Feskekôrka, Gothenburg’s 150-year-old fish and seafood hall, has reopened following a careful restoration that reasserts its timber structure, reinstates its relationship to the canal, and removes intrusive services from the nave-like market interior by relocating them to a new technical basement.
Feskekôrka Technical Information
- Architects: White Arkitekter
- Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
- Project Years: 2018 – 2024
- Photographs: © Kalle Sanner
By restoring the physical connection and reestablishing a visual link to the water, we hope to rekindle Gothenburgers’ awareness of Feskekôrka’s original bond with the waterways that flow through the city.
– Viktor Göthe
Architectural Lineage and Urban Setting
Completed in 1874 and designed by Victor von Gegerfelt, Feskekôrka translates Nordic stave church and neo-Gothic references into a secular market typology. A sequence of dramatic timber arches spans a single, uninterrupted volume, while a spired silhouette raises the roof profile above the city’s quays. The colloquial “Fish Church” name acknowledges the ecclesiastical resonance of its section and the didactic legibility of a structure that reads directly as space.
Set at the canal’s edge, the hall once operated as a waterside marketplace, its logistics and identity shaped by daily exchanges across the quay. Over time, that connection diminished. The restoration returns the building to its hydrological context by clearing sightlines, reorienting thresholds, and amplifying the axial relation between the nave-like interior and the waterfront. Treating the market as a civic interior preserves the long-span proportions and the clarity of the arch rhythm, allowing daylight to define the room and the urban edge simultaneously.
Forensic Conservation of the Timber Structure
Mid-20th-century interventions had replaced portions of the original timber and masonry support with concrete, obscuring how the building worked. The project removed these later additions to recover the historic system of brick buttresses, granite plinths, and timber frames. This enabled a recalibration of the original load paths, with arch thrusts once again resolved by the buttress-and-plinth ensemble rather than by concealed concrete substitutions.
Carpentry was undertaken as both structural repair and material pedagogy. Worn rafters and beams were replaced with Swedish pine, and existing members were conserved with traditional joinery, wooden pegs, and cast-iron bolts. The approach respects historic fabrication while distinguishing new from old, making the frame’s chronology legible without compromising the continuity of performance.
Conservation decisions were guided by structural clarity. Restoring bearing points to their granite bases improves longevity and inspection, while reconstituting the braced timber logic aids lateral stability in a way consistent with the hall’s original engineering. The result is a readable primary frame in which the tectonic role of each element is evident and verifiable, aligning heritage objectives with robust structural behavior.
Systems Below Grade to Recover Light and Volume
A new technical basement consolidates ventilation, refrigeration, and service equipment below grade, freeing the hall from the machinery that had encroached on its floor area and light. Removing equipment from the main space restores the continuous span of the arches, clarifies circulation along the central axis, and allows daylight to wash the interior without obstruction.
Contemporary programs for food preparation and storage are integrated as discreet, furniture-like insertions rather than permanent partitions. Tiled kitchen stations recall the building’s historical stalls, using rounded edges, robust detailing, and wide grout lines that converse with the masonry facades. Their material register situates them within the hall’s palette, yet their precision and proportion clearly mark them as contemporary additions.
By decanting services to the basement, the visible envelope remains largely untouched, and the spatial reading of the hall is preserved from floor to roof ridge. Views across the nave remain open, perimeter activities are held low to maintain the arch springing line, and maintenance access is improved below ground, reducing operational clutter in the public volume.
Heritage Governance and Public Realm Strategies
As a listed building, Feskekôrka’s alterations followed a formal approvals process with heritage authorities focused on safeguarding significant values, including the structural legibility of the timber frame and the generosity of the market interior. The project privileges retention and repair over replacement, with documentation and inspection informing each intervention to ensure traceable decision-making.
Adaptation for current market use relies on reversible or low-visibility insertions. The basement aggregates high-intensity services that might otherwise compromise the envelope, while new fit-out elements touch the historic fabric lightly and are designed to be demountable. Durability is addressed through robust materials at points of wear, but detailing avoids embedding new systems in ways that would preclude future conservation.
Re-establishing the canal connection functions as both conservation and urban design. By clarifying waterfront access and opening visual contact between hall and quay, the project restores site memory and orientation for visitors and traders. The market’s daily life is again legible from the canal, and the building resumes its role as a civic hinge between the city’s interior spaces and its working waterfront.
About White Arkitekter
White Arkitekter is an interdisciplinary architectural practice based in Sweden, founded in 1951. With a strong commitment to sustainable design, the firm integrates social, ecological, and architectural considerations into each project. Its approach emphasizes collaboration, innovation, and a deep respect for place and heritage, guiding transformative interventions across urban, cultural, and civic contexts.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Client: Higab
- Construction company: Skeppsviken
