The Nobel Center will offer visitors the opportunity to view exhibitions, attend school programmes, listen to lectures and participate in conversations about issues that are important in solving the major challenges of the future. It will be a place for Nobel Prize laureates, Stockholm residents, tourists, school children and their teachers.
“We live in a time of war in Europe. Human rights are being violated. Free speech is being attacked, and we are seeing campaigns against facts and science. The Nobel Center will stand for the opposite. There we will tell the stories of pioneering, creative and courageous laureates, who for more than a century have contributed to the greatest benefit to humankind – making solid contributions that have changed the world, that give us hope and also strongly influence our future,” says Vidar Helgesen, Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation.
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Students and teachers are an important target group for the Nobel Center. The ambition is that all school children in Sweden will visit the Center at some point during their school years. Teachers will be offered lesson materials and in-service training. There will also be extensive programme and exhibition activities at the Nobel Center based on the laureates, their discoveries and their works. Photo by Clément Morin.
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Nobel Prize laureates visiting Stockholm will be invited to the Nobel Center. At today’s Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm’s Old Town, all laureates who drop by are asked to donate an artefact and sign their name on one of the chairs in the museum’s Bistro. Pictured are economic sciences laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee visiting the museum during Nobel Week. Photo by Clément Morin.
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Students and teachers are an important target group for the Nobel Center. The ambition is that all school children in Sweden will visit the Center at some point during their school years. Teachers will be offered lesson materials and in-service training. There will also be extensive programme and exhibition activities at the Nobel Center based on the laureates, their discoveries and their works. Photo by Clément Morin.
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Nobel Prize laureates visiting Stockholm will be invited to the Nobel Center. At today’s Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm’s Old Town, all laureates who drop by are asked to donate an artefact and sign their name on one of the chairs in the museum’s Bistro. Pictured are economic sciences laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee visiting the museum during Nobel Week. Photo by Clément Morin.
David Chipperfield Architects will design the Nobel Center. The local architect will be Sweco. The Erling-Persson Foundation and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation will finance the construction of the building together with the Nobel Foundation.
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Nobel Center Talks is a series of programme activities that explore the significance of the Nobel Center in Stockholm, the surrounding region, Sweden and in an international context. Based on a given theme, key individuals from the City of Stockholm, the business community, the school system and the museum sector are invited to share their experiences and contribute knowledge and reflections. The theme of the first activity was “Reinventing Museums”. Dr Tilly Blyth, Head of Collections at the Science Museum in London, was one of the speakers at the first Nobel Center Talks. Photo by Clément Morin.
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In the years leading up to the opening, there will be a number of initiatives to show future visitors what they will be able to experience at the Nobel Center. One of these initiatives was the highly publicised and acclaimed exhibition Life Eternal at Liljevalchs Art Gallery in Stockholm. Photo by Jean-Baptiste Béranger.
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Nobel Center Talks is a series of programme activities that explore the significance of the Nobel Center in Stockholm, the surrounding region, Sweden and in an international context. Based on a given theme, key individuals from the City of Stockholm, the business community, the school system and the museum sector are invited to share their experiences and contribute knowledge and reflections. The theme of the first activity was “Reinventing Museums”. Dr Tilly Blyth, Head of Collections at the Science Museum in London, was one of the speakers at the first Nobel Center Talks. Photo by Clément Morin.
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In the years leading up to the opening, there will be a number of initiatives to show future visitors what they will be able to experience at the Nobel Center. One of these initiatives was the highly publicised and acclaimed exhibition Life Eternal at Liljevalchs Art Gallery in Stockholm. Photo by Jean-Baptiste Béranger.
In a review in the Stockholm daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter, art and design critic Birgitta Rubin wrote about the exhibition Life Eternal:
“But as a preview of a future Nobel Prize Museum at the new Center, ‘Life Eternal’ promises good content. This boundary-breaching exhibition mixes hand-picked art, specially commissioned works and artefacts from the museum with several interactive installations depicting scientific and literary advances in history. In any case, wandering through the twelve halls increases my hope that the Nobel Center will truly be ‘an open house for science, culture and dialogue’, as the Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation has assured us.”
Facts about the Nobel Center
- The Nobel Center will offer a broad range of public activities including exhibitions, school programmes, lectures and conversations about the major issues of the future. The public activities that are already being conducted around the world, digitally and at the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm’s Old Town, will be further developed and scaled up for the opening of the Nobel Center.
- The Erling-Persson Foundation and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation will be funding the construction together with The Nobel Foundation.
- David Chipperfield Architects has been engaged to design the Nobel Center at Slussen in Stockholm. This is one of the world’s most respected architectural firms, which also became quite familiar with the public activities surrounding the Nobel Prize during the previous Nobel Center project. The local architect will be Sweco.
- Construction of the Nobel Center is planned on the property designated as Södermalm 7:87 (Hamnmästaren) along Stadsgårdskajen, just east of Slussen on the northern waterfront of Södermalm island. The property is part of the existing detailed local plan for Slussen, which has gained legal force. The site was originally intended for an office building. The local plan includes clear and binding limits on the building’s design, for example in terms of maximum height and width.
- The start of construction is planned for 2027, with a two-year construction period. Inauguration may occur during 2031.
In the words of the Center’s main financiers:
“The Nobel Center will offer people both in Sweden and internationally a place for knowledge, inspiration and exciting encounters. The Nobel Prize is well established in the world and shows the importance of science, culture and peace efforts as driving forces for positive global development. The Nobel Center will make all of this accessible to a larger audience. For us at the Erling-Persson Foundation, it thus feels important − together with the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation – to contribute to the implementation of this initiative,” says Stefan Persson, Chairman of the Erling-Persson Foundation.
“For research and education at Swedish institutions of higher education, the Nobel Prize is incredibly important − for the broader image of Sweden as an advanced scientific nation but also for its powerful role in attracting researchers and graduate students to our country. We believe that a Nobel Center that is accessible to everyone, in the heart of the city − filled with inspiring content and providing a place for dialogue across national, disciplinary and societal boundaries − will be highly valuable to our country. We are therefore pleased to join with the Erling-Persson Foundation to make the establishment of a Nobel Center possible,” says Peter Wallenberg Jr, Chairman of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.