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Bergsten, Carl (Gustav)
(b Norrköping, 10 May 1879; d Stockholm, 22 April 1935). Swedish architect and designer. After studies at the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan and the Kungliga Akademien för de fria Konsterna in Stockholm (1897–1903), he travelled in Europe and became acquainted with modernist architecture in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. He participated in the architectural debate both as a teacher and as the editor of the Arkitektur (1912–16), and he joined the opposition to academic training when with Ragnar Östberg, Ivar Tengbom and others he started the Klara School, a free studio, for a group of young architects, which included Gunnar Asplund, Sigura Lewerentz and Osvald Almqvist. Bergsten’s early works show the influence of Joseph Maria Olbrich, for example Olai Primary School (1908), the Lithografen Printing Co. (1911) and the Scandinavian Bank building (1906–8), all in Norrköping. These buildings combine structural as well as decorative use of concrete with dark brickwork, in expressive and heavily massed volumes. Bergsten contrasted symmetry with asymmetry, and his preference for displaced or angled motifs sometimes created eccentric effects. In Hjorhagen Church (1909), a suburban brick chapel in Stockholm with a side steeple and an interior of parabolic arches, these tendencies are, however, well controlled, while Enskede Church (1913) is in a more Romantic vein.
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