The Turning Torso is the major tourist attraction in the city of Malmö. It is a skyscraper located on the Swedish part of the Oresund channel. Designed by the renowned architect Santiago Calatrava, the skyscraper is 190 meters high and has 54 stories. It has been designed to look like a turning human body and thus is called so. It is the tallest building in Scandinavia and the second tallest residential building in Europe.
The turning Torso has nine vertically stacked cubes and is twisted 90 degrees from bottom to top. The steel spine has been designed to twist along with a structure resembling the spine and ribs of a human body. The architecture of the sculpture has been much appreciated and talked about, ever since its completion. The design of the skyscraper is based on a sculpture called “Twisting Torso” by the same architect. The structure inspired by the human form in motion is one of the city’s most important landmarks.
The spectacular building has nine segments of five-story pentagons. These pentagons twist as the building rises, with the topmost segment twisted 90 degrees clockwise with respect to the ground floor. The irregular pentagonal structures that rotate around the vertical core are supported by an exterior steel framework. The bottom two segments serve as office space while the two topmost floors are reserved for Turning Torso Meetings. The central part houses around 147 luxury apartments.
The skyscraper was designed with an intention to create a symbol for Malmö and build a recognizable skyline for the city. A large crane has been the city’s symbol since long as it symbolizes Malmö’s blue collar roots, and therefore the Turning Torso was built to re-establish the symbol and have a skyline for the city. The sculpture is visible for miles around and is located in the Western Harbor. It is however a private residential building and the common public doesn’t have access to it.
