Turning Torso is the tallest building of Malmö, Sweden.
It is also one of the tallest buildings overall in Scandinavia and the fourth largest in Europe, measuring an astonishing 190,4 meters (roughly 624,67 feet).
The original design was composed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava Valls and is currently owned by the Tenants’ Savings and Building Association, or HSB Malmö (in Swedish: Hyresgästernas sparkasse- och byggnadsförening Malmö).
There are offices, apartments, and an observation deck on the top floor.
History of Turning Torso
The first plans for what was about to become the Turning Torso were drafted as early as 1999.
Back then, the plans were to have a 25-story building at the current location of Turning Torso, and they had already contacted Santiago Calatrava Valls, asking him to construct a temporary information pavilion that should be erected before and contain information about the exhibition Bo01 (Exhibition Live01 in English).
After some consideration, the exhibition company behind Bo01 reached out to him to ask him to design the 25-story building instead.
A sculpture made by the architect was discussed as inspiration for the building.
The name of that sculpture was “turning torso”.
After Calatrava engaged himself in the process, the building got taller, twisted, and more expensive than initially planned.
Turning Torso in Facts and Fiction
The process of building Turning Torso has been featured on Discovery Channel’s Extreme Engineering.
Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten made a documentary about the whole process in the documentary “Sossen, arkitekten och det skruvade huset” (in English: The Social Democrat, the Architecht and the twisted House) back in 2005.
In the Swedish TV-series “Tunna blå linjen” (The Thin, Blue Line) it does occur in the background in several episodes.
Location of Turning Torso in Malmö
Turning Torso is located in the seaside area of Västra Hamnen (West Harbour)
Nearby Turning Torso
Dockan
Places to Eat Near Turning Torso
Dockside Burgers
Laziza
Restaurang P3
Restaurang Ubåtshallen
Wayne’s Coffee
Other information
Some of the information above is based on the Swedish Wikipedia site of Turning Torso.
The pictures used in this blog post were taken by Rickard Österholm, who also wrote the original blog post.
