Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 02/07/2026 23:44:00

Functionalism arrived on Rundelsgatan in 1931, when the fraternal order Sirius-Orden commissioned architect Gosta Olson to build it a headquarters on the corner of Rundelsgatan and Kattsundsgatan in central Malmo. Completed in October 1932, the Siriuspalatset (Sirius Palace) is considered a fine example of Swedish functionalism, its clean facade carrying decorative traits of art deco - a dressed-up variant of the otherwise austere style. The Sirius Order itself was founded in Ystad in 1906 and grew into a nationwide fraternal society with dozens of lodges and thousands of members. The order acquired the palace in 1932 and still owns it through the company AB Siriuspalatset; the order's national chancery is housed in the building, alongside lodge halls used for ceremonies and gatherings. From the start the building also earned its keep commercially. In the 1930s the ground floor and offices held a fruit shop, a photographic studio, the Skane editorial office of a Stockholm newspaper and the studio of painter Fritz Karfve, among others, and over the decades the property has continued to mix lodge life with offices, shops and event lettings. Today it stands a short walk from St Petri church and the Caroli district, a quietly handsome piece of 1930s Malmo that most passers-by never realise belongs to a secret society. Sirius-Orden today counts roughly 5,000 members across some 46 local lodges stretching from Trelleborg in the south to Ludvika in the north, led by a Grand Master and Grand Lodge whose chancery sits in the palace; membership requires being at least 25 and recommended by an existing member. Archive photographs from 1933-34 show the newly finished house already buzzing with tenants: the Carlsson & Moberg fruit shop, the AB Ellams Duplicator office-machine firm, painter Fritz Karfve's studio and the Skane editorial desk of Stockholmstidningen all operated behind the strictly functionalist facade with its distinctive exterior lamps.