“We are interested in the point where nature and culture collapse into one another.”
— Bigert & Bergström
In response to a commission from Riksbyggen, Bigert & Bergström have created a sculptural chamber in the form of an egg-shaped sauna that has been installed at Luossabacken in Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost town.
Kiruna is currently undergoing a radical transformation, which involves a gigantic move for the whole town. This is so that the mining company LKAB can extract more of the iron seam that cuts diagonally downwards beneath the town. The iron ore is and has been – ever since it first began to be extracted at the end of the 19th century – an important source of income for Sweden, and absolutely vital for the town of Kiruna. No mine, no town. But the breaking up and devastating transformation of the landscape, the environment and the architecture caused by the move are also sparking a lot of debate.
Solar Egg has been made as a social sculpture where local people and visitors to the town can meet and, for instance, discuss these challenges. In the arctic climate of Lapland the sauna occupies a key position, as a room for warmth and reflection. B&B have taken up this tradition and developed a sculptural symbol that prompts thoughts of rebirth and an incubator that nurtures conversation and exchanges of ideas. The project is a continuation of the artists’ strategy to incorporate the climate into the experience of the artwork which was initiated with the Climate Chambers in 1994.
The egg is made out of stainless golden mirror sheeting, its multifaceted form breaking up the surroundings that it reflects into a multiplicity of different mirror images. Landscape, mine, town, sky, sun and snow are here combined into a fragmented image that can evoke associations with the complexity spanned by today’s discussion about climate and sustainable community development.
The egg’s interior has been formed out of wood, with the wall panels and floor decking made out of pine and the bench of aspen. In the center of the egg stand the wood-heated, heart-shaped sauna stove made out of iron and stone. The temperature inside the egg varies between 75° and 85° Celsius.
In Stockholm’s archipelago lies the art institution Artipelag, where Bigert & Bergström presented their exhibition Eye of the Storm in the winter of 2017-2018. Solar Egg was placed in the institution’s park.
Photo: Samuel Lind
Solar Egg has been placed on the terras of Skellefteå Konsthall in relation to Bigert & Bergström`s solo exhibition, The Broken Greenhouse which will be on view between 11th February and 21st of May 2023.
Solar Egg exists between artifact and apparition. Set against the vast northern landscape, the structure appears almost impossible: a reflective golden form deposited within snow and silence like a celestial remnant or ritual object from an unknown civilization.
Yet its purpose remains profoundly human. Conceived as a sauna for the mining town of Kiruna during a period of geographic displacement and urban transformation, the work transforms architecture into a site of collective restoration. Heat, reflection, and shelter become gestures of care within an environment shaped by extraction and movement.
Bigert & Bergström approach architecture not as permanence, but as atmospheric intervention — something capable of altering perception, emotion, and social ritual simultaneously. The faceted shell mirrors the Arctic horizon in fractured fragments, folding landscape, sky, and body into a continuously shifting surface.
Within the archive, Solar Egg endures as both sculpture and sanctuary: a rare architectural object whose symbolic gravity equals its physical presence. It reminds us that even in the coldest terrains, design can function as warmth — not only thermal, but cultural, communal, and mythic.
Words & images courtesy of Bigert & Bergström
