Stockholm's island city is the work of many hands over time and continues to evolve, with some adventurous new proposals.

Looking down as my flight from Copenhagen neared Stockholm, the coastline seemed to dissolve into the Baltic like a melting ice pack, forming an archipelago as seemingly insubstantial as flecks of foam on the water. The Swedish capital was founded on one of these islands--now known as Gamla Stan (the Old City)--and has extended itself over 13 more, becoming a work of art that is defined by its waterfronts. The urban fabric is looser and more varied in elevation than that of Venice, to which Stockholm is inevitably compared, making each island a three-dimensional composition of varied facades, spiky skylines, and expanses of greenery. Restrained Baroque and exuberant Beaux Arts buildings predominate, with a smattering of Art Nouveau and romantic extravaganzas like the City Hall, but modern buildings are surprisingly inconspicuous in the city centre, except in the commercial core around Sergels Torg and the railway station.

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That urban renewal programme of the 1960s, like the crash programme to build a million homes, provoked a backlash that discouraged further bold moves in the capital. In contrast to Copenhagen and Helsinki, where the best of the new is juxtaposed with the old to the benefit of both. Stockholm seems to have banished Modernism from the mix wherever it might compete with postcard views. Paris and many Italian cities have adopted the same strategy, holding at bay the eyesores that have sprouted in unprotected neighbourhoods, but it seems ironic that this paternalism should prevail in the capital of a country that is synonymous with the Modern Movement.

Rafael Moneo's ill-fated Museum of Modern Art (AR November 1998) which recently reopened after a three-year closure to climinate an outbreak of mould, is hunkered down on the island of Skeppsholm as though it wanted to be invisible; and the extension to the King's Library is largely underground. Nobody wants another banal, overscaled Sergels Torg, but antipathy to the adventurous feels more like a loss of nerve than a stand on principle. Some feel that progressive architecture was too closely associated with the Social Democrats, who dominated Swedish politics for four decades, and that it lost favour when that party lost power. Others contend that architects have been marginalized by the big construction companies and lack the esteem they enjoy in Finland and Denmark. Thomas Sandell, who collaborated with Gert Wingardh on buildings for Ericsson, blames it on the recession. 'Before, companies wanted signature buildings; now they're retrenching, as are public authorities'.

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Anders Wilhelmson is an architect who enjoys playing agent provocateur, and knew he would create a furore when he proposed to address Stockholm's housing shortage by erecting 50-story apartment towers across the city. In his rendering, this Ville Radieuse overlay has a seductive beauty; the 16 cylinders of coloured glass, elegantly cross-braced with steel ribs, shimmering in the clear northern light. He insists, in the name of social equality, that they should be evenly distributed through the city, rather than relegated to a high-rise ghetto on the outskirts, as in Paris. That alone guarantees that his proposal will not be scriously discussed, even though everyone acknowledges the need to add space as a steep rise in property prices drives residents and businesses from the centre.

Wilhelmson is undaunted. He proposed a complex of folded glass planes for the Royal Technical School of Architecture, which seems likely to be set aside in favour of a remodel. An apartment tower that resembles a slab of Gruyere cheese has stalled, but he hopes to employ a similar irregular fenestration on a villa. He has completed one of 10 planned housing units on the outskirts of Helsingborg: an open-ended figure-eight of 30 houses, clad in corrugated metal on the inner face, which coils like a snake around a landscaped courtyard and opens up to the countryside through walls of glass on the outer face. It's the sole bright note in a depressingly conventional new suburb.

The landmarks of Modernism in Stockholm are the work of exceptional individuals: Gunnar Asplund's central library, with its skylit rotunda rising from a stucco cube atop a podium of shops: Sigurd Lewerentz's church of St Mark, and the Woodland cemetery, to which they both contributed. Gio Ponti's Italian Cultural Institute is a hidden gem in the embassy district, and Ralph Erskine's university buildings in Frescati are well worth journeying out to see.

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In contrast, the best new work in the capital is collaborative or concealed. Ten firms contributed clean-lined apartment buildings to the new city-planned community of Hammarby Sjostad, which extends along the Arstaviken waterway. The five- to seven-storey blocks have stepped plans to maximize views and natural light, and the pedestrian paths along the shore are handsomely landscaped with boardwalks and cobbles, reeds and artworks, and incorporate a few surviving fragments of the docks that once occupied this site. An elegant stainless-steel footbridge by Erik Andersson and Magnus Stahl connects the two sides, and a ferry carries commuters downtown. A small island that was formerly occupied by an Electrolux factory is also being redeveloped as a residential community.

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Architects are relocating to the south of the capital, infusing new life into the island of Sodermalm. White, a 350-person firm with offices in eight Swedish eities, has recently completed a handsome five-storey glass-walled office block on the waterfront, taking the top three floors and a woody penthouse for itself. They have also recently finished Stockholm's largest hotel, the Clarion, a few blocks away, but have built much more in Malmo and Goteborg. Nyrens, another large firm, has moved into a warehouse it remodelled. The three young partners of Claesson Koivisto Rune, a trio of young architects, work out of a former bakery and its cellar, and have won acclaim for the rotated geometries of modestly scaled houses, and a residence-gallery in Kyoto.

Gert Wingardh divides his time between Stockholm and his principal office in Goteborg, Sweden's second city. There he built the Universeum, a popular science muscum that makes brilliant use of timber for vertiginous exhibit halls and daringly cantilevered roof planes. Also in Goteborg he created a refined auditorium for Chalmers Technical University that flows into a rough-edged student union, and several commercial buildings. He won praise for the Swedish Embassy in Berlin (AR March 2000) and his plans for the embassy in Washington DC (AR April 2003), but his only conspicuous building in the Stockholm region is the control tower at Arlanda Airport, twenty miles from the centre.

It's a great loss: Wingardh like his talented colleagues deserves to contribute to a city that is the product of many hands and many styles: a composite work of art. It's also very odd, for good contemporary design is an everyday commodity in Sweden, from the interiors of SAS planes to Jonas Bohlin's VIP lounge at Arlanda: in restaurants and hotels such as Nordie Light and Clarion; in Ingegerd Ramen's glassware for Orrefors and ceramics for Gustavsberg as well as IKEA. Why not in the streets? Do the authorities think it would frighten the horses?