The head office was built from 1985 through 1987 by the Norwegian architect Niels Torp. SAS intended to build its head office in the lake Brunnsviken area, near an exit to Stockholm Arlanda Airport. The plans caused controversy since the municipal and regional planners wanted the area to be used for recreation purposes. The Swedish government was about to sell land in the Brunnsviken area, and was interested in SAS having its main office in the area of Stockholm. So SAS took a plot of land, while the beaches and scenic elements of the area were retained. In 1984 SAS held a competition amongst nine architects to determine who would get to design the head office. Niels Torp won the competition and a complex was built. When the building opened, there were 2,000 employees. Around 2010, SAS had reduced its space in the building due to reductions in staffing. Therefore, portions of the building were leased to other companies. Around 2010 the building owner, Nordisk Renting AB, decided to sell it to Norwegian KLP for 1.5 billion Swedish kronor. In 2010 SAS announced that it would relocate its head office to Stockholm-Arlanda Airport, with the move scheduled for the northern hemisphere autumn of that year. In 2013 SAS announced that it once again would relocate to Frösundavik, partly because it was hard to find another user of the large custom made office building.
Features
The building has seven separate building blocks with a street, covered by a glass roof, connecting the corridors. The street is lined with shops and cafes. Jeremy Myerson, author of "After modernism: the contemporary office environment" said that the SAS building, which opened in January 1988, said that the building "refashioned entirely the traditional notion of office life by creating a giant complex with shops, restaurants, and coffee bars lining a solar-heated internal 'main street'" running through the facility's spine. Jan Carlzon, a company president, explained that the concept was to promote SAS senior managers promenading through the corridor and meeting staff members informally. Myerson added that the building "moved as far away from Taylorism in aesthetic and organisational terms as one could get." The Frösundavik Aquifer is the building's source for cool groundwater used in summer months and warm groundwater in winter months.
