Denise Hagströmer

Title of dissertation: In Search of a National Vision: Swedish Embassies from the Mid-twentieth Century to the Present


My PhD thesis charts the meeting of ‘Swedish Modern’ and international high politics in Swedish embassies. It examines how national values were and are materialised and expressed in selected cases. The construction, use and experience of both exteriors and interiors are analysed. Current knowledge of Swedish embassies is very superficial, despite an ongoing reassessment of the country’s national design legacy. 


My study examines how embassies ‘work’, and assesses the architectural dialogue between the Swedish embassies and their host nations. It might be expected that a nation’s embassies be similar across the world; but my thesis demonstrates that this is conclusively not the case. An embassy design and spatial typology is also provided, together with analysis of the contributions by professionals and those, previously overlooked, including the diplomat spouse as amateur producer of events. Primary sources including national and personal archives and interviews, are synthesised with ideas coming from recent international research concerning nationalism, nation building and nation formation.


This thesis contests the prevailing narrow conceptions of Swedish modernity and received notions of the homogenous and stereotypical image of Swedish Modernism and posits an inflected historicist–traditionalist form of Swedish Modern. It also provides a new perspective on the design and material culture of Swedish ‘welfare nationalism’ and Swedish international identity.