Olle Engkvist

Olle Engkvist, full name Olof Theodor Engkvist, (31 May 1889 - 22 February 1969) was a prominent Swedish building contractor and architect, and founder of the company by the same name.

Early life Born the son of a bricklayer in Uppsala, and raised in Gävle, Engkvist attended the Brunnsvik Folk Highschool (Brunnsviks folkhögskola), and later a technical school from which he graduated in 1918. Engkvist started his building career as a brick-layer, was a union official, and from early on identified as a social democrat.

The Olle Engkvist company

By 1919 Engkvist had qualified as a certified builder, and in 1922 he founded his own building company, which three of his brothers worked also. Engkvist's company went on to become one of the largest in Stockholm, taking on a range of projects including the reconstruction of the Swedish parliament building, the Rikdagshuset in 1938-42.

In the decades after the founding of his company, Engkvist became a campaigner against what he saw as excessive regulation, particularly under Sweden's left-wing post-war governments. Abandoning his previous left-wing beliefs, Engkvist became a conservative. On the 30th anniversary of the founding of his company in 1952, he resigned control of his company turning it over to colleagues, and declared that this was because the "spirit of the age" under what he described as the "'New Deal' in Sweden" was "crushing initiative". Engkvist subsequently retired to live in an 18th century mansion. with whom he adopted a son called Gunnar (born 1924). By 1934 Engkvist had divorced Greta,

As of 2024, the Olle Engkvist Foundation remained a major funder of research in Sweden, focusing on funding research in the areas of medicine, natural sciences, technology and the humanities.