Filborna Water Tower
Filborna Water Tower is a water reservoir and public landmark at Österleden in Helsingborg. Developed for NSVA, the project was awarded the Kasper Salin Prize, Sweden’s most prestigious architectural award, for rethinking the conventional water tower as a 90-metre circular ring raised above the landscape. The form emerges directly from technical requirements, allowing water to circulate efficiently while creating a monumental public space enclosed by 24 columns. The structure stores around 7,000 tonnes of drinking water, while the open centre forms a civic room for recreation, events and cultural activities.
Excerpts from dialogues about the project
Gert Wingårdh, in a car from Gothenburg to Malmö, 10 September 2019.
Look! There it is! [Nods out the side window] Shouldn't we go and have a look at the building site? Would love to! [Parks next to a crane lorry] Careful where you tread. We should've had a torch. It's Stonehenge! Fun, isn't it, with this enormous scale? It's extraterrestrial!
Stonehenge was nothing we considered when designing it, but I've noticed it's a recurring reference — though Stonehenge is only a third of the size.
It doesn't look like a water tower…
A traditional water tower is a reservoir that's filled and emptied like a toilet — sometimes the water is still, sometimes emptied, sometimes refilled. But this is a full-flow tower, filled and emptied continuously. The water should never be still; it should swirl, move, oxygenate.
It swirls round?
Exactly. And then the ring-formed cistern is perfect: you send in water and after one turn you empty the cistern.
Doesn't that mean you need two cisterns?
That's what we have here, placed outside each other, layer upon layer, in a circle. It was Jonas Edblad who got me to see the cisterns as two rings — the sudden realisation that these ring tanks could be arranged as planets in orbit. Saturn outside Jupiter, Mars outside Earth. The site at the hub of the ring I imagine can be used for weddings and parties.
Joakim Lyth and Gustaf Wennerberg, co-workers, Malmö office, 30 September 2019.
JL: We tested two alternatives, 90 metres in diameter and 150 metres in diameter. But the municipality preferred the 90-metre alternative. In the 150-metre alternative, the cistern itself became so protracted and narrow that no one would’ve dared to move around up there.
GW: That was such a disappointment at first. But if we hadn’t proposed the 150-metre alternative, I don’t think the municipality would have dared to go with the 90-metre alternative. And when I now look at what is being built… it’s pretty majestic.
I’ve been to the building site. It’s an almost physical experience.
JL: NCC Infrastructure are building it. They have no major experience in working with architects, normally they build roads and bridges. And that was certainly a bit daunting, would they be able to handle Gert’s demands? But then we held a kickoff workshop and all the concrete workers were there and I guess they were all a bit worried. But Gert told them, ‘Cast it however you want! This design is so strong it will survive anything!’ Liberating.
Maria Lyth, co-worker, Malmö office,
30 October 2019.
ML: The first proposal had 27 pillars. I said to Joakim, ‘Shouldn’t it have 24? So it can be seen as a sundial.’ That’s how it ended up.
