Stockholm makes Kista a testbed for office reuse

Stockholm makes Kista a research testbed for transforming office districts

Stockholm and ArkDes, part of Moderna Museet, are starting a practice-based research project that uses Kista as a testbed, with teams chosen through an open call studying how office buildings and underused sites can be reused.

3 November 2026 by Robert Eduard Antal, facts checked automatically against the source · updated 4 November 2026

Key facts

Stockholm city and ArkDes, part of Moderna Museet, are starting a collaboration on the future of Kista.

Through an open call, interdisciplinary teams with skills including architecture and design will work on concrete challenges in Kista.

The work will examine how existing office buildings can take on new functions and how underused sites can be developed.

Stockholm city and ArkDes, part of Moderna Museet, are starting a collaboration on the future of Kista, one of Sweden’s largest workplace areas. In a new practice-based research project, interdisciplinary teams will study how existing office buildings, urban spaces and infrastructure can be used as resources when a large workplace area is developed to meet new needs. The aim is knowledge that can be used in urban development across the whole country.

Why Kista

Kista is shaped by the extensive build-out of offices and infrastructure that took place in the late 1900s. Today the area is developing towards a more mixed district, while its role as a place for business needs to be strengthened. This raises a question many cities face: what to do with areas created specifically for offices or manufacturing when needs change. According to ArkDes, office environments from the late 1900s are relatively unexplored.

How the project works

Through an open call, interdisciplinary teams with skills including architecture and design will work on concrete challenges in Kista. The work will examine, among other things:

how existing office buildings can take on new functions;
how underused sites can be developed;
how the area’s existing architectural, cultural-historical and spatial qualities can be put to use.

Another important part is to explore new forms of cooperation between the city, property owners and other actors, and to invite more voices into urban development. The project will also involve property owners in the area. “Kista needs renewal,” said Torleif Falk, city architect at the City Planning Administration.

Wider relevance and next steps

In many places in Sweden and internationally, office areas need to be developed to meet changing ways of working and new needs. At the same time, climate and resource issues increase the demand to make use of what already exists. The ambition is that experience from Kista will add to general knowledge about how office areas can be transformed and how public and private actors can cooperate in such processes.

A knowledge day, RE:purpose Kista, takes place on 6 November from 9.00 to 12.00, where Swedish and international actors will discuss how workplace areas can get a new life. Participants include Torleif Falk and Kris Johnson-Jones, senior strategist at ArkDes/Moderna Museet.

The project is part of ArkDes’ research strand Omvandling (Transformation) and is an independent continuation of the practice-based project Omvandling – RE:purpose, which in 2025–2026 examined how existing buildings and environments can be transformed instead of demolished.

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