvsstaden team built up a profile of the materials available for re-use and recycling. Its initial conclusion estimated saving 30,000 carbon tonnes could be made through material re-use. Though spanning the spectrum – including 130 doors reused in an upcycled hotel, a significant proportion of the Material Lab’s inventory comprised concrete slabs, alongside over 1.8 million reusable bricks. One-sixth, or around 300,000 of these bricks have gone into Gjuteriet, returning the industrial buildings’ facades to their long-lost glory days.

But when you step inside, a different yet related vision is clear. Timber is everywhere, with the redesign integrating wood at both structural and facade levels throughout the interior.

For its circular strategy, Varvsstaden turned to the Lendager group, a young Copenhagen studio known for making the running around circular construction in the Nordics. But it isn’t the only example of the development leaning on the Danish scene:  Varvsstaden comes across as something of a Danish design playground. Lendager produced an ideas catalogue, and several big name Danish studios, including HenningLarsen and Arkitema, who are at the heart of the redesign. However, it was a Swedish practice in a  Stockholm studio called KjallenderSjöberg, who won the Gjuteriet Foundry building, and its remaking of the interior is their handywork.

Timber isn’t new to KjallenderSjöberg. Over the last decade, the Stockholm studio has contributed to Sweden’s architectural recovery; they’ve also been relatively prolific with timber, with a series of projects to their name. These include a 2023 housing project, Elinelund also in Malmö, Magnolia, a boutique restaurant in Stockholm’s Stora Sköndal district, and an ecological block Woodhouse Rosendal, in university city, Uppsala, both from 2020. When I visited on a rainswept April day, Simon Estie, the studio’s then Malmö-based project architect, acknowledged that he’d initially been all-consuming in his conversion to wood as the way forward in a post-carbon world. But this, he felt, had since been refined, and now he’d come round to a slant that timber wasn’t necessarily the most effective response to driving down carbon footprints. Still, timber is at the heart of Gjuteriet. Oatly’s brief, according to Estie, was to make it “as sustainable as possible” and to have the feel of a small office in a big space. 

Naked wood platforms 

Wall to wall – between the external walls and timber platforms are walkway corridors – with the right-hand wall left fully exposed. Photo right Oliver Lowenstein

Foyer and main stairway entrance

At the entrance Post Milk Bar, a barista-reception and open canteen, and other downtime activities including a pinball machine, greet visitors. In the foyer, there is clear space up to the high ceiling roof of the re-worked shell of the outer building. In front, at ground level, the central row of oxblood red iron pillars provides initial circulation into the building, leading to the primary staircase up to the first and then second-floor offices, work and meeting spaces.  

The all-timber platforms are partially enclosed, lined by both private offices and open naturally lit workspace, helped by the high windows running the length of Gjuteriet’s walls and the skylight roof lanterns. Between the platforms, raised open spaces have been given over to breakout relaxation spaces, doubling as wide level bridges. The red steel pillars, chunky glulam posts and beam structures, and gun-metal grey and yellow staircases have an overwhelming presence. And yet, this is a distinct preferable contrast to the usual run of minimally attired open plan offices. The glulam platforms are, by turn, minimal post and beam constructions, alternating with diagonal truss braces cutting through the floors, adding to the busyness of the structure, and to an extent messily, though inevitably, obscuring views in many places. There again, the chunky 45⁰ glulam braces act as reminders of an industrial building. The structural timber was delivered by road from Martinson’s north Sweden factory close to Skellefteå. It is one of the country’s largest manufacturers, and, according to Estie, the only company that could deliver and assemble within the required schedule. 

Pretty in pink – photo Oliver Lowenstein

Upper floors, glulam post and beams and panelled roof

Aside from the glulam, wood is everywhere. Above the top third floor, 14.5m from ground level, the roof sits on the glulam post and beam system, fading into a patchwork backdrop of prefabricated fir panels parcelling out the internal roofscape. The doors, walls and railings are made of red elm, while Kingspan’s Troldtekt wood-cement acoustic panels are specified in corridors, toilets and changing rooms. The lower floors and ceiling is made of recycled PET bottles. With timber extensively used throughout the interior, two balancing acts are apparent; the first where natural circular materials meet man-made ones. The second of 20^th century structural systems meeting 21^st century ones. It is evident that Gjuteriet is an industrial building, and inhabiting an industrial building suggests Oatly is an industrial product. If a building equivalent to an Oatly carton or its wheat-based drink had been pursued, your imagination might be led to a wheat or at least Biobased-centric structure. Oatly is the result of years of agricultural Biotech research at nearby Lund University, and is very much an industrial product. 

Post Milk Bar on the ground floor and the mezzanine break out chill spaces – photo left Oatly, and right Oliver Lowenstein

For Oatly, there’s clear alignment, because it is known for its irreverent ad campaigns and identity. Indeed they have sought to import this feel good factor into the interior décor and furniture. There are the usual pithy slogans like Wow No Cow! Iit up by an electric light near the Post-Milk Barista bar. All through Cia Eriksson, Oatly’s creative director, tracked down pre-loved furniture, which makes the open chill spaces bright with big splashes out of shocking pink, plus bands of violets and magenta. Elsewhere, there are sobering royal blues and greys. Second-hand furniture, says Eriksson, is company policy and used in all their offices.

By contrast, outside, it is the brickwork which dominates. The main entrance close to the dock quay features two larger and smaller glazed doors, above which the semi-circular basilica has been fully restored, complete with its century old industrial inscription, Kockums Mek Verkstads A.B. Throughout, brickwork has been carefully returned to approximations of its original state, Material Bank’s 300,000 re-used bricks integrated into the façade, extending from a creamy white limestone through to brick red, as part of the heritage protection of the historical building. On the inside walls, insulation has been added before being enclosed behind a new layer of the recycled bricks. Gjuteriet’s west side, originally an internal wall, has also been rebuilt from recycled bricks and other rescued materials. Interspersed throughout the façade are reworked industrial windows, further helping with natural light permeating the building. 

How far Varvsstaden will take their reuse experiment also is unclear. Sitting between the turn of the millennium shorefront Västra Hamnen Bo01 eco-district and the old city centre, the new district is a partnership between Malmö’s city council, Peab – Sweden and the Nordic world’s third largest builder – and Balder, an equally large-scale developer. Though much is made of the district’s century-old industrial heritage re-emergence and its circular dimension, the historic buildings are beginning to be dwarfed by the surrounding new buildings. Housing for 2500 new homes, offices, other workspaces and further hotels are already quite advanced, but they do not appear to be following anything like the same hi-spec re-use agenda of the historic harbourside showcases.

Varvsstaden’s circular experiment broader influence Estie remains reserved. It notes that although it raised interest and awareness, the project’s level of complexity have left architects and clients “overwhelmed”, and Gjuteriet vulnerable to becoming a one trick pony charge. There are, Estie adds, plenty of more recent buildings in Malmö ready for circular workovers, but next to none as interesting, bland, and in his eyes ugly.

Around the harbourside and around Gjuteriet: Varvsstaden development  – photo Oliver Lowenstein

This said other, moves are afoot: across town to the south in Hyllie, another new district, Wingårdh Arkitekter’s master planner and developer Granitor Properties Embassy of Sharing, also includes several new circular features. Droppen, a fourteen-storey housing block, integrates reused bricks at ground level, while the remaining upper floors showcase repurposed Alfa Laval stainless steel heat exchanger plates across its facade. Another project, furniture made from local waste across the site, includes construction timber and rough CLT offcuts collaboratively designed by Småland furniture makers Swedese and Malmö’s interior designers Addentity Interiör. Their work populates the potlatch of new builds, including Fyrtornet, Wingårdh’s new eleven-storey timber office, which is currently the tallest timber office in Sweden.

There’s also Återbyggnadsdepå, a building materials re-use depot, where a wide collection of materials can be sourced, both by builders and the general public. What isn’t clear is the impact on the wider construction sector. It’s unfair to get our hopes up regarding a surge in scaling circular construction in Malmö and Sweden,as it feels as though the foundations of these new and old ways of building haven’t quite found a footing.