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It has been a long time since a building put Stockholm on the world map. When Norra Tornen in Hagastaden has been named the best tall building in the world in 2020, it is highly anticipated.
Norra Tornen also represents something new internationally. The architect in charge, Reiner de Graaf at the Dutch office OMA, sees himself as unconventional: “not monumental, but homey.” And the jury of the International High Rise Award talks lyrically about the “apartments for all” of the houses.
It is good to assimilate. Rather, Norra Tornen is part of a luxury trend. Darling, very few.
If skyscrapers were originally a response to sky-high land prices and an opportunity to build offices high up with the help of steel, today more and more tall buildings are trying to sell a residential view. What you are looking for is a perspective from above, the possibility of living a couple of floors above the rooftops.
Build on height is at the same time cumbersome and expensive. If tall buildings are shaped differently, it also makes it even more difficult to build them and meet the costs. Someone has to pay for everything. Therefore, most skyscrapers, if they are not filled with expensive offices, lead to exclusive floors.
So in response to demand for housing, skyscrapers are often unleashed. Now, Tellus Towers, which Wingårdhs drew on Telefonplan, was an attempt at a kind of Robin Hood policy of skyscrapers. 1200 small apartments in two high-rise buildings. Many who could not otherwise afford to live high would have a chance there.
But building skyscrapers on a tight budget is tough. And here it was not enough for a solid design. The two towers became a bit pompous, drab, and mundane, and lacked that extra.
It is sensitive when skyscrapers do not become visually powerful enough. Especially in a city like Stockholm. For most residents, they are primarily landmarks. They are alone, visible in the distance and from most angles.
In order to create interesting urban sculptures, world-famous architectural studios are increasingly being used internationally.
In the number one skyscraper city, New York, North Tower architecture studio OMA has come up with some of the most innovative ideas through ingenious ways of stacking different “boxes” on top of each other, such as 111 First Street in Jersey City.
Danske Bjarke Ingels, in turn, has contributed the so-called Courtscraper: a skyscraper that rises diagonally around a courtyard, as a combination of a European neighborhood city and the Manhattan in which it is located. And Swiss Herzog & de Meuron have created with 56 Leonard a finely glued glass vase in a colossal format.
London can be that city in the world where the need for an architect who conforms to form has become clearer in recent years.
Skyscrapers after skyscrapers have been erected, several of them in the financial district in the eastern part of the city. One more expressive than the other. The British Norman Foster, the architect of the gilt bronze, manages to reach the noise. His “The Gherkin” (cucumber), as it is popularly called, has also been compared to a pistol holster and a massage stick, but it has unmistakable symbolic value. An elegant way where most things are in balance.
Santiago Calatrava’s “Turning torso” has become a symbol of Malmö.
Photo: Ingvar Andersson
Malmö’s “Turning torso” by Spaniard Santiago Calatrava is a son of the same spirit. 190 meters tall and with an elegant slightly curved upper body.
However, as the tallest house in Sweden, it will soon pass Karlatornet in Gothenburg, designed by American SOM. But despite the fact that Karlatornet, whose funding has already been resolved, will be the highest in the Nordic region at 245 meters, with its tight waist it is less convincing, more common than “Turning torso”, which stands strong as a symbol of Malmö. .
Therefore, it is important to handle a monumental scale. Personally, I like the consistent shape that OMA has given to Rothschild Bank in London. Through a simple gesture, a terrace floor recessed a little above the closed and slender body of the house, a monotonous language of power is broken. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
But at the same time, that particular skyscraper is hard to spot among all the others. Clear shapes are a bonus when many tall houses grow uninhibited, a bit like weeds.
The developments in London are a reminder that every major city needs a tall building strategy. The limits of what is allowed in Stockholm are now moving slowly, almost unnoticed, without benefiting quality.
High-rise buildings that have been planned in the region in recent years land around 110 meters for Norra Tornen, compared to 79 meters for Folksamhuset and 84 meters for DN scraper. Stockholm would feel good if I set a maximum height once and for all, in my opinion no higher than Norra Tornen.
Stockholm would also benefit from clearly limiting the number of skyscrapers. There is a situation where they go from being easily discernible to disappearing into the crowd and contributing to the rise of a city with rows of dark streets where the sun never comes.
It would hardly be better if dense clusters of lower, high-rise buildings were constructed. Like the proposal for the continued expansion of Liljeholmen; Marievik. Also at Telefonplan, a collection of low-rise buildings is proposed, after the Tellus Towers were demolished.
In that sense, a lonely house is easier to accept. Inevitably, it casts its shadow over nearby residents during parts of the day. But it rarely completely takes over the adjacent neighborhoods and destroys them. Skyscrapers, on the other hand, are good, like Norra Tornen, who also brings dynamism to the street level.
North Towers awarded by OMA
Photo: Laurian Ghinitoiu
Norra Tornen’s criticism that they are misplaced and destroy PO Hallman’s plan for Röda Bergen seems a bit wrong to me. Much of the criticism is that the towers do not blend in well with the surroundings.
But a high house is never in harmony with the city, rather it is always a deviation, an apostasy. It is there to create a crime and a sensation.
The city would have been sadder without the Torres del Norte, which has become a destination between Stockholm and Solna. The jury that named them the best high-rise buildings in the world in 2020 connects them to the brutalism of late modernism. Perhaps not the most flattering period to be associated with.
For me, there is something special about multifaceted expression. The shape is divided into a small repeating module, pressed in and out, so that intricate variation occurs and the whole easily becomes irregular. Everything is emphasized by the fact that the two towers have different heights and distributions.
More than ideal forms, they are each frozen moment, two forms that have solidified in the middle of a movement.
It is an architecture with a high artistic level. A level architecture should always have when elevated to high altitudes.
Tomas Lauri is an architect and writer of new architecture at DN.
