In the shadow of the mighty Skuleberget mountain there is a building, inspired by nature, that has attracted much attention. And which has come about with the aid of ‘geological surgery’, a precise incision made into the bedrock.

The landscape forced down by the inland ice is now springing back and rising out of the sea. Nowhere has this happened more than along the High Coast, which is the reason for the area being included in UNESCO’s natural world heritage list. White has designed five nature centres around the country. Two more are under development. However, the High Coast project has attracted the most attention to date – including internationally.

The task for the competition was clear: To create a nature centre that acts as a gateway to the countryside, a building that sharpens the appetite for the main course.

Our proposal won the day, and we also triumphed in the separate competition regarding the exhibition.

“The environment was incredibly dramatic and gratifying to work with,” says architect Ulla Antonsson. “The busy E4 motorway is just a couple of hundred metres away. But at the foot of the legendary Skuleberget mountain it is like looking straight into a John Bauer illustration.”

When a boulder is cracked or a tree trunk split, fracture surfaces are created. Interesting geometric patterns and angular displacements that provide a rich and varied expression.

It is precisely this coarse and anything but regular feel that characterises the High Coast nature centre.

The simple, straight base of the building, dominated by icy glass surfaces, is crowned with large, irregular bodies that rise up through the roof and are reminiscent of large erratic boulders.

The interior of the High Coast nature centre is characterised by unusual angles and variations in terms of rhythm, scale and colour. The glazed long side represents the ice. The inner concrete wall symbolises the mountain. However, White’s victorious exhibition “Impressions” has a visual impact that is anything but monochromatic.

The exterior colouring also uses a range of greys, with concrete and fibre cement the dominant materials.

In environmental terms, the location has provided obvious benefits – not least when it comes to energy savings – and the surgery has also been applied to the vegetation. Surface layers that have been peeled off during construction have been lifted back into place, with tree stumps and everything. The wild grass is spreading out, and by the time of the inauguration in summer 2007, much of the past and future wilderness feel was in full bloom.

The approach that Mattias and Ulla refer to as ‘geological surgery’ is primarily a description of the basic concept. They wanted to expose the mountain’s secret, to combine education and architecture in harmony with nature. By making an incision in the land, a patch of the terrain has been lifted up and a building inserted halfway. The result is what the competition jury characterised as “an unobtrusive but nevertheless sculpturally expressive building interacting closely with the location, the mountain and the sea”.