Gothenburg’s tallest building is under construction called ‘Karlatornet’ in ‘Karlastaden’ near Lindholmen on the islandic part of the city. Karlastaden, almost a township with the city, will have 8 blocks: a hotel, school, library, clinic or health centre, restaurants, 2000 apartments or flats, space for offices and a pavilion with a market hall.
Karlatornet or the Karla Tower will be the tallest building in Karlastaden, and it will also be the tallest building among Nordic countries rising to a height of 245 metres with 73 floors. It is scheduled to be completed by 2021: Gothenburg will celebrate its 400th birthday or quadricentennial in 2021!
The 8 blocks in the area under construction are named as Virgo, Lynx, Callisto, Cassiopeja, Aries (the Robert Dickson Foundation has bought some of the development rights in this building), Auriga, Capella, and Karlatornet (245 meter tower with residential flats from floors 5th to 73rd floors and there will be a viewpoint and skybar on 69th floor.
Johan Live, Media Relations Manager, Serneke Group AB, informed that Karlatornet will be completed in 2021, and out of 594 apartments in the tower, ‘481 of them are sold’ – as on April 2019. Has the fall in property prices affected the project? Johan said, “The fall in prices has not affected the sale of apartments in Karlatornet in any substantial way, as we can see.”
VIEWING POINT:
Karlatornet will have a viewing point and a sky bar at level 69, and it will be the heightest viewing point over the city in Gothenburg.
The viewing point will also be open for public. According to Johan, “You will be able to see the entire archipelago around Gothenburg from there.”
Serneka Group is constructing the tower in Karlastaden. Karlastaden is a joint venture between Serneke and NREP and ’many people are contributing to making the vision of Karlastaden a reality, ranging from construction companies to architects and developers’. According to the group, the idea for Karlastaden got the consent from the City of Gothenburg in 2013, and Serneke Group AB acquired the land, and an architectural design competition for the tower was launched. In 2014, an American architectural firm named Skidmore, Owings & Merrill won the competition to design the skyscraper. In 2015, Serneke acquired another property, Lindholmen 1:13, and sold the development rights in Karlastaden to Hemsö and the Robert Dickson Foundation in 2016, and NREP acquires 50% of the shares in Karlastaden’s project company. In late 2018, foundation construction begins for the Callisto, Lynx and Virgo blocks and Serneke aquires NREPs shares. The construction began in 2017 by laying the foundation for the tallest building by using ‘extreme methods of drilling into the rock’ to hold the structure.
Once Karlastaden is ready, it will be an independent township with round the clock action: 24/7 with occupants in 2,000 residential units. Will it be crowded once the flats are occupied? The designers and developers say that it will be ‘welcoming’ – with roof terraces and outdoor squares on different floors with space for children to feel safe and play, and for plants (presumably, not the plastic ones).
The developers reckon that the occupants into the tallest building will start to move in by 2021, and the entire area will be ready for habitation by 2025. The area is going to be the new addition to Gothenburg’s township within the city. Johan Live said that once it is completed ‘Karlastaden will have around 2, 000 apartments altogether, so around 4 000 people will be living there’.
