Innovative Water Towers Popping Up in Sweden

A recent trend in Sweden is replacing the country’s aging water towers with radically different designs akin to Modernist architecture. As Nate Berg explains in Fast Company, the trend began in Varberg, where the city held a design competition for a new water tower when the city’s old water system sprang a leak.

Cast in stark concrete and perched atop a small hill, the water tower has the unusual form of a long and narrow rectangle propped up on nine slender pillars. Scalloped along its lengths with subtle curves that recall waves of the nearby coast, the water tower is a radical departure from the bulbous and cylindrical tanks found in cities around the world.

While water tower design is largely dictated by utility — stipulations for the contest included water capacity and safety considerations — the competition called for a design that would become a local landmark that communicates “creativity, slenderness, comfort, and strength.”

The unique Varberg tower sparked a rash of other design contests around the country as cities replace old water towers and build new ones to accommodate population growth. “Advanced design tools and hydrological modeling software are now making it possible for the design of these water towers to take inventive new forms. One new water tower, built in the city of Helsingborg, is shaped like a large floating ring.”