Torslanda, Sweden
2024 - 2026
Nāst Treehouses
On a hilltop in the Gothenburg suburb of Torslanda, Volvo Cars’ new headquarters will combine office, workshop facilities, and car labs. Incorporating a stilt construction, our design integrates the building into the surrounding nature.
Project details
Client
Steptura (for Volvo Cars)
Status
Northwest of the Swedish city of Gothenburg on the island of Hisingen lies Torslanda – a small village of 10,000 inhabitants, and the home of world-renowned car brand Volvo. An addition to Volvo Cars’ existing head office in Torslanda, our design for the treehouses aims to unite various disciplines and create a dynamic and collaborative environment.
For the design of the 26,000 m2 space, we drew inspiration from the surrounding forest, designing the building volumes to sit on the hilly terrain using stilts. The design includes offices, a meeting center, cafeteria, coffee shop, reception, exhibition area, and lab workshop. To emphasize the human scale, the building is broken down into smaller volumes, while its timber structure, featuring vertical wooden facades, directly references nature.
“At Volvo Cars, our focus is always on people and their needs. In collaboration with the Henning Larsen, we have designed a workspace rooted in humancentric design principles. By integrating the natural environment of the nearby forest, we enhance employee well-being and creativity. Our aim is to establish a modern workplace that prioritizes comfort, flexibility, and personal growth, supporting both internal and external collaboration,” says Gunnar Wijk, Head of Workplace Experience Design, Volvo Cars.
“By integrating the natural environment of the nearby forest, we enhance employee well-being and creativity. Our aim is to establish a modern workplace that prioritizes comfort, flexibility, and personal growth.”
Martin Stenberg Ringnér
Associate Design Director, Henning Larsen
Embracing local nature
Situated on a hilltop characterized by cliffs, rocky soil, and forest, the project’s landscape strategy is centered around reusing on-site resources – both mineral and organic.
This strategy turns to the hill as a central resource, from rough stone formations to a merging landscape of forest and mineral soils. The building design integrates into the topography, offering spaces for relaxation, activity, and exploration, while emphasizing a minimalistic material approach focused on the existing characteristics of the site.
Materials have been chosen carefully and in connection with the surrounding environment. Forest terraces are constructed with local wood, and stones will be used to create seating, as well as to construct texture paths in the forest. On the forest side of the campus, people are invited to embrace the proximity of nature. Textured paths made with gravel, stones and wood elements lead through the dense mossy forest, offering various activities along the way.
“The ambition for the project is to keep as much of the nature untouched and let the unique, green surroundings, with its biodiversity, be the main attraction for the place, while creating modern office buildings that encourage people to interact with nature and each other,” says Carolina Grenaa Nemeth, Landscape Lead, Henning Larsen.
Microclimate as a design driver
With strong winds present in Torslanda almost all year round, an understanding of the local climate is crucial to our design. During the winter, winds are neutralized through existing trees and bushes, while a tree canopy around the building shelters the structure itself. People walking between the buildings are sheltered from the wind by strategic structural placement.
Direct sun exposure heavily influences thermal comfort, with excess sunlight in the summer and a lack of it in the winter months. During summer and shoulder seasons, the area around the site will benefit from surrounding trees which will offer shaded areas and reduce heat stress. In the winter, deciduous trees will lose their leaves, increasing sun exposed areas.
An innovative workspace
The Torslanda campus employs 6,500 people and produces more than 300,000 cars annually, all of which Volvo has pledged will be electric by 2030. In this transition, the treehouses will play a key role in solving the challenges of new solutions for mobility.
“Our vision is to create the future workspace for Volvo Cars. A place that promotes innovation and collaboration and can attract and retain the best talents. The Nāst Treehouses will make it attractive to come into work every day whilst also becoming a destination for everyone in Torslanda.” says Martin Stenberg Ringnér, Associate Design Director, Henning Larsen.
Bringing employees together for social and active meetings is a central aim for the treehouses. For this purpose, the design incorporates wooden platforms in different sizes throughout the area. Large ones for social gatherings such as celebrations or lunch in the sun, and smaller ones scattered around the forest to explore, or use for relaxation.
Office floors are designed with a high degree of flexibility and the perspective that no size fits all to accommodate the needs of different teams and departments. Along with office facilities, the building accommodates car workshops, labs, a coffee shop, and a canteen.
The construction of the Nāst Treehouses began in the first quarter of 2024 and is expected to be finished by 2026, in time for Volvo Cars’ one-hundred-year anniversary in 2027.
Contact
All contacts
Martin Stenberg
Associate Design Director
Head of Department, Landscape
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