Almost Frenemies: That Time that Transregional Swedish-Danish Exchanges in Architecture Failed

In 1960, before funds were even secured to build a Danish Academy in Rome, the Swedish King Gustaf VI Adolf and his daughter, Queen Ingrid, Swedish by birth but Danish by marriage, expressed the desire to have the Swedish and Danish cultural legations under the same roof. Despite the idea of solidifying transregional exchanges, networks, and connections between the two neighboring Nordic countries after tumultuous centuries was promising, it never came to fruition. On the contrary, the buildings' proximity, has caused several crises, particularly during the Danish Academy's construction, thirty years after the Swedish one. This article critically explores the building construction of the Danish Academy as a significant case study, addressing it as a missed opportunity to materialize Swedish-Danish exchanges. Rather than determining for whom the construction constituted a missed opportunity – whether from a Swedish or Danish partisan perspective – it seeks to examine it through a transcultural lens, grounded in diplomatic architecture and informed by previously overlooked Danish archival sources, while maintaining a super partes positionality. It builds on the author's compilation of the Byggesager Dossier, an archival sub-collection at the Danish Academy Archive about building operations, aimed at shedding light on the genesis of the building documented therein. By delving into the struggles, negotiations, frictions, and limitations of constructing a Swedish-Danish transregional architecture, the article demonstrates how the discontinuation of the transregional collaboration for the construction can be traced back to a deep opposition regarding the representational role of architecture in a diplomatic context.