Hotel Al Rasheed and Orrefors

Hotel Al Rasheed and Orrefors – a tale of an amazing hotel and spectacular chandeliers

During Sommarutställning Pukeberg 2022, (Re-)learning the archive, in collaboration with the research project Design history in other geographies, shows the exhibition Hotel Al Rasheed and Orrefors – a tale of an amazing hotel and spectacular chandeliers. The exhibition is open 18 / 6-6 / 8, every day 11-17 (closed midsummer weekend).

In this exhibition we want to highlight a piece of unwritten Swedish-Iraqi history of design – a story of design of the highest quality, of world politics and war.

The seventh summit of the Non-Aligned Movement was planned to take place in Baghdad in 1982. It was an important meeting where delegates from the global South were to discuss critical common questions. A meeting of this calibre needed a setting, a premise, that corresponded to the dignity of the event. The assignment to carry out the construction went to Skanska in Kalmar in 1978. The Danish architect Ole Helweg was behind the building design and the interiors were mainly delivered by Swedish companies, many of them from Småland. No expenses were spared in giving the meeting its material setting.