Image: Församlingshemmet (parish hall), detail, designed by István Poroszlay (1970). Photo: Hans-Olof Utsi
Kin, the contemporary art museum in Kiruna, opens István Poroszlay: världsarkitektur i Kiruna (István Poroszlay: World Architecture in Kiruna) on 13 October 2026. The exhibition, on view until 7 March 2027, is devoted to the architect behind several of the northern Swedish town's best-known buildings, at a time when many of them are threatened by the relocation of the city.
Poroszlay (1923–2015) trained in Budapest and fled to Sweden in connection with the Hungarian uprising of 1956. In Kiruna he designed Samegården, the parish hall and Centralskolan, buildings the museum describes as marked by strong forms, clear silhouettes, dynamic compositions and playful ornament. Before founding Malmfältens arkitektkontor in the mid-1960s he also designed a number of private villas, some with an almost cosmopolitan character. For a time he was the only architect both living and working in Kiruna; in 1966 his former fellow student Robert Hont (1926–2011) arrived from Budapest and became the office's first employee.
As mining undermines the ground, parts of the post-war town are being demolished or abandoned. The exhibition asks what happens to an architect's work when the city itself moves. It presents Poroszlay's preliminary studies, sketches and photographs, a new video by the architect and artist Ulrika Karlsson based on 3D scans of some of his buildings, several of them already demolished or at risk, and a survey by the Kiruna photographer Hans-Olof Utsi documenting almost every building in the town designed by Poroszlay and his office.
The exhibition is a collaboration between Kin, the Municipality of Kiruna and ArkDes, Sweden's national centre for architecture and design in Stockholm, and draws on archive material from the municipality and ArkDes's collection. It forms part of ArkDes's research and exhibition project Arkitektur i Sápmi, carried out with the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo.
The opening on 13 October, from 4 to 6 pm in the town hall's main hall, includes a ceremony with a work by Carola Grahn and Nils-Johan Labba, talks by ArkDes curators and the municipal antiquarian, and contributions from Karlsson, Utsi and Poroszlay's daughter, Marta von Poroszlay.
