Gert Wingårdh (born 1951) is a Swedish architect whose company, Wingårdh arkitektkontor, maintains an international practice. Personal life Gert Wingårdh was born 1951 into a wealthy family in Skövde, Västergötland county, as the only child. His father owned the local cement factory and the family’s house was built on a limestone mountain. Both cement and limestone are materials Wingårdh later has used in his work. When Wingårdh was ten the family moved to Gothenburg. After moving to Gothenburg he was bullied by other children for a while. As a teenager he took interest in art and cinema. Wingårdh still lives in metropolitan Gothenburg, near Marstrand in Kungälv Municipality with his family. His home, an old cottage in the picturesque setting of an ancient village, contrasts sharply with the modernist style and skyscrapers with squares and sharp edges that he designs in his professional life. Education Wingårdh studied economics, art history and architecture in the 1970s at Gothenburg University and Chalmers University of Technology, and has in interviews stated that it was a visit to the Pantheon, Rome, that made him decide to become an architect. Before deciding to become an architect he had plans to be an art-gallery owner. He received his degree in architecture from Chalmers in 1975. Career Gert Wingårdh started as an interior decorator in the 1970s. After graduating he joined an architectural firm for a short while before setting up his own office in 1977. He had his big breakthrough as a regular architect with the Öijared Executive Country Club outside Gothenburg in 1988. The building rendered him a Kasper Salin Prize. He has had a number of assignments in the United States and Germany in recent years. Wingårdh is also the creator of the Swedish embassies in Washington and Berlin. Most of his realized buildings, however, can be found in Sweden and in particular in the area of metropolitan Gothenburg. In 2007 Wingårdh won a major international competition for a large new shopping centre in Malmö, and in the same year seven of the twelve hottest architecture projects in the capital Stockholm – listed by a Swedish national daily – were designed by Wingårdh. Several spectacular projects have created considerable attention but remained unexecuted, such as a conference centre in Östersund, Jämtland, on the top of a mountain, called Breath of Life. Features developed in these experimental projects do occasionally return in built projects later,