Sergels torg

The street Klarabergsgatan leads west past the department store Åhléns City and Klara Church to the Klaraberg Viaduct and Kungsholmen.

Before the creation of Sergels torg, Brunkebergstorg was the most important public space in the area, the hub about which traffic revolved, the place where people would go to work and to find entertainment.

[1] Albert Lilienberg was appointed city-planning superintendent in 1927, and a year later he produced the first proposal for a public square on the location in his general plan of 1928.

The Chamber of Commerce was critical of the concept, concluding pedestrians on a lower level would produce poor business sites, an analysis which would eventually prove correct.

This counter-proposal was however produced in only two months, which made it easy for opponents to pin-down its weaknesses (mostly a failure to leave enough space for the metro which was being constructed at this time).

For the shape of this fountain, Helldén consulted his friend, the mathematician and artist Piet Hein, who in less than in minute found a curve with a "continuously varying bending" and immediately named it the superellipse.

The sculpture, finally completed in 1974 and since haunted by technical problems, never was able to deliver the intended visual output and - quoting Hall - "thus adds itself to the many projects within the [reconstruction of central Stockholm] that didn't endure confrontation with reality."

A contest in 1965 for this area included a cultural centre proposed by Pontus Hultén, the legendary founder of Moderna Museet who wished to see his museum relocated from the isolated island Skeppsholmen.