OMA / Reinier de Graaf inaugurates the Norra Tornen in Stockholm
08/11/2018.
[Stockholm] Sweden
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
Description of project by Reinier de Graaf / OMA
The Norra Tornen project started with two inherited building envelopes, the remains of a cancelled project initiated by the former city architect Aleksander Wolodarski. Each a kind of 'crescendo' composition of different heights – neither slab nor tower – prohibit the unfolding of an uncompromised typology. Conversely, the opted program, apartments with an emphasis on large outdoor spaces, prevented too literal a translation of the envelopes into architectural form.
Through a kind of 'Freudian flight forward' – a passionate embrace of the inevitable in order to conquer and overcome one's initial fears – the prescribed building envelope was adopted as a given. Its initial vertical segmentation was complemented by a second, horizontal segmentation that gives the buildings' exterior a single, homogeneous treatment: a rough skin, formed through an alternating pattern of withdrawn outdoor spaces and protruding living rooms. The chosen material, ribbed colored concrete brushed with exposed multi-colored aggregate pebbles, echoes brutalist architecture and that is not by chance. According to architecture critic Reyner Banham, the term brutalist architecture was invented by Hans Asplund, the son of Gunnar Asplund, when referring to a design of his studio colleagues in a letter to his British architect friends.
Concrete at Norra Tornen comes in the form of prefabricated panels – a construction technique that allows work on the building site to continue even below the five-degree Celsius limit which prohibits in situ concrete pouring. Prefabrication also significantly reduced construction costs. This way a design with a wall-to-floor ratio close to 1 – most developers would be discouraged by a 0.5 ratio – was suddenly not an unthinkable proposition. The investment could be channeled in creating apartments with unique layouts, multiple orientations and extra square meters of windows – a precious asset in a country with scarce daylight for half of the year. In a city center with a housing stock largely built before the Second World War, Norra Tornen introduces a new way of living which brings together density with the possibility to enjoy outdoor space (Stockholm ranks fourth among the cities with the highest air quality in the European Union).
The Innovationen Tower comprises 182 units ranging from 44 sqm one-bedroom apartments to a 271 sqm penthouse on the top floor, with the majority consisting of two- or three-bedroom apartments of 80 to 120 sqm. The residential units are complemented by a cinema room, a dinner room for parties and celebrations, a guest apartment, a gym with a sauna and a relaxation area, and retail space at the ground floor. The Helix Tower includes 138 units, plus amenities.
At a height of 125 meters, and 110 meters, respectively, the two towers are the highest residential buildings in Stockholm’s city center. Located in Hagastaden, a new district in the north of Stockholm developed around the Karolisnka Institute (which awards the Nobel Prize in Medicine), they stand as a gate to the city. However, the manipulation of the initial building envelopes radically transforms their initial implied architecture of monumentality. It gives way to an articulation of domesticity. A once formalist structure comes to house apartments that are surprisingly informal...one could even say humanist.
Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.
OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).
AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.