Sara Davin Omar/Confront
→ Communal Tower
Home Competition, 2020
With Felicia Liang and Diana Wagner
Stockholm, Sweden
In Stockholm, consumer-driven culture plays a particularly vital role in peoples’ lives and therefore also in their homes. Simultaneously, the quintessential type of the metropolis, the high-rise building, is increasingly taking place in the city. One of these is the twin-tower project Norra Tornen completed in 2020. As the new face of capitalist realism in the city, the seemingly innovative form of the towers repeats the standard scheme of any residential high-rise: hierarchically stacked private units designed for young professionals or the nuclear family. To counter this, the proposal for a future home in Stockholm consists therefore of a reformulation of the tower through the application of a shared economy for an extended household.
By promoting collective prosperity over private ownership – objects, but also the multitude of common spaces within the vertical volume – are shared by its residents: from the rooftop terrace to the cultivation park on street level. A storage room in the core is shared by the inhabitants and makes up the heart of each floor. The densely populated sleeping floors generate generous rooms for the community. The shared spaces house different activities such as studying/working, cooking, swimming and exercising. With varying slab heights Communal Tower reflects on the spatial potentialities of the skyscraper beyond private accumulation of objects, suggesting sharing not only as a resistance against consumer culture but also as a form of luxury.