Will tall towers and sky walks populate the Stockholm of the future?

2016-01-12T13:34:00-05:00

Could roof-straddling “sky walks” soon be coming to Stockholm? A new plan proposed for the Swedish capital would see a large slice of its city center built over with densely packed towers, joined at their peaks by a dramatic zigzag of tree-lined, open air gangways... Sweden’s capital is one of the fastest growing cities in Europe... If it isn’t going to sprawl unmanageably or become overcrowded, it’s going to have to find somewhere to put everyone...

Proposed by Anders Berensson Architects, the "Klarastaden," or "clear city" plan, was commissioned by the Swedish Center Party, a center-right party with an environmental focus and neoliberal bent. The Swedish capital is poised to grow 17 percent in the next nine years, putting pressure on its historic infrastructure and architecture.

If you want to avoid sprawling out, you're best options are to go in and up, increasing urban density and height. The Klarastaden proposal does just that, weaving together a matrix of towers of different heights and widths with a series of pathways. Following what is increasingly becoming the go-to trend for marking a project as "green," the building roofs would support a fragmented park.

But, as is noted by CityLab, the Center Party isn't in power at the moment. So Anders Berensson Architects have also crafted a diagram for how their strategy could be retooled as a retrofit instead of a massive development.

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Will tall towers and sky walks populate the Stockholm of the future?