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Almqvist, Osvald
(b Trankil, Värmland, 2 Oct 1884; d Stockholm, 6 April 1950). Swedish architect. After graduating from the Kungliga Tekniska Högskola in Stockholm (1909), with Gunnar Asplund, Sigurd Lewerentz and others he joined the Klara School, a free studio for drawing established in opposition to the classical academy education. He began by training in industrial planning and workers’ housing: both Forshuvudfors hydro-electric power station (1917) and Bergslagsby housing estate (1915) at Borlänge have traditionalist architectural elements, although their planning is rational and economical. In collaboration with Vattenbyggnadsbyran Consulting Engineers he developed the planning of hydro-electric plants into a process of constructional simplicity, where the design is derived from the machinery and functional requirements. The exteriors make expressive use of plain, sharply defined elements such as thin sheet-metal roofs and ribbon windows: characteristic examples include the stations at Hammarfors and Krangfors (1925–8; later extended) in northern Sweden, and the Chenderoh Plant (1926–30; with Palmer & Tritton Consulting Engineers) on the Perak River in Malaysia. A series of school buildings, including Domnarvet Training School (1932), Borlänge and Luleå Vocational School (1936), employs the same vocabulary of plain, smooth-cast façades and thin, low-pitched roofs. Almqvist contributed to the development of modern housing in work for a committee for the design of workers’ housing (1920), in his studies of kitchen standardization (1922–34) and in a series of flats and homes at the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. He also worked in industrial design (e.g. lampposts and a standard spiral staircase in cast iron). As a pioneer of modern urban planning he made development plans for Arsta (1939), a suburb of Stockholm, and for smaller communities. From 1936 to 1938 he was head of the Stockholm City Park Department and from 1940 to 1948 urban-planning officer in Södertälje.
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