“Stockholm’s a bubbling city,” declares design-mad Fredrik Carlström. Despite being a draw for new companies and home to innovation, what the capitol lacked, until recently, was “a hub for [creative] people to hang out.” That void has been filled by Alma, a members-only club with communal work space facilities created by Carlström, its Chief Creative Officer as well as founder of Austere, a Stateside showroom for Scandinavian design.
Located in a building on Nybrogatan that was once home to Beckmans School of Design, the address is already familiar to many members, though the interiors are much more inviting. ‘We wanted it to feel homey, like someone’s lived here,” explains Carlström. “It’s not a blank canvas.” Quite the contrary, in fact, the space is filled with art. While the public have access to the shop and café, members can secure a dedicated seat, book the recording studio, and eat locally-sourced, seasonal food served on pottery designed for Alma by Rikard Palmquist and served at picnic-style tables of ash designed by the space’s architects Tham Videgård, winners of last year’s Building of the Year Award for the KTH School of Architecture.
With membership curated “the same way you curate a dinner party,” one is almost guaranteed an interesting dining partner. Still, we wondered, how do the self-contained and Socialist Swedes take to the idea of a by-invitation club? For many years, explains Programming Director Jun-Hi Wennergren Nordling, “it’s [been] really super provocative to talk about exclusivity and members, but that’s really changing now.” Carlström attributes this shift to travel; certainly the existence of places like SoHo and NeueHouse helped pave the way for Alma, too. “We see it as a members club not unlike a tennis club or a sailing club or a chess club,” says Carlström, explaining that at Alma, instead of a sport or a game uniting people, “it’s the project or the work or the creative thing you do during the day.”
