Works News Office
Name:Brick Tower/ KKH Apartment Building
Type:Commercial, Residential
Location:Malmö, Sweden
Year:2016
An 19-floor building with 72 apartments for Skanska Nya Hem, located in central Malmö in a former harbour area next to the new Concert-, Congress- and Hotel project, Malmö Live.

The design of the Brick Tower in Malmö is based on the attitude that there are reasons for giving apartment buildings, that make up such a large amount of the urban context, a calm appearance as a background for the profiles of the community’s shared public institutions.
The facades has vertical grouping of identical windows. To provide a relaxed rhythm and variation, the height of these windows has been substantially increased at the point where the shaft rests on the base and in the two top stories.
In the entrance to the building, its tenants encounter material that greatly resembles its exterior but which has more sensual features than the facades.
We have developed a small number of typical details to enable rational building. Development of the facades began with sketches and drawings before we constructed a number of full-scale prototypes where we could test and adjust the choice of bricks, mortar colour, metal fittings and fibre concrete balcony bases. The facades are made of bricks that have been laid on site using sliding scaffolding. Laying the bricks on site allows for greater variations in nuance than prefabricated brick panels.
The frame of the building consists of prefabricated concrete panels with PIR insulation and it has been constructed as a passive building, as laid down by Swedish Standard.

The general floor plan for the tower has two three-room apartments and two two-room apartments arranged symmetrically around the stairwell. This plan can be varied to allow combinations of apartments with five, four, three or two rooms.
The base houses six apartments along a central corridor. At the top of the building there are terraces, a shared common room and a sauna. Each apartment in the tower is provided with a generous balcony facing in two directions at the corners of the building.
The ground floor is used for shops and cafés.


Completed 2016.



Published
Arkitektur, No 8, Stockholm, 2016
Byggekunst i mur + betong, Oslo, no 2, 2016

Fritz-Höger-Preis 2017, Nominee
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