Rasmus Wærn is a Swedish architect, historian and critic.
He was born in Gothenburg in 1961 and got his training as architect at Chalmers University of Technology (M.Arch. 1988) and presented his doctoral thesis on the history of architectural competitions in Sweden at the same school in 1996. The same year he took the seat as an editor at the Swedish Review of Architecture (Arkitektur), a position he remained at until 2004. Parallel to the editing he also edited, published and contributed to numerous books on Swedish architecture on Arkitektur Förlag, as the first guide to architecture in Sweden.
Wærn has also been curating exhibitions as “Architecture in the 20th Century: Sweden” for the German Museum of Architecture in Frankfurt am Main in 1998 and “Eleven Houses” at the Swedish Museum of Architecture in 2008. In 1998 he was appointed by the government as a member of the board at the same museum, a position held until year 2001.
His interest has focused on the conditions for the making of architecture in the dawn of the modern society in Sweden as well for the contemporary situation. He has lectured extensively on these subjects in Sweden, mainly at KTH, the Royal College of Technology in Stockholm, as well as internationally. Today he works as a writing architect and in-house critic at the firm of Gert Wingårdh. Together with the principal he edited the anthology “Crucial Words; Conditions for Contemporary Architecture” in 2008. Apart from addressing the professional audience, he is concerned with public education, and has for more than 20 years been a frequent writer in Swedish daily press as GöteborgsPosten and Svenska Dagbladet. He is chairman for the Swedish Alvar Aalto Society and a frequent jury member in architectural competition and prize boards.
An extensive list of this writing is available at www.nordicarchitecture.com where his contact info also is to be found. The most significant books and texts are:
Tävlingarnas tid. Arkitekttävlingarnas betydelse i borgerlighetens Sverige. Arkitektur förlag 1996.
Guide to the Architecture of Stockholm. Arkitektur Förlag 1998.
Guide to the Architecture of Sweden. Svenska Institutet 2001.
Architect Gert Wingårdh. Birkhäuser Verlag 2001.
Crucial Words. Conditions for Contemporary Architecture (editor together with Gert Wingårdh) Birkhäuser Verlag 2008.
Scandinavia: Prefabrication as a Model of Society, in “Home Delivery; Fabricating the Modern Dwelling” ed B Bergdoll, MoMA 2008.
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