Two high-rise residential buildings in the northern part of the city, a kind of "gateway" to the center of Stockholm, were conceived even before the invitation to participate in OMA. The architects had to take into account the silhouette of different heights proposed before them, which they supplemented with the same horizontal "heterogeneity". As a result, the buildings seem to be composed of cubic "bay windows" with living rooms behind them, the floors of which serve as open terraces for apartments on the floor above. The proposed scheme gave a ratio of walls and ceilings of about one, despite the fact that even a proportion of 0.5 is usually unprofitable for developers in the case of high-rise housing, the authors of the project explain. The use of prefabricated elements made of painted textured concrete with the addition of multi-colored pebbles made it possible to reduce the cost of construction. This is a reference to the texture of brutalist buildings, based on the invention of the term "brutalism" by the Swede - Hans Asplund, the son of Gunnar. The use of "panels" also made it easy to build in sub-zero temperatures.
The savings were spent on more varied apartment layouts and large windows, which is important when there is a lack of sun for six months. In addition, the volume of the towers disintegrates into “pixels”, loses its original monumentality, and instead acquires informality and even humanism, says OMA partner in charge of the project, Rainier de Graaf.
The taller Innovationen tower (125 m, 36 floors) has now been completed, the second, Helix (110 m, 32 floors), is planned to be commissioned in early 2020. In total, the residential complex will have 320 apartments, and on the ground floors there will be premises for renting for shops, etc.
Innovationen (total area 23,479 m2) accommodates 182 apartments ranging from two to seven bedrooms (penthouses up to 271 m2). All apartments were sold out even before the start of construction, their cost varied in the case of this tower from 575 thousand to 4.3 million euros. Among the amenities for residents are a room for movie screenings, a large dining room for parties, a guest apartment, a gym with a sauna.
