Johan Sundberg Wraps a Swedish Sticker Factory in an Undulating Timber Shell

Production buildings rarely aspire to civic presence. They occupy industrial estates as boxes: flat roofed, clad in corrugated metal, oriented so their loading docks face away from the street. The Stickerapp Urban Factory in Lomma, Sweden, designed by Johan Sundberg arkitektur, refuses every one of those defaults. Its undulating timber facade curves toward the street rather than retreating from it, its canopy shelters arrivals like a public building, and its ground floor restaurant is designed to open to the neighborhood several days a week. What was originally planned for 60 employees now holds 140, yet the architecture reads as generous rather than packed.

The most interesting move here is conceptual rather than formal. Sundberg placed the production hall at the heart of the plan, then wrapped offices, social spaces, and warehousing around it, connected through large glazed walls. The result is a factory you can see into from every workspace, a layout that mirrors the client's non-hierarchical culture and turns the act of making stickers into something visible, shared, and oddly dignified. The architecture argues that a production environment and a humane workplace are not opposing goals but the same brief.

A Facade Without a Back

Most factories have a front and a back. The Stickerapp building was designed to look good from all angles, and the undulating facade is the mechanism that makes this possible. Vertical timber cladding wraps the upper volume in a continuous rhythm, while a curved concrete base anchors the building to the ground and accommodates planted beds that soften the industrial context. At dusk the warmth of the wood catches ambient light, lending the structure a domestic glow that no sheet metal warehouse could achieve.

The deep roof overhang, lined with an exposed wood soffit, does practical work as well. It shields the entrance zone from rain and direct sunlight, functioning as a kind of outdoor vestibule where arrivals and departures happen under cover. The curve of the canopy is not decorative; it accommodates the building's program of movement, guiding trucks, cyclists, and pedestrians along different trajectories without signage or bollards. Bronsgatan in Lomma gains a piece of urban space where there was previously just a property line.

Simple Means, Unusual Warmth

The material palette is restrained and economical: pine plywood on interior walls, light terrazzo on the floors, Troldtekt acoustic ceiling tiles overhead. None of these are luxury finishes. What elevates them is precision. The pine plywood is detailed with minimal joints, so the cladding reads as a continuous surface rather than a patchwork of panels. Glass partitions use slender frames that keep sightlines open between offices and the central production hall. Exposed steel beams in the hall are left honest, their scale reinforcing the industrial purpose of the space without apology.

Site-built fixed furnishings, including elements in a common room with ping pong tables and reading nooks, contribute to an atmosphere that feels designed rather than furnished after the fact. Loose interior pieces were handled by Karolina Nilsson of White Arkitekter, adding a layer of considered domesticity to a building type that typically gets office furniture from a catalog. The cafeteria beside the entrance includes a professional-quality kitchen, reinforcing the idea that eating together is as much a part of the company's culture as manufacturing.

Why This Project Matters

The Stickerapp Urban Factory is a quiet rebuke to the notion that production buildings are exempt from architectural ambition. By centering the factory floor and wrapping it in communal program, Johan Sundberg created a workplace where hierarchy dissolves into visibility. Everyone sees the product being made; no one is relegated to a windowless corridor. High windows flood the office level with daylight, well-proportioned ventilation pipes give the production hall a technical rhythm, and the whole thing cost what a conventional industrial building would cost, just spent more carefully.

The broader lesson is about economy of means. Pine plywood, terrazzo, and Troldtekt are not heroic materials. Steel beams are not novel structure. But when these elements are assembled with graphic precision and governed by a clear idea about how people should work together, they produce something that outperforms buildings with ten times the budget. Lomma now has an industrial building that acts like a civic neighbor, and 140 employees work in a factory that feels like a place designed for humans first and logistics second.

Stickerapp Urban Factory by Johan Sundberg arkitektur, with project architect Henrik Ålund of Studio Ålund AB. Lomma, Sweden, 2021. Photography by Markus Linderoth.

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