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M r Stoschek, White Arkitekter is the largest Swedish architectural office
with 13 branches in Sweden, Denmark and London. What prompted you
to apply there?
I want to be honest. Before starting to research traineeships, I didn’t even know
White Arkitekter. I had, however, already during my bachelor studies felt very attrac-
ted to Scandinavian architecture and thus an increasing number of offices from this
region had been on my list. After I had discovered that White Arkitekter, who are very
committed to climate protection, are probably the leading architectural office in
Northern Europe, I was motivated to try my luck there in Sweden, although I had
been accepted by two renowned offices in Denmark. But the interview at White was
so convincing that my decision was quickly made.

r Give us an insight into the working- and project world at White!
To understand White and their philosophy, one must know one thing: The company
structure is fundamentally different from the one of other offices. Of the 800 em-
ployees, more than 600 are partners. White is thus for a large part collectively and
collaboratively organized. This is of course also noticeable in the everyday office life. Fotos: Åke Eson Lindman
In addition to the very flat hierarchies, there is a great deal of transparency which
makes the conversational tone in the office very pleasant and family-like. And that
is really saying something. The reason being that, during my traineeship in Stock- Whites Architekturbüro im hippen Stadtteil Södermalm ... • White’s architectural office in the hip ...
holm, almost 200 employees were working there and only nine trainees – relatively
few for an office of this size. On the one hand, this had the advantage that we could
be perfectly familiarized. We took part in internal trainings and were quickly able to
come into contact with other employees without the risk of remaining stuck in a
“trainee bubble”. On the other hand, I was in fact the only foreign trainee and thus
it was not always easy for me to break through the sometimes a bit reserved men-
tality of the Swedes.

r On the homepage of White Arkitekter, it is written: “Our mission is to enable
sustainable life through the art of architecture.” To what extent was this mission
noticeable in your everyday routine?
Put briefly – very much! Just recently, an increasing number of offices – mainly for
reasons of marketing – have claimed a similar slogan just to end up decorating a
building designed as a concrete skeleton construction with a sparsely greened fa-
çade. The Swedes and particularly White Arkitekter are already thinking far ahead
in this respect. Wood as the sustainable construction material per se is used in prac- ... bietet den Mitarbeitern eine Dachterrasse ... • ... district of Södermalm offers the staff a roof terrace ...
tically all the projects which has enabled Whit to already collect an incredible
amount of expertise in this field. The issue of the construction material often doesn’t ... und ist innen lichtdurchflutet. • ... and is light-flooded on the inside.
even come up anymore; rather, it is already being questioned whether the constantly
increasing use of this raw material is really the non plus ultra when it comes to su-
stainability. This mission is also continued in the everyday office life. The meals of-
fered are exclusively vegan, the employees are urged to take business trips by train
and, for shorter routes, bicycles are available for the employees.

r In Germany, working conditions for architects – at least prior to the Corona cri-
sis – had last been better than they had been for 30 years. What does the job
market for architects in Stockholm and Sweden look like?
When I arrived in Stockholm in August 2019, I gathered from the first talks with the
staff that it had no longer been all that easy to get one of the sought-after jobs during
the past months. Unfortunately, some employees even had to leave in the spring.
This is exactly what was to happen again. In one of the monthly Monday meetings
with the whole office, it was announced that approximately 25 of the close to 200
employees had to be dismissed. This was a shock for everyone, of course. With the
justification that the above-average boom of the building sector during the past
months and years was now slowly decreasing to the normal level again, all at once
one eight of the staff was sacked! This process took several weeks. There were nego-
tiations with Sverige Arkitekter, Sweden’s very influential chamber of architects, and
attempts were made to place employees in other branches. Still, the atmosphere du-
ring lunch breaks was very tense from then on since everyone was afraid of receiving
the news that there would not be a future here for him or her. This was my negative
experience here in Stockholm and made me realize that I as well may not be spared
in a few years from now and will enter the real working world which can sometimes
be very hard.

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