RAVINEN is a vibrant and dynamic meeting place for art, music, experiences and design on the Bjäre Peninsula in Scania. RAVINEN is located just outside Norrviken’s Gardens in Båstad, next to the stream ravine that gave the art centre its name. The building is 1500 square meters and designed by Möller Arkitekter AB. RAVINEN is open all year round and houses three exhibition halls, a concert hall with seating for 210 people, educational activities, design shop and Café & Bistro. A sculpture park will be created on the slope towards the sea.
The initiators of RAVINEN are Ulla and Gustav Kraitz, who for three decades worked actively to make the vision of a place for art on the Bjäre Peninsula a reality. RAVINEN is located in a place with an endless view of sky and sea. The meeting between different elements is a central part of the soul of the business. Between the constant and the changing, between nature and culture, between the traditional and the experimental, between expression and impression, between activity and pause.
Ulla and Gustav Kraitz have worked as artists in Förslöv for almost sixty years. Based on the Bjäre Peninsula, they have over decades established a strong international reputation with commissions for public works in New York, San Francisco as well as in Stockholm and Båstad. As a heart in RAVINEN, there is the Kraitz room, where we show an exhibition of Ulla and Gustav Kraitz’s art. RAVINEN is created with the hope of being able to contribute to the cultural life of future generations on the Bjäre Peninsula.
Since June 1, 2022, RAVINEN has been part of Norrviken Utveckling AB, and is owned by the Erik Paulsson family.
Birgit Nilsson-salen
A venue and common room for various forms of scenic creation such as chamber music and jazz concerts, theatre, opera and dance performances, film screenings, symposia, lectures, literary events and more. The selection and content must correspond to the high artistic level that applies to RAVINEN, but must also provide room for experimentation and play. A unique, flexible, aesthetic and imaginative room with a new Steinway C-grand and 210 audience seats.
The Birgit Nilsson hall is carefully designed so that the acoustics will optimally suit the activities described above, and the room is characterized to a great extent by the wall elements on the side walls, which have been designed by Anna Kraitz and Gustav Kraitz in consultation with the acoustician Jan-Inge Gustafsson. The wall elements work diffusively and are central to the sound character of the room. Otherwise, the walls are equipped with ribbed panelling, which also has a sound-diffusing effect, albeit at higher frequencies. In the ceiling there is a suspended ceiling consisting of six large reflectors, all of which function as both reflecting and diffusing elements. The hall is equipped with theatre technical equipment, such as stage lighting placed on wire-drawn pipes, a high-quality speaker system and a projector for showing pictures and films.
If you have thoughts and ideas about stage activities that can develop RAVINEN into a national and international cultural center – please contact Stefan Klaverdal, music and performing arts program manager, sk@ravinenkultur.se or Charlotta Jönsson, operations manager/intendent, cj@ravinenkultur.se.
Cecilia Kraitz’s work Organicum in wood-fired raku can be experienced in RAVINEN Café & Bistro. Cecilia Kraitz mostly works with wood-fired raku – a firing technique dating back to the 16th century that was developed in Japan and was part of the Zen Buddhist tea ceremony. A raku-fired work of art gives the glazes depth and creates structures and random shifts that are perceived differently depending on the lighting or time of day. The temperature of the oven, the nature of the wood and the humidity in the prevailing weather conditions mean that no two firings are the same. Cecilia Kraitz tells us that she has striven to produce an organic movement that contrasts with the materials and straight lines of the architecture. The work of art therefore becomes a meeting and a contact with the magnificent nature outside us.
Photo: Mikael Bertmar
The opening of RAVINEN on 1 October 2021 consisted of six acts over as many days. During the first day of the inauguration week, Olle Wästberg, former consul general in NYC, gave a beautiful inauguration speech that described the journey Ulla and Gustav Kraitz made to realise the dream that has now become reality – a cultural centre on the Bjäre Peninsula.
